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Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

cnbc.com

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Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#51

Post by piva00 »

ETH_start wrote: post #35
Frieren wrote: post #27

I see the current gold rush of AI the same way I saw crypto-currencies. Even if originally there were people that believed in the concept it became just a snake-oil sellers business. The parallelism is made even more relevant by its hungry use of electricity. There is a future for AI but it is not what we see companies developing right now. Chat-bots are more dystopian and problematic than useful. AI future (and pres…

There is reason to be cautious about every kind of endeavor where the potential for enrichment can cloud judgment. However, the possibilities opened up by technologies this radical in the magnitude of the improvements they make in specific fundamental societal functions are enormous, and for that reason, they are on the balance massively beneficial, and that includes chat bots.

> However, the possibilities opened up by technologies this radical in the magnitude of the improvements they make in specific fundamental societal functions are enormous, and for that reason, they are on the balance massively beneficial, and that includes chat bots.

The improvements it can be dreamed of to the bottom line of companies by replacing expensive labour are massive, that's why it got US$ 1tn Capex downed into it as noted in another article from Goldman Sachs shared today on HN.

It doesn't mean it's massively beneficial to societal functions, a bigger case for that would be a clean, and massively cheap energy source (if fusion turned out to be viable and scalable, for example) but we don't see US$ 1tn poured into the pursuit of that because it does not promise improving companies' bottom line in a short time frame.

AI can definitely turn out to be a panacea but more and more grifters are attaching themselves to it, and the companies churning out the most advances of it are not really invested in improving society as a whole, that's the marketing speak used but we in tech have seen those empty promises of utopian changes turning out to be just smoke and mirrors for the surveillance capitalism age to set in.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#52

Post by philipkglass »

Here's the underlying report that this CNBC story is based on: https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/google-2024-e...

The key driver for the CO2 growth is "scope 2" emissions, mainly electricity demand from data centers. See pages 34-38 in the PDF for the definition of scope 2 emissions and overall progress on running data centers with carbon free energy. They're currently at 63% CFE, the same as in 2022, but absolute growth in electricity consumption also meant absolute growth in emissions from the other 37%.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#53

Post by sva_ »

Frieren wrote: post #27

I see the current gold rush of AI the same way I saw crypto-currencies. Even if originally there were people that believed in the concept it became just a snake-oil sellers business. The parallelism is made even more relevant by its hungry use of electricity. There is a future for AI but it is not what we see companies developing right now. Chat-bots are more dystopian and problematic than useful. AI future (and pres…

Not sure if energy use is a sufficient criteria to dismiss some technology. This universe progresses by turning low entropy energy into high entropy energy, which the use of energy is doing. So it seems to be closely tied.

Making processes more energy-efficient is only really a good thing as long as it retains its effectiveness.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#54

Post by affgrff3 »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #32
jbandela1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, instead of batteries the original idea was to have them be part of a brain based neural net which makes a lot more sense than batteries. But this was felt to be too complicated.

Exactly. Why they gave up on the human collective neural net movie plot and replaced it with the human batteries one is beyond me. It makes no sense, humans make terrible batteries. If the machines from the Matrix needed to use some mammals as batteries, why not just use cows instead of humans? They'd be much more complacent with living in the Matrix, grazing on virtual fields, and less likely to wise up and try to e…

I came up with this explanation to make me enjoy the movie more: The world outside the matrix is not the real world, but just another layer by the machines for obfuscation. In the real real world humans are actually used as processing units but since it is easier for the humans to accept and not ask further questions, the intermediate level with humans as batteries is introduced by the machines.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#55

Post by elicksaur »

kens wrote: post #39

The headline is bogus and most of the comments are responding to the headline. Google's emissions increased 13% since last year, "primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions." It's unclear how much is due to AI. The supposed surge is a 48% increase compared to *2019*, consisting of moderate increases every year since 2020, not a nearly 50% surge due to AI. Google's document…

Maybe AI summarized the document for the reporter.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#56

Post by skywhopper »

alecco wrote: post #8

I don't like 2024 Google, but they seem to be the only ones trying (at least) to make the least impact with their energy consumption. Why aren't there hit pieces like this on the US intelligence massive Utah Data Center? (for example)

The NSA's data center is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of similar data centers operated by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, et al. And I would not call increasing your power consumption YoY by 13% or whatever it was to be "trying". To the extent they are trying, it's only to squeeze the value out of their real estate and to avoid blowing their transformers. They can spin that as "saving energy" until something like LLMs with their GPU requirements comes along.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#57

Post by smus »

Frieren wrote: post #27

I see the current gold rush of AI the same way I saw crypto-currencies. Even if originally there were people that believed in the concept it became just a snake-oil sellers business. The parallelism is made even more relevant by its hungry use of electricity. There is a future for AI but it is not what we see companies developing right now. Chat-bots are more dystopian and problematic than useful. AI future (and pres…

I currently save so much time a day using chatbots lol

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#58

Post by skywhopper »

umvi wrote: post #14
josefritzishere wrote: post #3

The galling part of this is that the demand for AI is artificial. Consumers are not demanding AI.

I'm demanding more/better code-completion style AI for sure. It's an invaluable part of my workflow now and I'm happy paying a monthly fee for the service.

Sure, but you are paying for that. It also has nothing to do with the bizarre and untrustworthy AI answers being shoved into Google and Bing search results, or Facebook's terrible AI search bar.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#59

Post by WheatMillington »

kens wrote: post #39

The headline is bogus and most of the comments are responding to the headline. Google's emissions increased 13% since last year, "primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions." It's unclear how much is due to AI. The supposed surge is a 48% increase compared to *2019*, consisting of moderate increases every year since 2020, not a nearly 50% surge due to AI. Google's document…

Your comment is a little dismissive. Firstly, the headline doesn't mention "versus last year", and the 48% figure is straight from the document you mentioned and is repeated often within that document. It's directly from Google, and is significant. Moreover that document itself states (page 31) "As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands". It's clear that AI advancements are the biggest hurdle in terms of energy use and therefore CO2 emissions for Google.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#60

Post by asdff »

kens wrote: post #39

The headline is bogus and most of the comments are responding to the headline. Google's emissions increased 13% since last year, "primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions." It's unclear how much is due to AI. The supposed surge is a 48% increase compared to *2019*, consisting of moderate increases every year since 2020, not a nearly 50% surge due to AI. Google's document…

48% increase since 2019 still sounds pretty bad to me. Not like any of their products improved in that time.
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