Laura Helmuth: Google's AI Overviews must create entirely new information in response to a search query. That costs an estimated *30 times* more energy than simply extracting information from a source through a traditional search. 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/what... by @parshallison.bsky.social

Google's AI Overviews must create entirely new information in response to a search query. That costs an estimated *30 times* more energy than simply extracting information from a source through a traditional search. 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/what... by @parshallison.bsky.social

What Do Google’s AI Answers Cost the Environment?www.scientificamerican.com Google is bringing AI answers to a billion people this year, but generative AI requires much more energy than traditional keyword searches

Killing the environment one incredibly dogshit search response at a time

you vegan? asking since you care about the environment so much

eating meat is entirely optional and causes far greater environmental harm than a data centres. so yes, we should improve society by not participating in that industry, not get mad about people having dota 2 matches

Thats so cool really hope the person who asked hears that

you directly responded to me on a public forum i dunno what you expected tbh

let's argue about data centers on the internet, which needs data centers to exist

"everyone has to take every measure that I approve of to solve the problems I specifically care about or they should be ignored by everyone else."

i doubt anyone is willing to give up using computer

hope you don’t want to have kids because i have News

we should improve society somewhat, and i don't think removing data centres is how we improve it

Do you genuinely believe that anyone here is advocating to ban Data Centers or are you being obtuse on purpose?

Wasn’t aware that there was a box labeled “Issues of Environmental Urgency” that is too small to fit more than one

i don't think sensationalized recycled headlines fall into that box tbh; we have seen this same headline for every trending technology and suddenly people are concerned because it's about a thing they don't like. ai, crypto, vr, video games, social media, streaming services- it's all the same thing

It is not the same thing. Theres two very specific things that are cause for significant concern about the energy usage, not just foolin around on the internet playing games

I am, but whether I am vegan or not has no relevance to the output of "AI" data centres and dumping that non sequitur in here is incomprehensible. Like what was the intent there

LOL 🖕

I'm vegan and I'm inclined to agree with where youre going, though I know all the reactionary online people have already made it clear that they dont want to be inconvenienced by the knowledge of what happens to cows, chickens, etc. bred for meat or how detrimental it is to our planet.

That's not to say the aforementioned data output problem isn't also an issue, but people will get so easily defensive when faced with more than one issue, esp one that might inconvenience them

carnists have a lot of cognitive dissonance when it comes to veganism; they have been brainwashed and lied to their entire lives, and suddenly they are being faced with the reality of their actions- they don't like that. not consuming animal products actually has an impact

😱

2% of global electricity usage is NOT 2% of global energy usage. www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/glob...

Look, we understand your need to defend the shit industry nobody wants but you've apparently built your life around.

It might be worth getting your criticisms right, amigo.

So you don't have a PhD in artificial intelligence?

I want people to go after AI for the bullshit God complex its proponents have, for the insane concentration of power, for the overselling and underdelivering, and for the insane libertarianism that is driving the whole industry from the top. Being wrong will only weaken the argument.

Is it still a lot. What's your point?

Cars, fossil fuel power plants, planes, agriculture, and industrial processes strongly dominate the carbon budget of the world, which we are blowing through like nobody's business. Maybe save some wrath for the things that are actually destroying the planet? References: IPCC reports 1 through 6.

I've got plenty of wrath to go around. Especially for something that is COMPLETELY unnecessary and is getting progressively more wasteful.

If you need terabytes of data and more energy than the world's fourth largest economy to create a chatty, half-assed assistant that would probably be fired on the first day if human, the problem is not the data. The problem is the design.

So... Stupid...

boiling the oceans to get wrong answers, it's fucking Bitcoin all over again

Example 975168971353 why using AI in a search engine is a spectacularly daft idea.

And it’s crap

Takes a lot more energy to come up with a result like "put glue in your pizza" than to just find and report popular pizza recipes.

There needs to be a way to opt out before your search begins.

There is! bsky.app/profile/udm1...

bsky.app

Even if it’s way too complicated imo

I made a bookmark on one of my browsers that I can click to bring up a Google search page with the extra string preloaded; since I default to DuckDuckGo search, that's also what I do for Google and Wikipedia searches and Google Translate.

Critical thinking skills require recalling the ongoing interaction. AI always restarts from zero with each interaction. Ergo no critical thinking skills in AI. Boondoggles have more substance.

Man between crypto and now this, these tech bros see zero problems in speed running environmental damage huh?

And how much energy will it take to actually provide *correct* answers?

I read that article and just uninstalled Google Gemini

Scholars call BS on LLMs like “Applications of large language models (LLMs) have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations” "We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit”

ChatGPT is bullshit - Ethics and Information Technologylink.springer.com Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persist...

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