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Generative AI is reportedly tripling carbon dioxide emissions from data centers (www.techradar.com)

submitted 1 month ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20289663

A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.

The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.

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[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 93 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two "technology branches" already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.

It's why humans will always remain de facto slaves to a few masters. Anything that could potentially be advantageous to all life on Earth? Only if the ones at the top get to profit first. No profit? Enjoy scorching to death on hell-planet for the next forty years!

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 44 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two “technology branches” already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.

And your sources? I only did a cursory search, and according to the IEA data centers are responsible for somewhere in the range of 2-6% of electricity demand. Renewables are currently around 30% globally.

Source: https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2024

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

I feel like some people are just emotional reactionaries. They see a certain story, and in their own mind they make the story worse than it is, and treat their feelings as fact.

I have no sources on this, or proof that this guy in particular is doing that.

.........wait, am I doing it right now???

Hmmmmm......

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 points 1 month ago

Maybe they got confused about total power usage (maybe) being more than the green power added?

[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two "technology branches" already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.

I think you would be shocked if you learned what some other things in our world cost in CO2.

The energy costs of cryptocurrency mining are easy to calculate because the system is extremely transparent. AI is a little muddier, but we know how much big tech is expanding data centers, and we know how many enterprise GPUs Nvidia sells, so we get a decent estimate.

But these things don't actually do as much damage as compared to other things. Imagine how much energy is used for Gaming PCs and consoles. It's probably up there with Crypto and AI if you consider all running consoles and PCs, plus all the multiplayer infrastructure. But we don't have numbers because this is hard to calculate.

And then there's stuff like personal automobiles, that completely blow these other things out-of-the-water.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Or compare to the CO2 put out by global concrete construction. It's more than some might believe.

[–] DanglingFury@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes but concrete is required. It is literally the foundation of modern civilization. It is the second most used substance on the planet after water. Without it we would have to do away with things like roads, power plants (green and carbon emitting), housing, water treatment and waste treatment plants, erosion control and seawalls, and most production facilities for all of our day to day goods and essentials.

The industry is making steps to reduce its up front carbon cost and inrease captured carbon in the concrete, but it is slow moving as big changes can cause major problems with infrastructure. Noone wants their hospital falling down because they used a new mix design that hasn't been thoroughly tested and tried.

We dont work without concrete, but i'm pretty sure we do work without bitcoin.

If your just looking at fun carbon emitting facts though, then aluminum smelting is another huge number like 4% globally. Concrete is like 7% globally, and HVAC is like 12%.

https://sustainability.mit.edu/article/cleaning-one-worlds-most-commonly-used-substances#:~:text=Concrete%20is%20the%20second%20most,it's%20used%20to%20make%20concrete.

[–] FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Quit the whataboutism. While the construction industry is in dire need of improvements, it's at least causing GHG emissions to achieve a useful goal, unlike ShitGPT which repeatedly fails to prove its value when opposed to its environmental costs.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I dont think much will remain after this extinction event. Do you know how long it takes niches to refill in an ecosystem? We're going to get to a point where industry collapses and we are reset if we survive at all.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

We wouldn't even be able to restart. All the easily available resources have been delved. Three thousand years ago people could scoop pure gold from rivers by the kilos. Today, all decent deposits lie kilometers below the surface.

But it'll be for the best. We had our shot and blew it.

[–] Tenniswaffles@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Resources like gold would be more accessible, y'know because it already been mined and made into things. If society collapses what few survivors there are could recycle shit like metals. The actual issue is fossil fuels. Getting to a point where you can use renewable power would be difficult with using fossil fuels for power first.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Pretty sure immortan joe is going to be wearing all that gold.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Maybe resources will be scarce enough that we are forced to try something other than capitalism, as we have to share to make it anywhere. Or maybe it will just make all resources needed for advanced technologies unavaible. Then we can fight over whose hut is closest to the last river.

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[–] Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world 35 points 1 month ago

I remember when scientists were more focused on making AI models smaller and more efficient, and research on generative models was focused on making GANs as robust as possible with very little compute and data.

Now that big companies and rich investors saw the potential for profit in AI the paradigm has shifted to "throw more compute at the wall until something sticks", so it's not surprising it's affecting carbon emissions.

Besides that it's also annoying that most of the time they keep their AIs behind closed doors, and even in the few cases where the weights are released publicly these models are so big that they aren't usable for the vast majority of people, as sometimes even Kaggle can't handle them.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Everyone thought AI was going to kill us via some Terminator-like Skynet.

Nope.

It’s just going to let us kill ourselves via greed and accelerate destroying the environment.

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

But it's ok because it's also going to solve climate change.

[–] Rakudjo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And even if it doesn't, it'll still make hundreds of trillions of dollars doing it, so it was worth it in the end.

[–] exso@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Don't worry, it's all very green!

The cash and stock tickers that is.

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[–] credo@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which search engines give results without an AI generated response?

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 16 points 1 month ago

Startpage and DuckDuckGo, but you might want to disable summaries in the latter's settings.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Every IT company now: we should increase our server costs by 100x to offer unwanted gimmicks that users don't want and aren't willing to pay

[–] towerful@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

And don't trust

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Look, i'm not saying that this isn't a problem. My only question is, is this one of those "global warming is because people don't recycle their soda bottles" things? In other words, How concerned should I be about this vs, taking attention away from the energy, beef, and transportation industry?

[–] RustyShackleford@literature.cafe 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Very concerned. It’s currently a race who can speed run us to extinction first.

[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

So you're saying that we should be concerned with datacenters more than things like factory farming and oil & gas?

I don't follow. I need a lot more evidence of harm before I become "very concerned" about datacenters specifically.

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[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think this is something to focus on. Tech being 40% of all emissions in the US is suspicious, given that in 2021, all industry was 30.1%, and all transportation was 28.5%. And the total emissions in the US was 6.3 billion tons. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=108623

I don't have more recent data (if it's in the article, I didn't see it at a skim) but I feel like oil, gas, and agriculture are the bigger long-term targets.

[–] ElderReflections@fedia.io 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Looks like Techradar misunderstood parts of the source story. The projected emissions over the next 10 years is equal to 40% of all US emissions. The Register

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[–] mrvictory1@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Call me surprised.

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 8 points 1 month ago

It's a nice gimmick and sometimes fun but probably not worth it given the state of the planet already.

[–] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

This is exactly what using AI feels like:

https://youtu.be/lM0teS7PFMo?

[–] alienanimals@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"The only way to interpret statistics is with a healthy dose of skepticism and a thorough understanding of their context."

While people in this thread jump at the opportunity for this slice of statistics to affirm their confirmation biases, intelligent people will ask what the total carbon dioxide output looks like by comparison.

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You're quick to imply that this study is bullshit, yet offer no counter argument except "believing statistics is for losers lul"

So where are your sources to refute the article?

[–] NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Ita also trivial to come to the same conclusion at a smaller scale.

You can run a LLM at home and see the amount of GPU & power resources it takes to compute the larger models. If I ran that full time, your household bill will most likely be 3x alone.

[–] alienanimals@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Never said the study was bullshit. I just said to look at the bigger picture.

I would show you how Google works and provide an article, but your reading comprehension leads me to believe you'd come up with another straw man fallacy to support your confirmation bias.

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[–] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Oh yea, this is happening too.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Lesson: only ask AI if you're still stuck after searching and have no colleague around.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This is the "carbon footprint" fallacy created by big oil. We should vote left and unionize until either the external cost of pollution is internalized with pigouvian taxes, or electricity is rationed by a community-owned organization.

Nobody will notice us shooting ourselves in the foot and expecting corporations to do it too. They don't care if we lead by example unilaterally.

[–] ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There exists an alternative that uses a lot less power. And also that power is going to get spent no matter what anyway.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

and also that power is going to get spent no matter what anyway

Yeah but it leads to higher bills for consumers, and generators can get spun down, and it's keeping fossil fuel plants open, etc.

[–] ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

The alternative I was talking about are called employee brains.

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