Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal : technology

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 61 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell

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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 129 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

Crash can't come soon enough

[+] SkaraBrae@lemmy.world -8 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

"We need a new plague" - Dwight Schrute

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 54 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

The people can stay, it is the AI that has to go.

[–] balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one -5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Nah people are terrible . Have you seen lemmy?

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[+] masterspace@lemmy.ca -26 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

From a long term environmental standpoint that's not at all clear cut.

We objectively have too many humans in our biosphere for our current rate of resource consumption and we should significantly drop the overall number.

However, our current standard of living is mostly the result of a shared economy where we pool and share our resources and have a shit ton of people working.

Right now neural network algorithms consume a lot of processing power and resources, but they also solve whole new classes of automations problems that computers haven't been able to solve before.

If we actually want to maintain our standard of living and reduce the population size, we may very well need AI automation utilities. They can keep scaling down in size and power consumption in the way that a real human can't.

[–] Soggy@lemmy.world 49 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Stop this ecofascist shit.

We can support the current population, it's just not profitable or popular to do so.

Birthrates naturally level off as societies develop. Many are already seeing negative growth.

Our current standard of living is mostly predicated on offshoring the suffering and waste to the global South, but even that could be comfortably leveled off if we weren't living under Capitalism.

We don't need large AI farms, we need empathy. The techbros will not save us.

[+] masterspace@lemmy.ca -17 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

We can support the current population, it's just not profitable or popular to do so.

If your solution ignores the nature of human psychology it's not a solution, it's a quixotic quest.

Our current standard of living is mostly predicated on offshoring the suffering and waste to the global South, but even that could be comfortably leveled off if we weren't living under Capitalism.

Yes, and as their standard of living rises to meet ours, the whole human output becomes increasingly unsustainable.

We don't need large AI farms, we need empathy. The techbros will not save us.

There is a more plausible path for neural networks to be involved in climate change solutions then their is for you to replace capitalism.

[–] innermachine@lemmy.world -3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The rain of down votes on ur comments shows me that Lemmy has become every bit as much if not worse an echo chamber than reddit. Facts of the matter are humans are overcrowding the plant and gobbling up all the resources at an unsustainable rate. Human population DOES need to drop a bit of we are to use this planet long term, lest we spell our own doom in a few hundred years by picking this once beautiful planet to the bone.

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[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If we actually want to maintain our standard of living and reduce the population size, we may very well need AI automation utilities. They can keep scaling down in size and power consumption in the way that a real human can't.

Theoreticisizing LLM's usefulness and resourcefulness doesn't help you there. For now they are rather useless embaracingly inefficient resoucehogs existing purely because of the bubble. It's a gamble at best, or a waste of resources and a degradation of human workforce at worst.

[+] masterspace@lemmy.ca -6 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

AI is not just LLMs, and it's already revolutionized biotechnical engineering through things like alpha fold. Like I said, "AI", as in neural network algorithms of which LLMs are just one example, are literally solving entirely new classes of problems that we simply could not solve before.

[–] tjsauce@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Most people are cool with some AI when you show the small, non-plagarative stuff. It sucks that "AI" is such a big umbrella term, but the truth is that the majority of AI (measured in model size, usage, and output volume) is bad and should stop.

Neural Network technology should not progress at the cost of our environment, short term or long term, and shouldn't be used to dilute our collective culture and intelligence. Let's not pretend that the dangers aren't obvious and push for regulation.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

lol keep dreaming :)

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/protein-structure-and-design-software-gets-the-chemistry-nobel/

I don't have to dream, DeepMind literally won the Nobel prize last year. My best friend did his PhD in protein crystallography and it took him 6 years to predict the structure of a single protein underlying legionnaires disease. He's now at MIT and just watched DeepMind predict hundreds of thousands of them in a year.

If you vet your news sources by only listening to ones that are anti-AI then you're going to miss the actual exciting advancements lurking beneath the oceans of tech bro hype.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

You need to take a step back and realize how warped your perception of reality has gotten.

Sure LLMs and other forms of automation, artificial intelligence and brute forcing of scientific problems will continute to grow.

What you are talking about though is extrapolating from that to a massive shift that just isn't on the horizon. You are delusional, you have read too many scifi books about AI and can't get your brain off of that way of thinking being the future no matter how dystopian it is.

The value to AI just simply isn't there, and that is before you even include the context of the ecological holocaust it is causing and enabling by getting countries all over the world to abandon critical carbon footprint reduction goals.

Don't come at me like you are being logical here, at least admit that this is the cool scifi tech dystopia you wanted and have been obsessed with. This is the only way you get to this point of delusion since the rest of us see these technologies and go "huh, that looks like it has some use" whereas people like you have what is essentially a religious view towards AI and it is pathetic and offensive towards religions that actually have substance to their philosophy and beliefs from my perspective.

The rich are using the gullibility of people like you to pump and dump entire economies you fool.

Edit I am not sure why I wrote this like you might actually take a step back, you won't, this message is really for everyone else to help emphasize how we are having the interests of the entire earth derailed by the advent of a shitty religion and its mindless disciples. The sooner the rest of us get on the same page, the sooner we can resist people like you and keep your rigid broken worldviews from destroying our futures.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You seem to be projecting about warped perspective.

Sure LLMs and other forms of automation, artificial intelligence and brute forcing of scientific problems will continute to grow.

That's not brute forcing of a scientific problem, it's literally a new type of algorithm that lets computers solve fuzzy pattern matching problems that they never could before.

What you are talking about though is extrapolating from that to a massive shift that just isn't on the horizon.

I'm just very aware of the number of problems in society that fall into the category of fuzzy pattern matching / optimization. Quantum computing is also an exciting avenue for solving some of these problems though is incredibly difficult and complicated.

You are delusional, you have read too many scifi books about AI and can't get your brain off of that way of thinking being the future no matter how dystopian it is.

This is just childish name calling.

The value to AI just simply isn't there, and that is before you even include the context of the ecological holocaust it is causing and enabling by getting countries all over the world to abandon critical carbon footprint reduction goals.

Quite frankly, you're conflating the tech bro hype around LLMs with AI more generally. The ecological footprint of Alpha Fold is tiny compared to previous methods of protein analysis that took labs of people years to discover each individual one. On top of the ecological footprint of all of those people and all of their resources for those years, they also have to use high powered equipment like centrifuges and x-ray machines. Alpha fold did that hundreds of thousands of times with some servers in a year.

Don't come at me like you are being logical here, at least admit that this is the cool scifi tech dystopia you wanted and have been obsessed with. This is the only way you get to this point of delusion since the rest of us see these technologies and go "huh, that looks like it has some use" whereas people like you have what is essentially a religious view towards AI and it is pathetic and offensive towards religions that actually have substance to their philosophy and beliefs.

Again, more childish name calling. You don't know me, don't act like you do.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

I am treating you like a child because you refuse to use your brain.

You gave me one obscure very early stage example that isn't even connected to the overall rise in value of LLMs and other forms of AI that has created an economic bubble worse than the dotcom bubble. So you are claiming the next real AI revolution is justtttt around the corner with a totally new technology you swear?

Maybe?

What I do know for sure is you are far more interested in that maybe than you are in actually engaging with the existential real world problems we are facing right now...

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

I am treating you like a child because you refuse to use your brain.

No you're doing so because you started doom scrolling before you had coffee and now you're trying to justify your uncalled for rudeness.

You gave me one obscure

It literally won the nobel prize.

very early stage example

It is not early stage, predicting the structures of those proteins has already actively changed the course of biomedical science. This isn't early stage research that need fleshing out, this is peer reviewed published research that has caused entire labs and teams to completely change what they're doing and how.

that isn't even connected to the overall rise in value of LLMs and other forms of AI

It is in that it uses the same underlying type of algorithms and is literally from the same team that developed the "T" in ChatGPT.

So you are claiming the next real AI revolution is justtttt around the corner with a totally new technology you swear?

I have not claimed that, I said that AI algorithms are likely to be part of our climate solutions and our ability to serve more people with less manual labour. They help to solve entirely new classes of problems and can do so far more efficiently than years of human labour.

Rage out about tech bubbles and hype bros if you want. Last time it was crypto, streaming before that, apps and mobile before that, social before that, the internet before that, etc etc. Hype bubbles come and go, sometimes the underlying technology is actually useful though.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

I have not claimed that, I said that AI algorithms are likely to be part of our climate solutions and our ability to serve more people with less manual labour. They help to solve entirely new classes of problems and can do so far more efficiently than years of human labour.

hahaha like AI will be a part of climate solutions are you serious right now?

Y'all are incapable of understanding expertise in your domain does not make you an expert in everything else, there is no way anyone in the industry you are speaking about will listen to climatologists and environmental scientists long enough to even begin to be helpful.

You keep talking about technology, when this is really a discussion about the catastrophic myopia of the tech industry of which you are making yourself a perfect example of.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/how-ai-is-transforming-data-centers-and-ramping-up-power-demand

To some biologists, that approach leaves the protein folding problem incomplete. From the earliest days of structural biology, researchers hoped to learn the rules of how an amino acid string folds into a protein. With AlphaFold2, most biologists agree that the structure prediction problem is solved. However, the protein folding problem is not. “Right now, you just have this black box that can somehow tell you the folded states, but not actually how you get there,” Zhong said.

“It’s not solved the way a scientist would solve it,” said Littman, the Brown University computer scientist.

This might sound like “semantic quibbling,” said George Rose, the biophysics professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins. “But of course it isn’t.” AlphaFold2 can recognize patterns in how a given amino acid sequence might fold up based on its analysis of hundreds of thousands of protein structures. But it can’t tell scientists anything about the protein folding process.

...

AlphaFold2’s success was founded on the availability of training data — hundreds of thousands of protein structures meticulously determined by the hands of patient experimentalists. While AlphaFold3 and related algorithms have shown some success in determining the structures of molecular compounds, their accuracy lags behind that of their single-protein predecessors. That’s in part because there is significantly less training data available.

The protein folding problem was “almost a perfect example for an AI solution,” Thornton said, because the algorithm could train on hundreds of thousands of protein structures collected in a uniform way. However, the Protein Data Bank may be an unusual example of organized data sharing in biology. Without high-quality data to train algorithms, they won’t make accurate predictions.

“We got lucky,” Jumper said. “We met the problem at the time it was ready to be solved.”

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-ai-revolutionized-protein-science-but-didnt-end-it-20240626/

However, it should be noted that due to the intrinsic nature of AI, its success is not due to conceptual advancement and has not hitherto provided new intellectual interpretive models for the scientific community. If these considerations are placed in Kuhn’s framework of scientific revolution [68], AF release is a revolution without any paradigm change. Instead of “providing model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners” [68], it is a rather effective tool for solving a fundamental scientific problem.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12109453/

This is because scientists working on AI (myself included) often work backwards. Instead of identifying a problem and then trying to find a solution, we start by assuming that AI will be the solution and then looking for problems to solve. But because it’s difficult to identify open scientific challenges that can be solved using AI, this “hammer in search of a nail” style of science means that researchers will often tackle problems which are suitable for using AI but which either have already been solved or don't create new scientific knowledge.

^ this is NOT the scientific method and it undermines the scientific integrity of the entire process

https://www.understandingai.org/p/i-got-fooled-by-ai-for-science-hypeheres

https://www.reddit.com/r/Biochemistry/comments/1j47wqy/thoughts_on_the_recent_veritasium_video_about/

https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1b1l68p/people_are_overestimating_alphafold_and_its_a/

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

You keep saying y'all and it's telling.

Learn how to communicate with people, not the simplified boxes you put them in.

When you're ready to have a conversation instead of just hearing yourself regurgitate mindless internet grandstanding I'm here.

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[–] aislopmukbang@sh.itjust.works 11 points 19 hours ago

So we objectively have too large of a population, but not if we change our standard of living and you want AI to solve this problem not by reducing our standard of living but instead by reducing the population?

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 18 points 21 hours ago

The ones advocating for corporate greed and AI are the same ones talking about a birth rate crisis. I guess they just want more proles to slave for them and damn the ones who die young in the process.

Fuck this timeline

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[–] a4ng3l@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Looking forward the 2026 ESG reports of large companies that are so happy to embrace AI :)

[–] puppinstuff@lemmy.ca 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I think you would have an easier time searching for those who didn’t.

[–] a4ng3l@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

I’m not into gold panning… though it’s not like all companies are using AI so much that it will transpire in their ESG. Now I now a couple that were so far very happily ignoring this source of carbon and, as far as I remember, it was not reported by the cloud providers either.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 49 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Hooray for cancer, asthma and bronchitis! Make America Healthy Again. Lung health is like Karate -- black is the best!

[–] TeamAssimilation 13 points 21 hours ago

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger! Or chronically ill, but in a cool way, really.

[+] trailee@sh.itjust.works 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] snoons@lemmy.ca 6 points 22 hours ago

Now they just have to understand what sustainable means beyond it being a buzzword.

[+] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

[deleted]

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com -4 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

It doesn't make any difference whether they use coal, nuclear, or renewables.

If they were using renewables the rest of us would need the coal generated power to keep the lights on.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

There's one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables.
One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city. That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.

It's easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn't have been built without your contributions, and you don't tax the power grid.

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[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

And the nuclear ?

You skipped it somehow.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

you seem to have missed my point.

If humanity's energy requirements without AI are x, and AI's requirements are an additional y, then AI is reponsible for the worst energy sources up to the value of y.

[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 7 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I'm just pointing out the fact that you mention nuclear energy and then discarded it in your follow up.

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[–] sefra1@lemmy.zip 3 points 13 hours ago

Exactly, people don't seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.

If doesn't matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it's just a green washing shift blame technique.

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