[pmarreck]

Instead of complaining to a void about resource consumption, you should be pushing for green power, then. Resource consumption isn't a thing that is going down, and it most certainly won't go down unless there's an economic incentive to do so.

[croes]

Isn't a great part of even green power converted to heat while consumed? Isn't that also additional energy which heats the atmosphere or is the amount too low for any effects?

[pmarreck]

Global warming is more about the "greenhouse effect" (certain gases like CO2 helping to trap in infrared energy) than it is about individual sources of infrared energy.

[croes]

But isn't the effect bigger when there is more infrared energy? The source of it shouldn't matter.

[int_19h]

The reason why AGW is such a big threat is because it causes Sun's energy output to be trapped more effectively. Even if we collectively dumped every single joule of energy we generated into the environment, we'd still be miniscule compared to that.

Note however that it can have local effects - e.g. if you use water from natural sources to cool your datacenter and then dump it back into the environment, it can easily raise up the water temperature enough to affect the ecosystem around. This can also have far-reaching effects - e.g. say you do that in a river where salmon from far away comes to spawn...

[eropple]

You know that somebody can hold two thoughts in their head at once, yeah?

Green power is great! But there'll be limits to how much of that there is, too, and asking if pictures of hypothetical cats is a good use of that is also reasonable.

[pmarreck]

It's not. But I'm also making a judgment call and neither of us knows or can even evaluate what percent of these queries are "a waste."

I'm flying with my family from New York to Florida in a month to visit my sister's side of the family. How would I objectively evaluate whether that is "worth" the impact on my carbon footprint that that flight will have?

[esafak]

You could use a carbon calculator. https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

One source recommends keeping it under 2T/yr. https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon...

[croes]

>neither of us knows or can even evaluate what percent of these queries are waste.

Maybe we should find ways to evaluate to know if AI has a net benefit or not

[pmarreck]

How would we objectively measure whether humanity existing is a net benefit or not?