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RT'ed by William Gibson on Twitter:
and it's so very on the nose of the issue:

@xs4me2 @LillyHerself not “this” unless backed up with data about how these various data centres source their energy.

Many have been and are increasingly using sustainable power, mostly because it’s actually more cost effective most of the time and they can do a little greenwashing as a bonus.

There are a multitude of reasons to dunk on LLMs / AI but power usage isn’t the “gotcha” many think it is.

Edit: It’s been fun but muting now to silence trolls 😆 🔇

@wiredfire @xs4me2 You can believe that, if it makes you feel better. But as long as there is still nuclear, and fossil fuels are still being burnt, and we are asked to keep our power usage down for essential things, and as long as the earth's climate continues being disrupted, then I'm afraid there's no excuse for it.

@LillyHerself @xs4me2 aye, I’m not actually contesting that but it’s conjecture - attack AI with things that OpenAI and their fetid kin can’t hand-wave away. How they power their infra isn’t the route.

✨easily traumatized nihilist✨

@wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 considering that before the AI boom, we were collectively only managing to power about 6% of the total energy use with renewables on a regular basis, there is ZERO REASON to think it's different with AI because "they pwomise." Everyone is absolutely right to dunk on the power consumption, just like with shitcoin, in fact they don't dunk nearly hard enough.

news.yahoo.com/news/power-hung

eu.detroitnews.com/story/busin

Yahoo News · Power-hungry AI boom making power grids dirtier, less reliableBy Griffin Eckstein

@wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 this isn't even to mention the water cost.
nature.com/articles/d41586-024

Fresh water is not becoming a more abundant resource, but new gigantic data centers are making the problem worse by consuming vast amounts of water. The AI boom is driving the creation of new & larger (more energy & water-intensive) data centers, including in areas already direly short on water.

techtimes.com/articles/293657/

www.nature.comGenerative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secretFirst-of-its-kind US bill would address the environmental costs of the technology, but there’s a long way to go.

@itsmeholland @wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 yes, once used, the water is gone afterwards. poof. each individual H2O molecule zapped from existence. it's a shame!

@lritter @wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 it doesn't matter how much fucking h2o you have if none of it is drinkable LMAO wtf? Have you been asleep for the past 50 years? We're not good at reclaiming water, desalination is not a sustainable solution & even rainwater is now considered to be unsafe to drink ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. If we squander the drinking & irrigation water at this point, we're fucked, bud.

@lritter @wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 like this is maybe the most hilariously wrong comment you could have made lmao.

You don't need to destroy the water molecules to have too much usless, polluted, or contaminated water and not enough drinkable water or water that's usable for agriculture, or even simply water that's safe to allow back into the environment bc surprise! Putting contaminated water back into the noncontaminated water creates BIG PROBLEMS