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I've never been so conflicted about a technology

marcjenkins.co.uk

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Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#71

Post by teruakohatu »

perrygeo wrote: post #36
roywiggins wrote: post #9

> Models require massive amounts of electricity and water (to cool servers). Does it? https://prospect.org/environment/2024-09-27-water-not-the-pr... > training GPT-3 used as much water as just under twice what is required for the average American’s beef consumption. In other words, just two people swearing off beef would more than compensate. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... > It would…

I don't understand the "whatboutism" angle. Running LLMs requires massive amounts of electricity and water. Period. That beef consumption and other activities also require massive amounts of resources is independent. Both can be true. And both need to be addressed. We no longer have the luxury to pick and choose which climate interventions we find most convenient; we need to succeed on all fronts. If the patient is d…

> massive amounts of electricity and water ... we need to succeed on all fronts

Datacenters' used for training or batch jobs can be placed in places where water and power are plentiful, ambient temperature are relatively low and government/society are stable.

A datacenter is going to be built at the bottom of New Zealand where all these things are true. There must be plenty of places in the world where this holds true.

At least for training, I think it is possible to have our cake and eat it. For real-time inference, probably not.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#72

Post by roywiggins »

perrygeo wrote: post #36
roywiggins wrote: post #9

> Models require massive amounts of electricity and water (to cool servers). Does it? https://prospect.org/environment/2024-09-27-water-not-the-pr... > training GPT-3 used as much water as just under twice what is required for the average American’s beef consumption. In other words, just two people swearing off beef would more than compensate. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... > It would…

I don't understand the "whatboutism" angle. Running LLMs requires massive amounts of electricity and water. Period. That beef consumption and other activities also require massive amounts of resources is independent. Both can be true. And both need to be addressed. We no longer have the luxury to pick and choose which climate interventions we find most convenient; we need to succeed on all fronts. If the patient is d…

Okay, but there is some reason why you personally are still spending electrons posting on the internet and not, presumably, entertaining yourself by rolling coal, and it's probably because the amount of energy you're using to browse and post on HN seems trivial to you. Does the energy use differential between Python and C++ seem important enough to always pick C++ for everything?

What I'm saying is that casual LLM use is also essentially trivial, and scolding people for using querying ChatGPT when you wouldn't scold people for, say, making a dozen Google searches or watching a Netflix show or taking a long shower or driving to the mall, is quite silly and a waste of time.

Similarly, there's a reason why doctors will tell you to worry more about your cigarette habit than almost any other bad habits you have, because it's so much more likely to kill you that it practically demands to be prioritized.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#73

Post by zdragnar »

frereubu wrote: post #23
zdragnar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't really need LLMs like we don't really need the internet. We don't really need that blog, nor do we really need Netflix, porn or Facebook. Individuals value things differently, so attempting to do society-wide prioritization is always going to be a reductive exercise. For example: Your local cafe doesn't need to exist at all. You could still drink coffee, you'd just have to make it yourself. That cafe is taki…

Again, this just feels like throwing your hands up in the air and saying "it's too hard to decide!" But we have to take decisions somehow if we're going to do anything.

Yes, that's the challenge of centralizing economies. You aren't going to be able to do so efficiently because you don't have every person's preferences.

If by "we're going to do anything" you mean presumably fiat power to ban LLMs, then you're better off using that fiat power to just put a sin tax on carbon emissions and letting people decide where they want to cut back.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#74

Post by burningion »

roywiggins wrote: post #9

> Models require massive amounts of electricity and water (to cool servers). Does it? https://prospect.org/environment/2024-09-27-water-not-the-pr... > training GPT-3 used as much water as just under twice what is required for the average American’s beef consumption. In other words, just two people swearing off beef would more than compensate. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... > It would…

I know everyone likes to abstract away the costs associated with AI data centers.

But let's look at what has happened with Grok, for example:

From May 6, 2025

https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-xai-memphis-35-14321739...

>The company has no Clean Air Act permits.

> In just 11 months since the company arrived in Memphis, xAI has become one of Shelby County's largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides, according to calculations by environmental groups whose data has been reviewed by POLITICO's E&E News. The plant is in an area whose air is already considered unhealthy due to smog.

> The turbines spew nitrogen oxides, also known as NOx, at an estimated rate of 1,200 to 2,000 tons a year — far more than the gas-fired power plant across the street or the oil refinery down the road.

The details are in the specifics here. People are _already_ feeling the effects of the AI race, the consequences just aren't evenly distributed.

And if we look at the "clean" nuclear deals to power these data centers:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-regulators-reject...

> The Talen agreement, however, would divert large amounts of power currently supplying the regional grid, which FERC said raised concerns about how that loss of supply would affect power bills and reliability. It was also unclear how transmission and distribution upgrades would be paid for.

The scale of environmental / social impacts comes down to how aggressive the AI race gets.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#75

Post by BeetleB »

teruakohatu wrote: post #55

I feel the points made in this article have been debated many times on HN. The argument about power usage for developers, as opposed to consumers, is probably insignificant compared to the inefficient use of compute resources for deployed software today. Arguably LLMs are probably enabling some web developers to create native applications rather than Electron monstrosities saving many P-core CPU cycles multiplied by…

> The argument about power usage for developers, as opposed to consumers,

Except with MCP, essentially most consumers will become "programmers". See my other comment for the rationale (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43997227).

(TLDR: MCP lets non-programmers convert their prompts into programs, for all practical purposes. Currently there is a barrier to entry to automate simple tasks: The need to learn programming. That barrier will go away)

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#76

Post by mvdtnz »

staunton wrote: post #33
jebarker wrote: post #19

> “If you’re going to use generative tools powered by large language models, don’t pretend you don’t know how your sausage is made.” This isn't a very hopeful quote given how many people continue to eat sausages even though we all know how sausages are made.

> we all know how sausages are made. I'm doubtful. There's a few documentaries showing the process and I've had people tell me multiple times that they were genuinely shocked by it. I'm assuming those people "knew" and it's just that knowing "it's all the waste at the butcher getting stuffed into guts" is not quite the same as seeing it first hand.

People get upset because we use every part of an animal for food? I think it's absolutely great. I am a meat-eater who doesn't feel ethically great about it, but I'd feel much worse if I knew a large percentage of a carcass went to waste.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#77

Post by robinsonb5 »

lucianbr wrote: post #26
roywiggins wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marginal impact of AI on global climate probably rounds down to zero, or at least is not the thing driving us over the cliff: > Global energy consumption in 2023 was around 500,000 GWh per day. That means that ChatGPT’s global 3GWh per day is using 0.0006% of Earth’s energy demand. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...

How much of that 500 TWh would disappear if you round to zero everything that consumes 3GWh per day or less? And keep in mind you are calculating for a single app (ChatGPT), nor for an entire industry or tech. Don't look at "civil aviation" but at each airline in particular. I suspect nearly all of it. You framed it such that it appears insignificant, but with this framing nothing is significant.

"No raindrop considers itself responsible for the flood."

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#78

Post by breuleux »

lordnacho wrote: post #6

I think it's harsh to start the accounting so soon after the breakthrough. Yes, of course AI uses a lot of energy. But we have to give it a bit of time to see if there are benefits that come with this cost. I think there will be. Whether the tradeoff was worthwhile, I think we are not even close to being able to conclude. Something like social media, which has a good long while behind it, I could accept if you starte…

You have to start the accounting immediately, because once a technology becomes entrenched, it's very difficult to backtrack. If it spins out of control and half of all energy is sunk into AI because half of services depend on it and workforces have been laid off, you won't be able to do anything about it without disrupting half of services. The window of opportunity to keep a technology in check, unfortunately, often occurs before the problems it causes become obvious.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#79

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

perrygeo wrote: post #36
roywiggins wrote: post #9

> Models require massive amounts of electricity and water (to cool servers). Does it? https://prospect.org/environment/2024-09-27-water-not-the-pr... > training GPT-3 used as much water as just under twice what is required for the average American’s beef consumption. In other words, just two people swearing off beef would more than compensate. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... > It would…

I don't understand the "whatboutism" angle. Running LLMs requires massive amounts of electricity and water. Period. That beef consumption and other activities also require massive amounts of resources is independent. Both can be true. And both need to be addressed. We no longer have the luxury to pick and choose which climate interventions we find most convenient; we need to succeed on all fronts. If the patient is d…

I used to live in a place where there are a lot of data centers now. There were only a few just a few years ago. Now there are tens and more under construction.

I returned to that place to visit family and friends last year. It was an eye opening experience. The people who live there have taken a keen interest on curtailing further development of any new data centers. One of the chief complaints is the constant power issues that didn’t exist before 2021-2022.

The locals argue that this is the result of the dramatic infusion of AI into every technology product. They’re likely not wrong. The communities in the area became quite politically active over the issue and have retained all manner of analysts and scientists, journalists and investigators, and so on, to aide them in making a political case against future data center development.

The thing that got me was the complaints about the noise. Over the past few years the locals and those in their employ have been monitoring noise levels near the data centers and they’ve tracked sustained increases in noise pollution with the timeline over which the use of AI has exploded. There it has become sort of a trope to measure the working day by how much noise pollution is produced by any data center nearby. Mostly belonging to a hyperscaler known by an acronym.

The data centers have reportedly not been the boon that was promised, which seems to be seen as insult to injury. The area already has a vibrant tech scene independent of data center operations. So the locals don’t really see value in allowing more data centers to be built, and they’re starting to organize politically around the idea of preventing future data center construction and implementing heavy usage based taxation on utilities used by the existing ones.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#80

Post by robinsonb5 »

roywiggins wrote: post #35
frereubu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but I guess my approach to it would be that as a general principle we shouldn't be using things that increase energy usage for little real gain, and this is something that is in my professional field that I can do something about personally. It does come somewhat from a place of feeling like the world as a whole is absolutely failing to get to grips with the significant large-scale changes that are…

a single hot shower uses more Watt-hours than most people spend on ChatGPT in a week, or a month. if people really want to cut down on how many watt-hours they're using on frivolous things there are dozens of things they should do first. if people are spending time worried about their ChatGPT energy use more than they are spending time going vegan or getting used to cold showers then they have been grossly misinforme…

Ultimately we're trying to persuade people to reduce their quality of life in order to reduce their energy footprint. That's already a difficult sell. It becomes an impossible sell when any reductions that might be achieved are immediately offset by a new energy-hungry technology coming online - especially when the long-term effect (goal, even) is to reduce yet further the quality of life of everyday people.
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