Paris Marx: Google’s emissions are up 48% in 5 years. Microsoft’s are up 30% since 2020. Those soaring figures are being driven by mass investments in data centers to power AI tools. Generative AI is a climate disaster and data center expansion must be stopped.

Google’s emissions are up 48% in 5 years. Microsoft’s are up 30% since 2020. Those soaring figures are being driven by mass investments in data centers to power AI tools. Generative AI is a climate disaster and data center expansion must be stopped.

Generative AI is a climate disasterdisconnect.blog Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share

Love this!

Google and Microsoft managed to get in The Netherlands special datacenters plus a windmill park for their worldwide needs. Ground is very scarse and expensive in NL and there will not be enough energy for households this way. 😡

After that Facebook tried to establish big datacenters in NL too. Local politicians, still thinking that Big Tech is for the public good, said yes. But others got alarmed and protests came. FB's plan was cancelled. Datacenters need cooling water, not good for the environment.

To be blunt, then we all better NEVER vote for another Republican who will put another "let them eat cake" jurist on the Supreme Court. See the Chevron decision if you doubt that!

Exactly! I'm tired of being told my puny recycling is so f'n important when #richierich fly in private jets whenever/wherever TF they want, and Big Tech is given a free pass because, well golly, it's new sexy technology! Yes, I'm a bitter former software/hardware chickie. #solderingiron

I accidentally used Bing for a search. I was looking for advice on how to cook a pizza on a grill. The AI insisted that I "flip regularly." That isn't how you cook a hamburger, let alone a pizza.

What's the breakdown of GenAI power consumption vs Bitcoin mining?

Of course WIRED has an article Bitcoin uses 112.31 TWh annually AI servers could use between 85 to 134 Twh annually by 2027 in a middle-ground scenario Other resources, like water, also are impacted in both scenarios

AI vs Bitcoin mining: Which consumes more energy?wired.me If AI and crypto are the technological behemoths of our era, which one has a bigger appetite for energy?

(@mattburgess1.bsky.social when will all Wired writers be here full-time?)

The Atlantic on Instagram's power usage: "The University of East London estimated that every time Cristiano Ronaldo posts a photo on Instagram, the energy that would be needed to show the image to each of his followers—190 million at the time—could power a household for five to six years"

Every Time You Post to Instagram, You’re Turning on a Light Bulb Foreverwww.theatlantic.com Even simple actions online can take a toll on the environment.

Cloud computing Is vaporizing life on earth

We (humans) have a moral imperative to physically stop this, would really like to see some direct action taking place. That's about as specific as I will get.

Also though just the continued expansion of the internet into places it’s been less available & everyone in places like the US storing more & more data from photos, emails etc? Electricity use is up a lot across many industries.

Storage costs are low vs computational costs, aren't they?

Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s storage costs for probably several billion people worldwide and going up. With a lot of things the small cumulative costs of many many people doing stuff can easily Trump a few big uses. None of this should be read as supporting ai or bitcoin mining though!

worth it

like most environmental issues, the problem is less your jesus raptor pic and more companies using the tech at scale to solve dumb problems in the worst way

Just saw this, relatedly: bsky.app/profile/heej...

"AI queries can use 30 times more energy than traditional searches" 😶 markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/...

The AI boom will push America's shaky power grid to its limitmarkets.businessinsider.com "The cost of that Gen AI architecture is freaking out of control," Baird strategist Ted Mortonson told Business Insider.

So the first step of AI should be solving the energy issue

It's literally burning resources to fuel the latest techbro cavalcade of bullshit.

someone needs to dox the datacenters

What, as in post their locations? We already have that information www.datacentermap.com

Data Center Map - Colocation, Cloud and Connectivitywww.datacentermap.com Data center, colocation rack, cloud servers, managed hosting or bare metal servers? Data Center Map is your guide to the right data center provider.

So basically, we have to keep our thermostats at 78 degrees so Google can give us shitty art and AI summaries of the first search result.

We are, with every single GHG, on record highs.. Every week a new record. As long as we don't see and act with this, as it is, a global problem.. That long the damage control can't be made.. And that's the only thing we can do, damage control bsky.app/profile/bete...

Nur mal zur Info.. CH4 (Methan) 25x stärker alx CO2 N20 (Lachgas) 265x SF6 (Schwefelhexafluorid) 23.500x Source NOAA gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_...

bsky.app/profile/bete...

Does anybody think, that this was a joke... 6 years ago...? Nobody should be surprised for a femtosecond.... 👇 👇 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Observed fingerprint of a weakening Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation - Naturewww.nature.com A characteristic ‘fingerprint’ of sea-surface temperatures suggests that the Atlantic overturning circulation has slowed substantially since the mid-twentieth century, as predicted by climate models i...

Their servers will melt or flood eventually , no matter where they are...

in Disconnect you say "[Microsoft] now has more than 5GW of installed server capacity, which is more than Hong Kong or Portugal’s annual energy consumption" It's only equal to Portugal's consumption (4.8GW*h*) if they run those servers at full tilt 24/7 (24*365.25*5GW = 4.38GWh)

Queue a new clamour for nuclear ☢️🙄

It's also shit.

don't be evil was a joke

One thing that bugs me, is that Microsoft said Swiftkey couldn't work with AI ... When it has, probably for years

SwiftKey has become so dire that I finally ditched it this year, after probably a decade or more of using it

Nuclear has zero emissions Thank Zeus and the Witch of Endor for Rolls-Royce www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/n...

Novel Nuclearwww.rolls-royce.com Rolls-Royce is focused on creating mechanical, electrical and nuclear power solutions to meet demand for safe, reliable, sustainable power.

But not zero environmental impact. It generates heat for example and needs water to cool down. Also need places to be build and cabling and infrastructure… all for something most people don’t even want…

“generates heat for example and needs water to cool down. Also need places to be build and cabling and infrastructure” I’ll allow it.

Will AI run more efficiently on quantum once that goes mainstream?

No. Different tech, different problem space. At least for now.

Quantum computing has very edge use cases. It's not a silver bullet for every computation problem out there. In fact one of the challenges of quantum computing is figuring out problems/algorithms that may run better in such computers.

📌