Exactly. Blocking out ads wherever possible is the only way to not be influenced by advertising. At least it helps to know that one isn’t immune to it. That helps to counteract the effects somewhat, but don’t count on it if you aren’t actively keeping your defenses up.
I realized that when i tried to cheat on a test in school, that when i prepared a cheat sheet, i didn’t actually need it afterwards - that only applies when writing the sheet by hand.
This is correct, but not all Data Center Usage is GenAI too. I agree that video generation is pretty energy intensive and not something that should be done on the regular, but image generation runs here on my graphics card pretty fast, so it’s not a big deal and comparable to chatbot responses.
Watching an hour of Netflix uses about 0,8kWh, which is a lot more but noone tries to make people have a bad conscience for binge watching a series. That’s Datacenter usage too, and a lot more than GenAI.
AI is also used a lot in Science, and even if i know that scientists aren’t that popular in the US, we probably agree that this activity is summa summarum positive for humanity, so lets keep it.
So where is the AI usage you propose is worse than global air travel? Lets look at total numbers here:
Electricity usage is 30% of the total CO2 emitted in the USA. Data centers in total used 4.4% in 2023, estimates say this will reach between 6.7 and 12% in 2028. If we take the worst case, Data Centers will be responsible for a bit more than 3% of all CO2 emissions in the USA, best case about 1.7%.
That’s not nothing, but it’s still a lot less then global flight, which was responsible for 9% of CO2 emissions in the US transport sector, which amounts to about 4% of Total US emissions 2022. Please note we are talking US flight emissions here, NOT GLOBAL. Since most datacenters worldwide reside in the US by far, your statement is bullshit.
ETA: People, the real climate killers have not changed: Cars, Industry, Flight. Trying to create a bad conscience for peanuts in relation is not worth it AND WILL NEITHER MAKE PEOPLE JOIN YOU NOR RESCUE THE PLANET, because these lies are easily disproven and make the green movement look untrustworthy.
image gen isn’t so heavy either, but even i who arguments against this “AI is killing the environment”-bullshit agree on the video gen - there is a lot of power usage behind that one. might still not be an issue if using renewables, but if you use elon’s illegally gas turbine powered AI, then it’s fucking bad.
here you go, since the commenter didn’t reply: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about
OP, this statement is bullshit. you can do about 5 million requests for ONE flight.
i’m gonna quote my old post:
I had the discussion regarding generated CO2 a while ago here, and with the numbers my discussion partner gave me, the calculation said that the yearly usage of ChatGPT is appr. 0.0017% of our CO2 reduction during the covid lockdowns - chatbots are not what is kiling the climate. What IS killing the climate has not changed since the green movement started: cars, planes, construction (mainly concrete production) and meat.
The exact energy costs are not published, but 3Wh / request for ChatGPT-4 is the upper limit from what we know (and thats in line with the appr. power consumption on my graphics card when running an LLM). Since Google uses it for every search, they will probably have optimized for their use case, and some sources cite 0.3Wh/request for chatbots - it depends on what model you use. The training is a one-time cost, and for ChatGPT-4 it raises the maximum cost/request to 4Wh. That’s nothing. The combined worldwide energy usage of ChatGPT is equivalent to about 20k American households. This is for one of the most downloaded apps on iPhone and Android - setting this in comparison with the massive usage makes clear that saving here is not effective for anyone interested in reducing climate impact, or you have to start scolding everyone who runs their microwave 10 seconds too long.
Even compared to other online activities that use data centers ChatGPT’s power usage is small change. If you use ChatGPT instead of watching Netflix you actually safe energy!
Water is about the same, although the positioning of data centers in the US sucks. The used water doesn’t disappear tho - it’s mostly returned to the rivers or is evaporated. The water usage in the US is 58,000,000,000,000 gallons (220 Trillion Liters) of water per year. A ChatGPT request uses between 10-25ml of water for cooling. A Hamburger uses about 600 galleons of water. 2 Trillion Liters are lost due to aging infrastructure . If you want to reduce water usage, go vegan or fix water pipes.
Read up here !
telemetry and crash reporting, and stuff like public statistics. Here’s the “Easy to read” privacy policy: https://help.niagaralauncher.app/article/109-privacy-policy-summary
They explicitly state that they sell a launcher, not data.
I switched to Niagara after Nova added the shitload of trackers, and i love it. At first i thought: what, i should only place 7 elements on my homescreen? But it really works and it didn’t even take a day of active use that i knew i had to get the Pro version. Was the first time i ever put down money on a launcher, but i’ve been using it for years now and hope i will never need to replace it, because there’s nothing that comes close.
Edit: damn, i read like a goddamn adbot. No, i am really human and like it lol.
Bot Disproval: Xi Pooh Bear Tienanmen Square Gaza Uyghur Genocide
I love my Niagara Launcher ! it’s a different concept than most launchers, and looks pretty spartan on first glance, but it’s sleek, efficient and can look absolutely fabulous. The Pro stuff is a bit pricey, but it has a good privacy policy, autodelete data older than a year, and are GDPR compliant.
Which was manufactured outrage, spawned by a few Shitter posts which were then amplified by a huge bot network.