[TheOtherHobbes]

The ecological considerations are wildly overstated. Data centres in general != AI, and other industries, including meat production and (ironically) paper for print all use far more water and create more damage.

This might change in the future if the planned insanely huge data centres get built and used. But today the situation is clear - AI isn't any more ecologically damaging than other popular data centred activities like streaming music and video, and general social media.

[seidleroni]

Also, I just listened to the latest Volts podcast and they make the claim that data centers will actually lower the cost of electricity fairly soon (~2030). Very counterintuitive but it does make sense. We'll find out soon enough.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/sooner-than-you-think-electricity

[jesse_dot_id]

I've been telling my friends this since LLMs launched. If your interest is in lowering the use of fossil fuels, then a global race for compute is great because the increased demand is probably going to usher in a nuclear/solar revolution in the energy sector.

It feels like a very large segment, on both sides of this argument, is completely incapable of forming nuanced opinions on this stuff.

[frizlab]

As it was already supposed to be the case (and has never been) with crypto mining, yeah…