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Power-hungry AI is putting the hurt on global electricity supply
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Is there any field where an assistant is worthless? I find GitHub CoPilot almost indispensable and soon equivalents will be available for nearly any industry.
Mostly though, I reject the idea that AI is a massive burden on our energy grid. It's well under 1% of global energy consumption right now and I don't see that changing. Yes, it's going up, but other things are going up too.
For example cars are getting bigger and heavier, which means they use more energy. More and more people around the world are heating/cooling their home to make it comfortable instead of just liveable - drastically increasing energy consumption. We build homes with concrete instead of timber. We're using more and more concrete worldwide... and concrete makes up something like eight percent of global energy consumption now (and growing).
We need to produce more energy. There's no way around it.
That's where I can't agree with you. I'd say we need to produce the same amount of energy while trying to have more efficient devices.
That's also why I'm asking what AI could bring to humanity. If it brings us ways to save energy and have enough food for a growing population, then I'd consider it. But for now, from what I know, it's just creating a new need when we are already consuming way too much and destroying our planet.
Instead of creating new needs, we should try to live with less, while still enjoying life.
Cars getting bigger and heavier is clearly true, but they are also consuming less (at least for ICE cars) than before. My Seat Leon Cupra is drinking way less fuel than my old Audi S4 Avant while being more spacious inside. I'm also sure that at one point we're gonna start having smaller and more efficient electric cars because not everyone wants a huge SUV.