This seems like a waste of time to me when you could instead focus on Coal or things that matter
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Why not use AI as a example
What if its local ai?
I am talking about Non Local ai here
Local AI probably uses more CO2 per prompt than datacenter, unless you’re running off your own solar panels or something
You really bit the AI phobia.
Even 1000 non-local AI prompts use about the same energy as your microwave.
Datacenters running AI are crunching billions of prompts a second.
Hang on those aren’t even equivalent units. Equivalent to running your microwave for how long?
A single prompt is about 1 - 1.5 W/h.
A microwave is 1000 - 1500 W/h.
It doesn’t matter how long you run either. Most prompt are only seconds.
Watts per hour is not a unit of energy or power, do you mean watt-hours? Neither of those numbers seems right if so. And the amount of energy consumed by a prompt will vary wildly based on the size of the model, your hardware, what your prompt is, etc. My point is that, with 2 identical prompts on 2 identical models, one done in a specialized datacenter and one done at home, the one at home will probably use more power because it’s less efficient. Therefore, if we are concerned with how much power AI datacenters are using, switching from datacenters to home computing is clearly not a solution.
That energy would be used anyway, on watching youtube
“YOUR screen time is destroying the environment!” Says screen that is using electricity 24/7.
The fluorescent tubes to power this thing all day for months probably uses more power than my router does in its life time.
Sounds like it wants me to not care about trees because what did they ever do for us?
Fruits? Wood? Oxygen? Soil Fixation? Spices? Truffles? Shade?
Ok, but besides fruits, wood, oxygen, soil fixation, spice truffles and shade, what have the trees ever done for us?
Maple syrup.
Damn, where’s the pancake mix
Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.
Honestly the biggest thing I think you could do (other than dying) is quitting animal consumption, but 90% of people can’t be bothered to make that simple change and would rather drivel on and on in endless debates about their sudden “health problems” and cultural norms that insist that conveniently don’t allow for them to stop.
Not everyone can live fully vegan. Just look at Alex O’connor’s vegan journey.
But a lot of people can try, and everyone can cut out beef if they want, which would already be a big win
Just look at Alex O’connor’s vegan journey.
Can you summarise? Ngl, I’m skeptical tho.
He’s a young YouTuber who started out talking about atheism and became a vegan and a big advocate for veganism and was very outspoken about switching to veganism etc. but a year or two into his journey he revealed that due to health reasons he can’t stay on a vegan diet so he’s reintroduced meat into his diet and he will try and do it as ethically possible but for health reasons he needs to consume animal products.
More details here: https://youtu.be/J6QWY4T6gxc
He’s got great content
Honestly, I’m still skeptical.
I glanced at the ai summary as I can’t watch something right now and this ‘pre-existing health condition’ just seems like a great way to absolve himself of the responsibilities of veganism, while still retaining his paycheque/followers and that feeling of superiority he very likely gets from preaching about righteous ways online.
I have little faith in media personalities though, so who knows, maybe I’m wrong.
He’s never really seemed to be after the money, he didn’t have a patron for a long time. He mostly goes around doing debates and discussions with other intellectuals.
It’s very likely that a percentage of the population can’t live on a vegan diet.
When you get a chance watch it, it looks very genuine to me, or he’s a world class actor.
the biggest thing I think you could do (other than dying) is quitting animal consumption,
I doubt it
Segregate your garbage so we can later throw it all into the same heap anyways.
Remember to turn off every power source when you leave home everyday the whole year to compensate for one day of McDonald’s signboard glowing 24/7.
Lease an overpriced EV so that the planet may survive another billionaire’s wedding.
I just stopped buying stuff…I buy food, that’s it. my garbage has gone from 3 bags biweekly, 2etal and 3 cardboard down to maybe 2 garbage, half a metal one and maybe 1 cardboard.
it’s amazing how much garbage they force on us when we buy companies junk
sometimes there’s more packaging costs then product…it’s absurd.
These are great, thank you for putting them together.
Unfortunately that’s not even scratching the surface
Keep going, they’re good comparisons.
Ok but have you considered that if literally every person on the planet did this, climate change would immediately be fixed??
You’re just a HATER of practical solutions…
This is the funny thing, Capitalism basically ensures, even if it were magically practical, it still wouldn’t work. Even in utopia, where everyone was super-pooper efficient and saved 99% electricity usage overnight, just one profit-seeking business (and they’re all profit seeking businesses) would buy up all the cheap electricity, use their enormous energy advantage to make a bazillion dollars, and use so much power that we’d go right back to 100% (or more) electricity consumption.
The narrative of the ‘if every individual did <x>’ is pure myth. Systemic problems can only be solved by systemic solutions.
Please tell me you forgot the /s ?
Thought it was obvious given how “every person in the world” and “practical” was in the same comment lol
If everyone turned off their smartphones for a day it would account for less than 1% of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet in that day.
If you have a fridge in your house it’s likely using almost 100 times more power than your smartphone. Your heating or air conditioning is using far more power. The steel industry, agricultural industry, transportation, are all pumping out greenhouse gasses at a rate that using electronics is negligible.
AI is becoming another one of those industries, but if everyone turned off their personal devices, they would still need to get up, go to work, which would likely use AI, because they need to buy groceries and pay rent and keep their home powered, and capitalism churns.
Being outraged at the systems around us is a good thing, pointing the outrage toward people living daily lives while wealthy corporations and people do everything in their power to do as little as possible for social good while farming maximum personal benefit, power, and profit is not.
Phone: under 5 watts. Heating: 10kW heat pump
Worrying about your phone energy cost would be fairly dumb. Usage/battery life can be a valid consideration of course.
I agree with you. Most energy comes from renewables these days, and your wi-fi usage is a negligible amount in the scale of things. How about going after corporate energy waste like AI instead?
AI is negligible compared to Coal & private jets etc. Or just gross spending by billionaires
It currently is negligible. Depending on how long this hype train lasts it may stop being negligible. Coal is on the decline. Private jets and careless billionaires are growing problems, but not as fast as ai. All need handling one way or another.
I’m anti-ai for privacy, copyright reasons etc.
But the environmental impact is negligible, streaming Netflix uses way more resources than thousands of AI prompts (including training)
If we watched less YouTube it would make a much bigger difference than if we didn’t use AI
Do you have a source for the streaming v AI power consumption thing? I don’t want to be an ass, just genuinely curious. When I run jellyfin and stream something from my home server, it draws 35 watts. If I run an ai model on my GPU, it draws way more than that.
I can’t remember where I first saw it, I quickly found this
https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about
Maybe not the best source, but tl:dr one ChatGPT prompt uses ~3watts including the training.
10min of 4k video streaming uses significantly more than a lot of prompts
But most people don’t stream in 4k
Fair point, after some googling I see I was significantly overestimating ais impact despite your comment previous comment, my bad.
Weird take…
Data centers use massive amounts of power. Reducing that power consumption would be a net positive on the environment.
That said, looking at the site, I can’t see anything that suggests they’ve done any research into that. Instead they seem to be promoting their research into keeping kids safe online, with the only mention of the OSA being a short description in their recent June report with no comment about anything to do with it’s obvious shortcomings.
This is part of a larger UK campaign to make people feel bad about energy usage while Starmer is filling increasingly large amounts of UK infrastructure with AI stuff that requires 100x the amount of power.
Only 100x?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_Group
The uk government keeps giving them renewable energy subsidies because trees can regrow but ignore the fact that they cut down trees the other side of the world to burn them here. It releases all the carbon stored in the trees into the atmosphere and then they capture a small percentage of it back and pretend to be the good guys.
As far as activities you can do in your leisure time go, browsing through your phone probably has less environmental impact than anything other than napping. Even say, reading a (physical) book is usually going to require you to go to a bookstore or library (or worse, have it delivered) which will have carbon expenditure.
Exercise, board games, write, read a book you already own, socialise with housemates/neighbours, do any of a billion hobbies, do anything where you only have to walk to the place. Go for a walk, go foraging, sit in the sun, do some gardening, plant some seeds from your own fruit, volunteer somewhere local, draw stuff, craft stuff, daydream, do some puzzles, do some DIY repairs.
I’m not saying these things are ideal, some will be more possible than others due to circumstances. But I mean it did take two minutes to come up with that list of (typically) enjoyable stuff to do in your leisure time that has net neutral or even net positive environment impact.
I don’t think it’s good nor correct to say the phone usage is the second best possible ‘leisure’ thing you can do with your life for environmental impact. Depending on how granular one got, it wouldn’t even make #100.
All of those are way more rewarding than scrolling on a phone, but most of them actually have a higher carbon footprint. Not that life should be lived purely on that metric, but the ad aims to guilt people for their screen usage. Reminds me of a discussion I read around this chart:
Modern batteries are so efficient that an e-bike has less carbon footprint than traditional cycling- which in itself is much more efficient than walking.
And yet somehow bombs seem to grow on trees for dropping on innocent children by the IDF in Gaza.
This ad was a waste of the energy it took to print.
If the internet is demonised with enough propaganda about it being full of porn and bad for the environment, while steadily becoming more and more difficult to access, then the British public will stop knowing about the atrocities Kid Starver is spending their tax money on.
Protesting anything the government disaproves of is a criminal offense and journalists have already been imprisoned over reporting too accurately on the Palestinian genocide.
I get the feeling the internet sanctions and propaganda will just keep coming now till the government can control the narrative and we will always have been at war with East Asia.
The UK does not sell bombs to Israel anymore.
This ad was a waste of the energy it took to print.
It’s not printed.
It’s on a screen.
Ironic innit?
It is not on a screen.
It is printed with a backlight. You can see that it is just a poster.
backlight
Still a waste though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, ok, but this is obviously just an ad, when have they become relevant to anything?
Is that advert backlit ALL DAY?
Think. Think again.Think about industrial energy use and lack of government enforcing landlords to install insulation and solarEh, I can give a pass to this because even if it wasn’t this ad, another one would be in its place burning the same amount of energy.
Wouldn’t it still be more useful to display an ad criticizing this kind of 24/7 lit ad?
If this university hadnt bought this meaningless advert it would have a tiny reduction in the demand for advertising potentially leading to less always lit billboards being made. So no, they dont get a pass for it.
The light that powers that sign likely uses more power than is going to be saved by people turning their screens off because of it
oh fuck off with that logic, a message needs a platform to be heard. Yelling at the top of your lungs about the axe-murderer isnt going to get you anywhere if you’re in his basement with the bodies. Get on his roof and yell
This isn’t a worth while message.
They could always use a poster…
“But the trees used to cut that poster and the glue used to put it up, along with the lighting needed to make it visible at a distance would incur unforgiveable costs on this planet…”
It IS a poster with a backlight that was already there.
This isn’t BP throwing out a million dollar PR campaign to improve their image after polluting the ocean, this is a university putting out a PSA to drum interest about sustainable ways of using our digital devices.
They printed a poster and rented an illuminated poster board that was already there to do so. It’s the same contradiction as using a diesel train to attend Friday for Future’s rally. Sometimes you have to just have to use the most practical medium to get your message out
What exactly is this PSA telling people? The message seems to just be “screens use electricity, and we’re doing vague sustainability research around that”.
I think this could have been a spam email and it would have achieved the same outcome. Not to mention that electricity is getting greener by the day, and personal device usage is such a small portion of electricity use it might as well be zero
Well I typed in the link to their page, and it’s… nothing. They’re literally not saying anything, just talking about some bs initatives with their corporate sponsors. Yes, fine, this is silly nonsense
True, those glowing signs may waste power, but have you seen what TikTok’s army of AI-slop cringe creators burn through? Generating just one viral AI avatar or “Barbie Box” image can consume enough energy to fully charge an eletric car several times.
AI slop is a different topic.
one viral AI avatar or “Barbie Box” image can consume enough energy to fully charge an electric car several times.
A Model 3 battery is 200,000-300,000 kiloJoules.
Absolute worst case for an image, even taking very extreme estimates and amortizing out all the training, is like 30 kJ. Maybe 70 kJ for a slop video that takes under a minute to render, which is on the order of browsing Lemmy on a laptop for a bit. For reference, a local generation with FLUX dev on my 3090 is 2 kJ per image, and that’s relatively inefficient.
I’m just saying, that is a bad comparison, as EVs take an absolute truckload of electricity to run.
I don’t think anybody turns their phones on thinking “I wonder what halfbaked AI generated video i can watch now?”
