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replies(15):
* Data centers powering artificial intelligence could use more electricity than entire cities [0]
* Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green [1]
* AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand [2]
It is a doomsday cult in the most literal sense.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/23/data-centers-powering-ai-cou...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/27/google-em...
[2] https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-...
So for example, if AI can replace the need for additional humans, then overall we're using net less energy?
AI is a massive waste of power in many (most?) cases, but electricity does not necessarily need to be generated in a way that releases CO2. Solar panels, wind farms, geothermic energy, and even nuclear plants can satisfy AI's requirements and only leave it to be a local problem.
Unfortunately, the USA, the government of country with the biggest impact per citizen as well as the hotbed of current AI development, has started taking down climate change related information to serve their oil baron masters. That leaves environmental responsibility with companies and their shareholders.
AI isn't a doomsday cult. It's the epitome of the "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders" meme in real life.
If AI were to not use so much energy, we would have a much easier time covering our need with green sources. Yes, we can probably also account for the additional use by AI, but it'll make an already existential challenge so much harder.
Regarding your last paragraph - AI is just the riders of the apocalypse. The doomsday cult is capitalism.
Capitalism as a system is fundamentally incapable of functioning without continously running forward, and stopping means the system collapses. It needs consumption, it needs perpetually renewing debt, perpetually working humans. It's a death cult.
AI companies currently simply are a major contributor to climate crisis, justified by racing for future riches for a few people, provided by some imaginary moat. Probably right near the one built by Uber.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. That this article is part of that doomsday cult (those worried about climate change)? If so, why not give it some credibility? Are you doubting the veracity of the linked articles? Because it seems like you are dismissing the claims presented in this article and the linked ones, attributing them to a doomsday cult. I may be getting it wrong, though.
The other meaning could be that you are referring to Silicon Valley's AI companies with their huge demand for power as the doomsday cult, and that they are to blame for the major reversal in ocean circulation.
In any case, it's not like we humans were intelligent enough to prevent climate change, or modify or adapt to it (depending on what your views are, human-made or just natural warming).
It looks like we're still dumb enough (we come from the apes, and they certainly are dumber than us) to not be able to deal with this problem, so it might be better to grant AI some room to compute, and maybe shrink some cities instead.
Electrical production can emit greenhouse gasses, and there is an argument we should be inventing and investing in decarbonizing it.
1. Can we capture CO2 and prevent it from affecting the climate in a safe way?
2. Could we create a large “blind” between the earth and sun to safely control how much sunlight hits the earth if the temperature gets too hot?
There have been advances in #1 and propositions for #2, but I think most either want to cast blame, bury our heads in the sand, or wallow in self-pity because they think we’re not capable of figuring out a safe solution and/or don’t believe that we could work together to accomplish it.
It does, but this due to the demand created by humans. If you create a technologically advanced civilization, with robots doing a lot of the work, and considering their lack of desire to own things like pretty houses, it could be possible to scale down civilization to a few select millions in such a way that the entire system is then respecting earth's resources.
If you were to ship a big group of people through the galaxy, you'd also have to put some constraints on how many people will be on that ship, yet it will have to function regardless of how little people exist on that ship. The same could be applied to earth.
This would also give animals more room on this planet.
What if the pursuit of real AI is what eventually saves humanity and leads to a utopian rather than dystopian future?
2. That's not how it works. It's more like a greenhouse and climate gases absorb more energy. Also look up after how many meters a steel cable ruptures under it's own weight. It's not exactly easy. Thermonuclear war might help.
Everyone in the oil business knew in the 80ies.
We could probably even figure out how to keep our standard of living but consumerism needs to stop but then capitalism breaks down.
It's a great strategy that works fantastically well and saves a lot of time and money, except when it doesn't.
To that, I must ask: look at the people driving the revolution, and their personal ethics.
What future do you think they will provide?
I see no reason to expect this technology to save us. We don’t even need AI to save ourselves from dystopia, it’s not been about lack of technology for decades, we need to change our societies structurally _somehow_
2. Having the ability to control the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth would help prevent overwarming, which is one possible outcome, and neither thermonuclear war nor any culling of humanity would be a solution, as in fact we’re responsible for this, so we must fix it. You’re basically suggesting killing all the life that could help.
is building green infrastructure environmentally friendly? The mines, machinery, ships, concrete, steel, the processing plants, etc, really Green, just because it's for EVs or batteries?
2. We can already fix this but for this we need to radically change the power structures that are in place and figure out a way to peacefully solve the problem. Reducing emissions should be the biggest priority everywhere.
Of course humanity runs on balance between living (and procreating) and saving the planet.. the quickest way to save the planet would be for all of us to drop dead, but very few of us would be in favor of that idea.
Are we going to use it for every new technology? It's a fairly easy stick to beat any tech with.
Does AI use more power than Facebook? Is one more deserving of the power than the other?
Especially here in Europe we like to play the 'Greener than Thou' card while for decades have been doing absolutely nothing real besides imaginary 'carbon credit' spreadsheet shenanigans, tipple passing the subsidy handouts for burning our forests in Dutch incinerators, exporting all our 'emissions' to China and paying very dubious buddies on the other side of the world for 'net zero' absolutions while tripling our real pollution.
Our earth is a shared resource. I am not okay with it being wasted on the pet projects of billionaires trying to enrich themselves even more.
The first one chooses somewhat arbitrary date of 2019 to make the 51% figure stand out. Google scaled up a lot since 2019, I'd bet it's almost entirely unrelated to AI (well, at least wrt to LLMs).
The other two are just a guesswork, which is likely completely outdated because it's from last year and so many things have changed since then.
The case of Bitcoin is more damning because pow for just no reason, serves no purpose. Security by consuming massive amounts of power. There is a reason why Ethereum successfully moved away from that. But Bitcoin will never dare to.
Unfortunately as you say the powers are currently focusing on denying what is clearly undeniable.
This article made me fear first time since a while for what kind of future are my daughters live in. I am truly sorry and sad.
Needless to say, the utopia plan is going badly.
The smart play was to allow AI to fuel a massive growth in production of solar panels and wind in the US which could actually rival China (who are going to eat the US within a decade) but corruption has put pay to that.
A popular narrative but it’s false. Even when we take it into account Europe’s emissions keep dropping.
It’s a small % of China’s massive emissions. They produce and consume on a level we can’t fathom. Their middle class has more people than the US and EU combined.
Nation-wise, all the biggest culprits (US/EU) and a good number of the biggest present and future contributors to climate change are democracies.
You do not get to shift collective responsibility onto some "powers that be": Those powers are you and me.
The problem is neither that people don't know about climate change, nor that "greedy corporations" prevent us from acting-- the central problem is that people, in general, don't want to sacrifice cheap fuel, electricity and high living standards now for a better future-- not even a little bit.
Thats it. You can see this in literally every discussion on environmentalism in basically every election. People only want clean energy as long as they don't have to pay a single dime extra for it.
I have not solution for this, but blaming corporations is most certainly not gonna solve this problem (if anything, it's making things worse).
The only way is to lower consumption drastically, end the constant growth chase, and enbrance closed carbon cycle (biodiverse biomass).
Others might have other models in mind, but it's a cop-out to say "oh well, we've tried bourgeois democracy and it was inevitably corrupted by capitalist interest, I guess we're all out of ideas..."
The good news is that that usage is creating high cost for them and an incentive to do something about that. Which is why MS, Amazon, etc. are very interested in investing in e.g. nuclear and renewables.
I'm not too worried about the long term impact of increased power usage by data centers. I think it's more interesting to focus on the big emitters: domestic and industrial heating, shipping, road transport, aviation, construction, etc. There is some movement there but it's very slow. Fixing that should increase demands on power grids and that's a good thing because investments are needed to make that better and cleaner and the most viable technical path to doing that is via renewables.
And it's not a zero sum game. AI delivers economical benefits as well. Including potential savings in labor, efficiency gains, and indeed power usage. I don't think becoming Luddites is really a realistic path. Not going to happen and quite pointless and ineffective to be calling for that. AI is happening and there's going to be more of it. Wasting energy on trying to put that cat back in the bag it escaped from is a mission impossible.
This is not my point. I think most western democracies do exactly what voters want against climate change: Nothing that would cost extra.
Effective policies to curb CO2 emissions are numerous and pretty obvious: Get rid of combustion engines, phase out fossil fuels from electricity generation, scale up electric grid interconnectivity and storage, lower emissions in steel/concrete production.
Voters are mostly not against those policies, but as soon as there are visible costs (fuel/vehicle/construction/electricity costs rising) or minor inconvenience (vehicle range) any progress gets firmly stopped.
I don't see how another form of government would help in any way-- the eco-communists would just get toppled before they could get anything done.
I'm an optimist by nature. I probably do err on the side of optimism. But when I look back over history, I see a trend upward in living standards, despite the modern determination to pretend this hasn't happened, or to cherry pick data to prove the opposite, and despite prophecies of doom at almost every step change.
I'm inclined to believe that will continue to happen, that regardless of what people personally think of Altman, Zuckerberg, etc, that ultimately, strong AI is inevitable, and that it will be a force for improving our lives.
I do not believe we'll be relegated to poor existences, while the captains of AI or whoever the elite are defined to be, live in paradise with robot workers do everything for them. It just makes no sense.
Not just on AI. Personally, I only downvote stuff that I think coarsens the dialogue. The opinion expressed, is not really relevant. I like living in a world where I'm challenged.
I too, am an optimist. I think that AI can have tremendous positive effect.
But I also have considerable life experience with the darker corners of human nature, and know exactly how bad it can get (HINT: There's no bottom). Some of the very worst specimens of ... humanity, I guess (for lack of a better term) ... are quite cultured and well-educated. Filed fingernails mean absolutely nothing, when it comes to personal Integrity.
A quick shufti through human history, will quickly show that our shared prosperity is merely a recent blip on the screen. Most of history is the 0.01%, living high on the hog, while the 99.99% live in hell, serving the 0.01%. AI can definitely enable that kind of society.
Car manufacturers are producing more and more vehicles using more resources and requiring more energy, either for ICE or EV, vehicles.
You can be against a particular tech using resources and power, but if you are selective about which tech then you don't really care as much as you think you do.