• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    What are you doing to reduce your fresh water usage? You do know how much fresh water they waste, right?

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The main issue is that the business folks are pushing it to be used way more than demand, as they see dollar signs if they can pull off a grift. If this or anything else pops the bubble, then the excessive footprint will subside, even as the technology persists at a more reasonable level.

      For example, according to some report I saw OpenAI spent over a billion on ultimately failed attempts to train GPT5 that had to be scrapped. Essentially trying to brute force their way to better results when we have may have hit the limits of their approach. Investors tossed more billions their way to keep trying, but if it pops, that money is not available and they can’t waste resources on this.

      Similarly, with the pressure off Google might stop throwing every search at AI. For every person asking for help translating a formula to code, there’s hundreds of people accidentally running a model due to Google search.

      So the folks for whom it’s sincerely useful might get their benefit with a more reasonable impact as the overuse subsides.

    • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Do you? Also do you what are the actual issues on fresh water? Do you actually think cooling of some data center it’s actually relevant? Because I really, data on hand, think it’s not. It’s just part of the dogma.

      Stop trying to eat vegetables that need watering out of areas without a lot of rain, much better approach if you care about that. Eat what people on your area ate a few centuries ago if you want to be water sustainable.

        • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          That’s nothing compared with intensive irrigation.

          Having a diet proper to your region has a massively bigger impact on water than some cooling.

          Also not every place on earth have fresh water issues. Some places have it some are pretty ok. Not using water in a place where it’s plenty does nothing for people in a place where there is scarcity of fresh water.

          I shall know as my country is pretty dry. Supercomputers, as the one used for our national AI, had had not visible impact on water supply.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            You read all three of those links in four minutes?

            Also, irrigation creates food, which people need to survive, while AI creates nothing that people need to survive, so that’s a terrible comparison.

            • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 day ago

              I’m already familiarized on industrial and computer usage of water. As I said, very little impact.

              Not all food is needed to survive. Any vegan would probably give a better argument on this than me. But choice of food it’s important. And choosing one food over another it’s not a matter of survival but a matter of joy, a tertiary necessity.

              Not to sound as a boomer, but if this is such a big worry for you better action may be stop eating avocados in a place where avocados don’t naturally grow.

              As I said, I live in a pretty dry place, where water cuts because of scarcity are common. Our very few super computers have not an impact on it. And supercomputers on china certainly are 100% irrelevant to our water scarcity issue.

              • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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                1 day ago

                I don’t know why you keep bringing up luxuries like avocados. I don’t remember the last time I ate an avocado, or a banana, or any exotic fruit for that matter.

                I somehow feel like you won’t listen to LLM criticism from me either, so it’s a disingenuous argument.

                • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 day ago

                  Because it’s the typical exotic fruit.

                  If you really don’t eat anything that it’s not native to your land good for you, you are one in a million.

                  What I mean is that the environment argument for being against AI doesn’t really hold. It’s just an excuse to justify the dogma.

                  • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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                    17 hours ago

                    Except AI centers are much much more impactful than any single decision a single person can make. Demanding perfection before assessing legitimacy of a complaint is also an excuse to justify dogma.