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throwthrowuknow 4 minutes ago [-]
The title is incredibly misleading. AI is not using anything that would go towards the “billions” presented in the article. So unless they are proposing moving the billions to North America in lieu of building datacenters then I don’t see a valid argument.
maelito 8 minutes ago [-]
Well, extremely large US models trained all-year will way too much money, yes. Not models like Mistral, they consume way less resources.
sajithdilshan 5 minutes ago [-]
That explains why miserable mistral is a pile of garbage
api 3 minutes ago [-]
I challenge people to look at some numbers here.
Is it possibly excessive? Yes. But this is insane hyperbole.
Of course that's how you get attention, I guess. Rational discourse is ignored. To get people to pay attention you have to make everything extreme and stupid.
onion2k 34 minutes ago [-]
Now do Netflix and YouTube! How about golf courses, almond farming, and Disneyworld?
Everything has a downside attached. Most things are terrible for the environment if you look at the raw numbers, and if you're not interested in them or they're things you don't use then it's easy to just dismiss them as pointless nonsense that we should stop doing.
However, if you're only looking at the downside then you're being dishonest. The point is never "Let's stop this because it's bad for the planet", but "Is the net benefit worth the cost?"
That could still be a no for AI, but there are things we ought to stop doing long before we come for AI. Notably golf. It's a terrible waste of land and water, and boring.
rogerrogerr 31 minutes ago [-]
Golf is largely self-regulating though; there is not a huge quantity of VC money going into golf courses. As more people find golf boring, there are fewer golf courses because the economics of running a failing golf course vs. selling to developers are too obvious.
Golf courses are not booking revenue by exchanging shares in themselves to other golf courses in exchange for golf balls that have not been manufactured yet.
onion2k 24 minutes ago [-]
Not right now, sure. The investment has been done over the last couple of centuries of golf course building. The environmental impact of keeping a huge amount of land watered so a few thousand people can bat their balls around is ongoing.
From an environmental perspective we should ban golf and use the land for literally anything else*.
* maybe not data centers.
bayindirh 2 minutes ago [-]
> The environmental impact of keeping a huge amount of land watered so a few thousand people can bat their balls around is ongoing.
True, but do you add chemicals to that water, and does it becomes unusable at the end of the day? At worst, that water gets in soil and goes somewhere else, and some of it evaporates.
Open loop datacenter cooling is not like that though (you add tons of chemicals to that water to prevent scaling and to kill algae), and closed loop is not that harmful, but big AI datacenters don't use that because it's wee bit more expensive.
The most "water hungry" sectors can reuse that water, or at least redirect it for agriculture. AI Datacenters are different. They are built in the cheapest way, hence they are very dirty both in carbon footprint and water-body fouling.
Golf courses at least trap some carbon by growing grass. It's almost bitterly funny in comparison.
galleywest200 19 minutes ago [-]
Where I live it can rain hundreds of days a year and the nearest course had browning greens last time I drove by.
28 minutes ago [-]
amazingamazing 7 minutes ago [-]
Netflix and YouTube probably are orders of magnitude less than the alternative of driving to plays and movie theaters. Most golf courses use recycled water, albeit the opportunity cost is real. Almond farming is fair.
AlexandrB 3 minutes ago [-]
> Netflix and YouTube probably are orders of magnitude less than the alternative of driving to plays and movie theaters.
This ignores that no one drives to a movie theatre or play every day or even several times a day but this is a common usage pattern for Netflix or that Netflix is not really an alternative to these activities but just another form of entertainment piled on top.
bluealienpie 9 minutes ago [-]
X is terrible, so don’t address Y is an awful way of framing any issue.
eesmith 17 minutes ago [-]
Okay, but this summary of the UN report is emphatically not "only looking at the downside". From the piece:
"“This report is not a case against artificial intelligence, a technological transformation that is improving the lives of billions of people around the world,” said Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of UNU-INWEH who led the investigation team. “It is a call for using it responsibly and addressing its unintended impacts proactively to make it sustainable and equitable.”"
It is impossible to judge of the net benefit is worth the cost if you don't know the cost. More specifically, "The report finds that AI’s environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured."
Its key policy messages even include: "AI within planetary limits is achievable. The report’s central argument is constructive. Capability and stewardship can grow together, but only with measurement, transparency, and shared responsibility across the ecosystem."
You can also see it's not anti-AI by how it argues, for example: "Governments should integrate AI infrastructure into energy planning, water governance, and land-use permitting, and require standardized environmental footprint reporting."
jackyinger 21 minutes ago [-]
How about instead of sewing FUD and justifying one evil by pointing at others, we actually gave a damn about the world we’re creating.
People act like doing things that are good for the environment is inherently lacking in economic value. My Dad’s environmental consulting business put me through college, while doing good things for the environment and people, and that is really small scale stuff. And his primary customer was a bank wishing to avoid lending on contaminated sites.
There could absolutely be massive money to be made in doing good things for the environment, it is the people making money doing bad things for the environment who do their damndest to keep grasp on the wheel and subvert any attempt to make doing good things for the environment economically advantageous.
These people are virtually selling their children’s future for a few extra bucks today. The earth is going to be around for a long time yet. We should care about our children, grandchildren and so on.
Avicebron 1 minutes ago [-]
We've gone so far past the "man plants tree whose shade he will never sit under" _almost_ universally. It's hard to see a way back, I know I'm doing my part, helping my struggling community/state. But it's hard work that's badly renumerated.
Maybe if we structured our economics around long term plans we wouldn't have such a mess.
insane_dreamer 19 minutes ago [-]
this is a poor argument
there have been plenty of articles about golf courses being a threat to water sources; just because golf courses haven't been closed doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the threat posed by AI. You're still free to crusade against golf courses if you like.
gchamonlive 19 minutes ago [-]
> if you're only looking at the downside then you're being dishonest. (...) "Is the net benefit worth the cost?"
Is any benefit worth the cost of killing the world? The article proposes a series of recommendations for investors in the "roadmap for sustainability and equity", because the conversation isn't if the benefits of AI are worth the costs, but if we are able to pay these costs at all plan the required infrastructure improvements -- which are always done with taxpayer money regardless of how neoliberal the society claims to be -- in order to accommodate the expansion of AI without massive disruptions.
johnnyanmac 3 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
Ydarbleoj 20 minutes ago [-]
My son does this. Points out all the issues in the world that I didn't address when I point something he's done. It's a childlike response insisting that either we talk about everything or nothing.
Weird take.
> That could still be a no for AI, but there are things we ought to stop doing long before we come for AI.
Hard to have that discussion if these are the responses.
senordevnyc 24 minutes ago [-]
Their estimated water usage by AI data centers for 2030 is about 9.8 trillion liters. The global almond crop is estimated to use ~8 trillion liters. So I vote we just ban almonds. Problem solved!
Also, I find the framing of water usage in terms of “the water needs of Sub-Saharan Africans” to be manipulative and misleading. It appears they just picked a poor part of the world where per capita water usage is very low, so they could make it sound as bad as possible. But virtually none of these data centers will have a deleterious effect on water availability for those people.
Alternative headline: “Despite massive growth globally, AI is projected to only use about a third as much water in 2030 as Turkmenistan”
(~28 trillion liters, mostly to grow cotton in the desert).
jonas21 15 minutes ago [-]
Or alfalfa, which uses ~6 trillion liters per year in California alone. Basically all of it gets fed to animals, and much of it is exported to China and Japan to feed their livestock.
uludag 13 minutes ago [-]
> So I vote we just ban almonds. Problem solved!
I'm pretty sure if we had an actually vote between banning AI data centers and banning almond farming, one would win by a landslide. I'm actually confident that if some hypothetical community had absolutely no water or energy problems they would vote against having the AI data center built.
galleywest200 21 minutes ago [-]
We can do two things: limit almond farming and limit AI water usage.
goda90 20 minutes ago [-]
Humans need to eat. Humans don't need AI. We're consuming too much in general and this speculative bubble is making consumption skyrocket with questionable gains for humanity.
sajithdilshan 7 minutes ago [-]
> questionable gains for humanity.
how do you know that?
senordevnyc 18 minutes ago [-]
Humans don’t need to eat almonds.
11 minutes ago [-]
solid_fuel 7 minutes ago [-]
I would trade every single token predictor in the world for a single almond.
sanp 20 minutes ago [-]
Almonds are tasty. AI on the other hand….
jonas21 5 minutes ago [-]
... is "a technological transformation that is improving the lives of billions of people around the world" [1]
The report seems genuinely dishonest. Every technology has its downside. The report complains about e-waste and mineral mining. Hasn't that been an issue since decades?
If they truly wanted to have an honest discussion, they would have outline both the advantages and disadvantages and start a genuinely balanced public debate. The report is more like a doomsday fear-mongering for a lack of better words propaganda.
The sad part is that reputed organizations like UN does this kind of things, it just reduce the trust of public in these orgs even more.
Is it possibly excessive? Yes. But this is insane hyperbole.
Of course that's how you get attention, I guess. Rational discourse is ignored. To get people to pay attention you have to make everything extreme and stupid.
Everything has a downside attached. Most things are terrible for the environment if you look at the raw numbers, and if you're not interested in them or they're things you don't use then it's easy to just dismiss them as pointless nonsense that we should stop doing.
However, if you're only looking at the downside then you're being dishonest. The point is never "Let's stop this because it's bad for the planet", but "Is the net benefit worth the cost?"
That could still be a no for AI, but there are things we ought to stop doing long before we come for AI. Notably golf. It's a terrible waste of land and water, and boring.
Golf courses are not booking revenue by exchanging shares in themselves to other golf courses in exchange for golf balls that have not been manufactured yet.
From an environmental perspective we should ban golf and use the land for literally anything else*.
* maybe not data centers.
True, but do you add chemicals to that water, and does it becomes unusable at the end of the day? At worst, that water gets in soil and goes somewhere else, and some of it evaporates.
Open loop datacenter cooling is not like that though (you add tons of chemicals to that water to prevent scaling and to kill algae), and closed loop is not that harmful, but big AI datacenters don't use that because it's wee bit more expensive.
The most "water hungry" sectors can reuse that water, or at least redirect it for agriculture. AI Datacenters are different. They are built in the cheapest way, hence they are very dirty both in carbon footprint and water-body fouling.
Golf courses at least trap some carbon by growing grass. It's almost bitterly funny in comparison.
This ignores that no one drives to a movie theatre or play every day or even several times a day but this is a common usage pattern for Netflix or that Netflix is not really an alternative to these activities but just another form of entertainment piled on top.
"“This report is not a case against artificial intelligence, a technological transformation that is improving the lives of billions of people around the world,” said Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of UNU-INWEH who led the investigation team. “It is a call for using it responsibly and addressing its unintended impacts proactively to make it sustainable and equitable.”"
It is impossible to judge of the net benefit is worth the cost if you don't know the cost. More specifically, "The report finds that AI’s environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured."
Its key policy messages even include: "AI within planetary limits is achievable. The report’s central argument is constructive. Capability and stewardship can grow together, but only with measurement, transparency, and shared responsibility across the ecosystem."
You can also see it's not anti-AI by how it argues, for example: "Governments should integrate AI infrastructure into energy planning, water governance, and land-use permitting, and require standardized environmental footprint reporting."
People act like doing things that are good for the environment is inherently lacking in economic value. My Dad’s environmental consulting business put me through college, while doing good things for the environment and people, and that is really small scale stuff. And his primary customer was a bank wishing to avoid lending on contaminated sites.
There could absolutely be massive money to be made in doing good things for the environment, it is the people making money doing bad things for the environment who do their damndest to keep grasp on the wheel and subvert any attempt to make doing good things for the environment economically advantageous.
These people are virtually selling their children’s future for a few extra bucks today. The earth is going to be around for a long time yet. We should care about our children, grandchildren and so on.
Maybe if we structured our economics around long term plans we wouldn't have such a mess.
there have been plenty of articles about golf courses being a threat to water sources; just because golf courses haven't been closed doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the threat posed by AI. You're still free to crusade against golf courses if you like.
Is any benefit worth the cost of killing the world? The article proposes a series of recommendations for investors in the "roadmap for sustainability and equity", because the conversation isn't if the benefits of AI are worth the costs, but if we are able to pay these costs at all plan the required infrastructure improvements -- which are always done with taxpayer money regardless of how neoliberal the society claims to be -- in order to accommodate the expansion of AI without massive disruptions.
Weird take.
> That could still be a no for AI, but there are things we ought to stop doing long before we come for AI.
Hard to have that discussion if these are the responses.
Also, I find the framing of water usage in terms of “the water needs of Sub-Saharan Africans” to be manipulative and misleading. It appears they just picked a poor part of the world where per capita water usage is very low, so they could make it sound as bad as possible. But virtually none of these data centers will have a deleterious effect on water availability for those people.
Alternative headline: “Despite massive growth globally, AI is projected to only use about a third as much water in 2030 as Turkmenistan”
(~28 trillion liters, mostly to grow cotton in the desert).
I'm pretty sure if we had an actually vote between banning AI data centers and banning almond farming, one would win by a landslide. I'm actually confident that if some hypothetical community had absolutely no water or energy problems they would vote against having the AI data center built.
how do you know that?
[1] https://unric.org/en/ais-environmental-costs-threaten-water-... (yes, the same page we are discussing)
If they truly wanted to have an honest discussion, they would have outline both the advantages and disadvantages and start a genuinely balanced public debate. The report is more like a doomsday fear-mongering for a lack of better words propaganda.
The sad part is that reputed organizations like UN does this kind of things, it just reduce the trust of public in these orgs even more.