this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024

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Generative AI is reportedly tripling carbon dioxide emissions from data centers (www.techradar.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

62 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20289663

A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.

The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.

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[–] Kyrgizion 93 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two "technology branches" already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.

It's why humans will always remain de facto slaves to a few masters. Anything that could potentially be advantageous to all life on Earth? Only if the ones at the top get to profit first. No profit? Enjoy scorching to death on hell-planet for the next forty years!

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two “technology branches” already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.

And your sources? I only did a cursory search, and according to the IEA data centers are responsible for somewhere in the range of 2-6% of electricity demand. Renewables are currently around 30% globally.

Source: https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2024

[–] Lost_My_Mind 24 points 2 months ago

I feel like some people are just emotional reactionaries. They see a certain story, and in their own mind they make the story worse than it is, and treat their feelings as fact.

I have no sources on this, or proof that this guy in particular is doing that.

.........wait, am I doing it right now???

Hmmmmm......

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Maybe they got confused about total power usage (maybe) being more than the green power added?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two "technology branches" already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.

I think you would be shocked if you learned what some other things in our world cost in CO2.

The energy costs of cryptocurrency mining are easy to calculate because the system is extremely transparent. AI is a little muddier, but we know how much big tech is expanding data centers, and we know how many enterprise GPUs Nvidia sells, so we get a decent estimate.

But these things don't actually do as much damage as compared to other things. Imagine how much energy is used for Gaming PCs and consoles. It's probably up there with Crypto and AI if you consider all running consoles and PCs, plus all the multiplayer infrastructure. But we don't have numbers because this is hard to calculate.

And then there's stuff like personal automobiles, that completely blow these other things out-of-the-water.

[–] Cocodapuf 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Or compare to the CO2 put out by global concrete construction. It's more than some might believe.

[–] DanglingFury 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes but concrete is required. It is literally the foundation of modern civilization. It is the second most used substance on the planet after water. Without it we would have to do away with things like roads, power plants (green and carbon emitting), housing, water treatment and waste treatment plants, erosion control and seawalls, and most production facilities for all of our day to day goods and essentials.

The industry is making steps to reduce its up front carbon cost and inrease captured carbon in the concrete, but it is slow moving as big changes can cause major problems with infrastructure. Noone wants their hospital falling down because they used a new mix design that hasn't been thoroughly tested and tried.

We dont work without concrete, but i'm pretty sure we do work without bitcoin.

If your just looking at fun carbon emitting facts though, then aluminum smelting is another huge number like 4% globally. Concrete is like 7% globally, and HVAC is like 12%.

https://sustainability.mit.edu/article/cleaning-one-worlds-most-commonly-used-substances#:~:text=Concrete%20is%20the%20second%20most,it's%20used%20to%20make%20concrete.

[–] Sanctus 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I dont think much will remain after this extinction event. Do you know how long it takes niches to refill in an ecosystem? We're going to get to a point where industry collapses and we are reset if we survive at all.

[–] Kyrgizion 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

We wouldn't even be able to restart. All the easily available resources have been delved. Three thousand years ago people could scoop pure gold from rivers by the kilos. Today, all decent deposits lie kilometers below the surface.

But it'll be for the best. We had our shot and blew it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Resources like gold would be more accessible, y'know because it already been mined and made into things. If society collapses what few survivors there are could recycle shit like metals. The actual issue is fossil fuels. Getting to a point where you can use renewable power would be difficult with using fossil fuels for power first.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Pretty sure immortan joe is going to be wearing all that gold.

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[–] Blaster_M 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

AI consumes power, yes, it's projected to triple its environmental impact, yes, but its environmental impact is much less than most other things. If anything, the AI hate train draws angry peoples' focus off the big polluters that matter.

"Arrghle AI is in everything and modern cars track you, I'll just drive a 30+ year old pickup truck because they don't has no AI tracking nonsense"

Oil and gas companies: money

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[–] Ragdoll_X 35 points 2 months ago

I remember when scientists were more focused on making AI models smaller and more efficient, and research on generative models was focused on making GANs as robust as possible with very little compute and data.

Now that big companies and rich investors saw the potential for profit in AI the paradigm has shifted to "throw more compute at the wall until something sticks", so it's not surprising it's affecting carbon emissions.

Besides that it's also annoying that most of the time they keep their AIs behind closed doors, and even in the few cases where the weights are released publicly these models are so big that they aren't usable for the vast majority of people, as sometimes even Kaggle can't handle them.

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Everyone thought AI was going to kill us via some Terminator-like Skynet.

Nope.

It’s just going to let us kill ourselves via greed and accelerate destroying the environment.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

But it's ok because it's also going to solve climate change.

[–] Rakudjo 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And even if it doesn't, it'll still make hundreds of trillions of dollars doing it, so it was worth it in the end.

[–] exso 2 points 2 months ago

Don't worry, it's all very green!

The cash and stock tickers that is.

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[–] postmateDumbass 1 points 2 months ago

Its the 'first to market wins' paradigm

[–] credo 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Which search engines give results without an AI generated response?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Startpage and DuckDuckGo, but you might want to disable summaries in the latter's settings.

[–] Wispy2891 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Every IT company now: we should increase our server costs by 100x to offer unwanted gimmicks that users don't want and aren't willing to pay

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

And don't trust

[–] gedaliyah 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Look, i'm not saying that this isn't a problem. My only question is, is this one of those "global warming is because people don't recycle their soda bottles" things? In other words, How concerned should I be about this vs, taking attention away from the energy, beef, and transportation industry?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Very concerned. It’s currently a race who can speed run us to extinction first.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So you're saying that we should be concerned with datacenters more than things like factory farming and oil & gas?

I don't follow. I need a lot more evidence of harm before I become "very concerned" about datacenters specifically.

[–] Specal 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't you dare say that eating meat is bad bro, someone will get very upset and point their finger at AI

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't think this is something to focus on. Tech being 40% of all emissions in the US is suspicious, given that in 2021, all industry was 30.1%, and all transportation was 28.5%. And the total emissions in the US was 6.3 billion tons. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=108623

I don't have more recent data (if it's in the article, I didn't see it at a skim) but I feel like oil, gas, and agriculture are the bigger long-term targets.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Looks like Techradar misunderstood parts of the source story. The projected emissions over the next 10 years is equal to 40% of all US emissions. The Register

[–] Blaster_M 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's a percent against the world's emissions. Be concerned less with this. AI is the current hate train whipping boy, and takes the pressure of public focus off the biggest polluters.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

It's a nice gimmick and sometimes fun but probably not worth it given the state of the planet already.

[–] mrvictory1 8 points 2 months ago

Call me surprised.

[–] werefreeatlast 5 points 2 months ago

This is exactly what using AI feels like:

https://youtu.be/lM0teS7PFMo?

[–] alienanimals 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

"The only way to interpret statistics is with a healthy dose of skepticism and a thorough understanding of their context."

While people in this thread jump at the opportunity for this slice of statistics to affirm their confirmation biases, intelligent people will ask what the total carbon dioxide output looks like by comparison.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You're quick to imply that this study is bullshit, yet offer no counter argument except "believing statistics is for losers lul"

So where are your sources to refute the article?

[–] NocturnalEngineer 7 points 2 months ago

Ita also trivial to come to the same conclusion at a smaller scale.

You can run a LLM at home and see the amount of GPU & power resources it takes to compute the larger models. If I ran that full time, your household bill will most likely be 3x alone.

[–] alienanimals 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Never said the study was bullshit. I just said to look at the bigger picture.

I would show you how Google works and provide an article, but your reading comprehension leads me to believe you'd come up with another straw man fallacy to support your confirmation bias.

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[–] drunkpostdisaster 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Oh yea, this is happening too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Lesson: only ask AI if you're still stuck after searching and have no colleague around.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is the "carbon footprint" fallacy created by big oil. We should vote left and unionize until either the external cost of pollution is internalized with pigouvian taxes, or electricity is rationed by a community-owned organization.

Nobody will notice us shooting ourselves in the foot and expecting corporations to do it too. They don't care if we lead by example unilaterally.

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