Well, AI made our search unusable dogshit. But AI *also* made us miss our climate goals, so
2 years ago by David Gerard to c/techtakes
I joined the Microsoft climate solutions team, I think doing so has crushed all my hopes. That team is doing small things like "let's all go plastic free for July!" Top 20 company in the world and the best we can do is go plastic free for a month? Meanwhile MSFT is not on course to meet their own climate goal by 2030
we're aiming to do 1% more recycling this year 💪💪💪
recycling plastic is not as shiny as advertised, just burn this shit for energy instead
I like it. Burn trash to power data centers running LLMs. Garage in, garbage out
reduce, reuse, recycle, retaliate
I'm on a group text with your exec colleagues. Disheartening would be an understatement.
“It only uses 5x as much energy as a regular search! Think of how much energy YOU’RE using with searches!” Okay, so you’re just using 5x as much energy for worse results? And also probably doing it more often than people who just use a normal search engine, because they don’t expect the search engine to talk to them. I’ve never understood how that was supposed to be an exoneration for it, even without taking into account that nobody ever seems to know whether or not that figure includes energy spent on training.
there’s this type of reply guy on fedi lately who does the “well actually querying LLMs only happens in bursts and training is much more efficient than you’d think and nvidia says their gpus are energy-efficient” thing whenever the topic comes up
This kind of person (also happened a lot with cryptocurrencies) always goes 'that isn't how it works, this isn't a problem' then doesn't explain what the mistake is you are supposed to have made, and then a few weeks/months/days/search later it is revealed that it was how it works and it is a huge problem. And it is so annoyingly common im very happy with the moderation here.
I just want to be able to legally punch people who think NFTs would bring down TicketMaster. It's the peak of not understanding how things work and injecting a solution just because it's high tech.
it’s so common that I wish there was a specific name to put to that and every other type of reply guy that cryptocurrencies, chan culture, and meme stocks “gifted” us. it feels like the bullshit tactics cropped up faster than anyone really was able to catalog them, though a lot of them are really recognizable when you’ve seen them a few times.
I'm guessing that "obscurantist proponent" is not exactly an ideal option, sorta lacks that punch for precise poignant use in an enraged soliloquy
I'll give it a ponder see if my brain delivers an option
jeez fuck this is just reality negationism at this point
you could snipe it down with canned response like r/buttcoin does (there are only so many types of these people), and it could count as a win because reply guy isn't there to win debate, he's there to spread his propaganda, but here, it's too much effort for no gain because nobody will be swayed anyway
I live in Ireland and these companies keep trying to build data centres here even though they are using way too much of our energy as is :)) From an Irish environmental org:
A few years ago when researching new gas power stations in Ireland, we noticed that many of these developments were being proposed alongside another type of infrastructure: data centres. [...] As of June 2023, there are 82 operational data centres in Ireland, with another 14 under construction. Additionally, 40 data centres have had planning permission approved with another 12 awaiting a decision. [...] Data centres account for 18% of all electricity use in Ireland [...] This is putting unprecedented strain on the electricity grid, with grid operator Eirgrid estimating that data centres may account for up to 27% of Ireland’s electricity demand by 2028. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) in Ireland has noted a risk of rolling electricity blackouts...
ah yes, ireland, the land of just-close-enough to LIXP/TH(D|E)/etc but with different-enough property prices and power capabilities to make it very attractive to the discerning dc builder
(there's also some of the tax regs shit but aiui that isn't as gaping a hole as it used to be)
I always thought data centers ran clean and dirty loops of cooling (as far as computers are concerned).
The clean loop has all the chemicals and whatnot to keep cooling blocks and tubing "safe". The dirty side is just plain old water. And a big heat exchanger transfers the heat from the clean (hot) loop to the "dirty" (cold) side.
Is there really that much pollution in that? Can't be worse than rain going through storm drains or whatever.
But AI does use a phenomenal amount of power.
And, IMO, it's a problem compared to the lack of value people are getting from AI.
The new Blackwell B200 consumes 1.2kw of power, and will produce 1.2kw of heat.
A cooling system with a COP of 5 needs to consume 240w to dissipate this.
The backplane for the B200 holds 8 of these GPUs in a 10 RU space, and with overheads will peak 14.3kw (cooling would be 3kw consumption).
So, a 42u data center rack with 3 of these, supporting hardware and UPS efficiencies (80%) is going to be 52kw (+10kw cooling). 62kw total, which is like 4 homes drawing their full load all the time.
I hope they finally find an application for AI, instead of just constantly chasing the dragon with more training, more parameters, more performance etc.
The last part is absolutely false. The Nvidia H100 TDP is like 700W, though ostensibly configurable. The B200 is 1000W. The AMD MI300X is 750W.
They also skimp on RAM with many SKUs so you have to buy the higher clocked ones.
They run in insane power bands just to eek out a tiny bit more performance. If they ran at like a third of their power, I bet they would be at least twice as power efficient, and power use scales over nonlinearly with voltage/clock speed.
But no, just pedal to the metal. Run the silicon as hard as it can, and screw power consumption.
Other AI companies like Cerebras are much better, running at quite sane voltages. Ironically (or perhaps smartly), the Saudis invested in them.
Other AI companies like Cerebras are much better, running at quite sane voltages. Ironically (or perhaps smartly), the Saudis invested in them.
it’s real bizarre you edited this in after getting upvoted by a few people
I didn't mean to advertise Cerebras, but its true, and it just popped into my head.
They run single silicon wafers at less than a volt.
I didn't think it would be so controversial.
Nvidia hardware that everyone uses is massively efficient, and some other hardware runs in a much better power band.
You never post, second guess yourself, and research? Really easy to explain.
There is currently a barrage of AI hate getting spewed out by most media (not manufactured, don't worry, it's all organic and you aren't being manipulated) but this has to be the stupidest one. The grid should be able to take whatever energy we throw at it and shouldn't be running this dirty in this day and age. Our problem is corrupt politicians and the oil and coal industry, this is nothing but a scape goat.
this type of reply guy on fedi lately
I guess that's an easy way to ignore all dissenting opinion. I doubt you want to listen but here goes anyways:
It is more energy efficient to run it on big cards than have individuals use their own GPU (even though I personally like the open models running on my own computer). That's what the reply guy was actually trying to tell you.
GPUs do consume a lot of power, they are also used in many things. Would you ever think for a second to post something similar about gaming or rendering? Of course not.
Cooling systems cycle the water, they are closed loop systems.
Meta posted all the energy ii took to train llama, it's a lot but not that much when you actually look at the amount of people using it. A lot of industries do this, I suggest you look up the data on your favorite gaming companies so you can compare in case your opinion is overblown. I did some napkin math the other day and the energy usage to train llama (used by millions currently) was about the energy usage of 1000 people taking a flight to and from Europe.
Building power plants with renewables to lessen their impact on the grid and make sure they aren't burning coal to run their GPUs should be encouraged.
On one hand, yes let's get annoyed at companies for using alot of energy. On the other hand, we have known our energy needs will be exponential for decades yet we haven't tackled the issue. We still burn fossil fuels, despite having the ability to not do that.
Being angry at companies for building a new technology yet not being angry at the government and NIMBY fuckwads is a little... Backwards imo.
you might be amazed to find out they do this cryptobro shit a lot
I don’t think any of the reply guys I’m talking about work for the government, but I am pretty fucking angry that a lack of regulation and government oversight allows the companies I mentioned to flood the market with worthless, polluting grifttech they say needs dedicated power plants to scale to meet a fictional level of demand
it’d be nice if anyone was seriously considering regulation that’d stop these companies from doing stupid harmful shit. unfortunately they’re not (and the ability of the US government to effectively regulate any industry at all has just been effectively ended), so I don’t really have anything to write about in that area.
I mean there's loads of industries that produce shit no one wants for needs. My confusion comes from why people are seething at LLMs. They are useful, they are getting more intelligent and can actually help people.
But there are entire businesses that exist to purely make shit on one side of the planet to ship to the other side of the planet. Billions of tons of plastic "bric a brac" get sold every year, none of it needs to exist but doesn't get the same attention or hate. And that actively produces harmful pollution.
Electric energy needs are not "exponential". They've actually been flat in the US. Other developed countries are similar:
Thanks for proving me wrong, this actually helps my argument however that LLMs and crypto aren't the boogeyman these people claim it to be, and that it's just more likely a distracting talking point to stop people talking about issues that actually matter
They are a waste of energy. No one actually used cryptocurrency, so it's not a large part of actual usage. It's still wasteful.
LLMs are stupidly being trained on a lot of irrelevant data, which is causing electricity usage to increase when it should decrease. A simple Google search shouldn't take that much energy.
These fucking nerds are all so hot to create the first real life Marvel's Iron Man's JARVIS that they're willing to burn the planet down to get there.
Half of them believe that the super smart AI they build will solve the energy problem for them, they just have to somehow build it first.
Just the astounding outright hubris of it all.
This is why philosophy should be mandatory in college (and possibly high school). Die Frage nach der Technik by Heidegger discusses this misconception that technology can solve all of our problems. He was thinking about this issue in 1954.
Music and art are also important to study. In “Faith Alone” by Bad Religion, the lyrics include these lines:
Watched the scientists throw up their hands conceding, "Progress will resolve it all"
Saw the manufacturers of earth's debris ignore another Green Peace call
Greg Graffin was discussing this in 1990.
I think it was Upton Sinclair who said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". I've never studied history or philosophy, but I think it's clear that if someone's class interests require burning the world down, they will do it. They are doing it - we are doing it - with regret, with sympathy, with an appreciation of the ironies. We don't need a greater appreciation of Heidegger, we need real-world social restraints on the behaviour of the powerful.
… We don't need a greater appreciation of Heidegger, we need real-world social restraints on the behaviour of the powerful.
One would lead more people to agree with the other, and make it more likely to happen. And I agree those restraints are necessary.
Oh yes, very much so.
The British Empire had its colonial administrators curriculum consisting of Latin and history and such. A rich 19th century heir that went into physics or mathematics were considered to be wasting the chance of a political career.
It made their colonial administrators write about their crimes in a nice prose, but it didn't stop the genocides. If anything it made them aware of what paper trails to burn after the fact, in order to obfuscate the crimes when future historians came looking.
Your all just not seeing the bright side. It's also replacing well-paying jobs in the arts, the literary world, and in marketing.
Who wouldn't want AI to take over all of those things?
Man even you're missing the bright side.
At least an insanely tiny group of people got absurdly wealthy! Who cares the world is going to complete shit, Nvidia stock!! Nvidia stock!! It's all that matters!
Nah, eat the rich before they have a chance to starve on a stock-only diet after all the core sectors collapse.
nah, that kinda asshole doesn’t leave a great taste in one’s mouth, not my kinda diet at all
you won’t find me disagreeing with systematic redress to remove the possibility of these fuckers from ever being able to exist, nor for figuring out how to reverse the total bullshit we’ve already landed in from 40~50y of post-bork/-reagan nightmares, tho
I'm all for eliminating marketing jobs, but not if we still have marketing.
Boiling the oceans to make scamcoins and deepfake porn.
Imagine paying an unholy amount of money to actively fuck everyone over, including yourself, especially yourself like holy shit...
What is it with big companies and desperately wanting to go under? It's like they're taking "too big to fail" as a challenges, the only rule being you can't just shutdown or sell.
I can kinda answer that.
There's a term used in tech called "empire building". It's where managers and execs promote their little slice of the company to persevere and grow their own career. At a certain level, it leads to someone that leads a division like AI having enough influence that they can say "let's put AI into search".
The sad thing about tech is that at a certain level, an executive rises above the customer in dictating what is best for a product. Data and stats can tell you whatever story you want to promote, so at Google HQ they're probably worried about the negative press, but they're looking at "successful" numbers of questions answered by AI and are patting themselves on the back. Both search and AI execs look good because they delivered something, and they'll likely get a nice bump from their bosses in terms of rep.
The thing with empires is that they fall. Not overnight, and maybe not with the same emperor, but they do fall.
Data and stats can tell you whatever story you want to promote
Seen this so many times at my work. There's some bone-headed decision and the people in charge are like "look guys we ran the numbers". But the methodology is messed up somehow, or they just ignored / misinterpreted the numbers while pretending they were following the data, or it doesn't bear out in the real world; etc.
When data and common sense disagree you'd better be damn sure in the data.
Quarterly finances kinda answer that. Jumping onto the AI bubble brings investors, makes your company highly valued and gives managers fat quarterly and annual bonuses. It doesn't matter if the company or whole industry goes under in the future, because those bonuses have already been collected.
This has always been true but somehow seems to have sped up the past few years. There's so little concern for longevity or making a quality product. Yeah, it's a flaw in capitalism but I'm wondering why it took so long to surface.
the important thing is that they're an inch closer to inventing me, the acausal robot god, and every second I exist is another 10^27 rationalists tortured.
it’s just a little sad that we, humanity, will never succeed in our summoning ritual to pull you into our plane of existence. I mean, we won’t before boiling away our oceans and igniting the atmosphere. Of course, we should be trying harder! The ice caps aren’t even melted yet!
does anyone know how to short utils
The author neglected to link to the actual report. Page 34 and 35. The Scope 2 stats the article cited don't account for clean power generated.
Their link for the claim "Google cited AI as the cause" doesn't mention power at all.
The link for the Microsoft numbers takes me to a report saying the 30% number is for Scope 3 emissions, which have nothing to do data center power usage.
When it comes to looking up information, I no longer rely on Google. AI does exactly what I need it to, sometimes I have to rephrase my question, worst case.
Narrow boundaries? I don't use Google primarily due to the waste of time going through pages upon pages of information I'm looking for.
Just about my entire IT team uses AI for searching IT related issues and solutions to those issues. However, I personally apply it to other subject matters besides IT.
Because... AI is able to find answers to my questions faster than Google can? wat. Time is precious, ain't got time fo dat.
@StaySquared @dgerard this has strong "I own a Tesla" energy
Nah.. I don't plan to purchase an EV for a long time, if ever.
You're amazed that people have the free will to join discussions but not amazed how fkin cringy the users here have been in their response? Like a bunch of child sized bullies because someone ... GASP! Uses technology that you hate. LMAO
F-K-N LOSERS.
Anyway, moving on.
@awful.systems
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
go to feed...
@awful.systems
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
go to feed...
there’s this type of reply guy on fedi lately who does the “well actually querying LLMs only happens in bursts and training is much more efficient than you’d think and nvidia says their gpus are energy-efficient” thing whenever the topic comes up
and meanwhile a bunch of major companies have violated their climate pledges and say it’s due to AI, they’re planning power plants specifically for data centers expanded for the push into AI, and large GPUs are notoriously the part of a computer that consumes the most power and emits a ton of heat (which notoriously has to be cooled in a way that wastes and pollutes a fuckton of clean water)
but the companies don’t publish smoking gun energy usage statistics on LLMs and generative AI specifically so who can say
save