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Generative AI is a climate disaster (techwontsave.us)

submitted 4 months ago by UnseriousAcademic@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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The cost of simply retrieving an answer from the Web is infinitely smaller than the cost of generating a new one.

Great interview with Sasha Luccioni from Huggingface on all the ways that using generative AI for everything is both a) hugely costly compared to existing methods, and b) insane.

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[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Tech could save us, but not AI. The tech that could isn't profitable enough to do so, though, so it's not happening. And it's not like oil corp. shareholders & execs are gonna accept a pay cut so that their subsidies could be redirected to more ecologically sustainable tech. Nope, we live in capitalist hell. At least, until we don't.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 6 points 4 months ago

I'm cheered that we now have so much wind and solar wanting to come online that it's straining grid interconnects so countries (US and NL for example) suddenly have to spend a bundle on infra so that the power can get across continents to where it's needed

this is a very cool problem to have: oh no! we have too much new clean energy!

it may not be sufficient, but it's an excellent start