[beanshadow]

> And, no, AI won't solve it; unfortunately, it only makes it worse.

A conclusive argument for this still seems out of reach. AI does solve some problems, and it's not exactly clear which problems AI "only makes worse". It's not clear how much energy all of our AI systems will use, and while it's tempting to outright believe they'll simply use more and more, even that's not yet clear based on arguments presented.

[bayindirh]

> It's not clear how much energy all of our AI systems will use, and while it's tempting to outright believe they'll simply use more and more, even that's not yet clear based on arguments presented.

For the last 20 years, power consumption of HPC is increased per cubic inch as systems are miniaturized and density increased. The computing capacity increased more than the power use, but this doesn't mean we didn't invent more inefficient ways to undo significant part of that improvement.

It's same for AI. Cards like Groq and inference oriented hardware doesn't consume as power as training oriented cards, but this doesn't mean total power use will reduce. On the contrary. It'll increase exponentially. Considering AI companies doesn't care about efficiency yet means we're wasting tons of energy, too.

I'll not enter into the water consumption debacle, because open-loop systems waste enormous amounts of water.

All in all, we're wasting a lot of water and energy which would sustain large cities and large number of people.

with regards from your friendly HPC admin.

[bcrosby95]

Outside AI independently uncovering some energy breakthrough there is nothing it can do to help, only hurt. We already have a source of clean, cheap, unlimited energy, we aren't rolling it out the way we could and should because some rich people would rather have us on a subscription plan where we literally light our source of energy on fire so we have to keep coming back for more.

[fc417fc802]

AI has already pushed fusion research forward.

We could certainly do better but switching isn't as simple as you imply. You also conveniently left out the part where activists historically blocked nuclear buildout.

[pyrale]

> It's not clear how much energy all of our AI systems will use

Is it superior to zero?

Does AI replace existing, more costly energy use patterns to the extent that its own energy use is offset?

[thinkingtoilet]

Perhaps someday. For now, it amount of energy used to produce and run these models is astronomical. It may be the case AI is a net positive for the environment at some point, but as it stands that is nothing but speculation. The reality is it is making the situation worse.