This finding is kind of surprising to me. Time to install solar systems at home I guess?

Are we surprised? Unfortunately not, they almost increased their indirection emissions 8 folds in a few years. And it could get worse still.

There's clearly a major issue in terms of environmental impacts with the AI industrial complex. Yes it's also about electricity consumption but not only. We have at last a comprehensive study on the matter. Without major changes it's just unsustainable and something we can't collectively afford.

The hype is very high right now indeed. This can lead only to misguided decisions. But really it's mostly distraction from the massive ethical concerns this industry carries. It would require for policymakers to step up but I'm afraid it unfortunately won't happen or they'll come up with misguided attempts if they don't first consult with field experts.

If you still don't think data centres have a water consumption problem, especially since the LLM weapon race... Think again.

This is what things will look like in the coming years. Only probably worse, and for more and more people.

More reasons why the whole "data centers in space idea" is stupidly dangerous and likely unreachable.

The insurances are starting to crumble under the risks. Looks like it's time to do something about it.

One of the dark sides of our industry, and this is is accelerating at a worrying pace. Maybe it's time to look at and fix the whole hardware life cycle?

This planned giant data center by Meta shows how the big players are grabbing land to satisfy their hubris. So much waste all around.

Let's not forget the ethical implications of those tools indeed. Too often people put them aside simply on the "oooh shiny toys" or the "I don't want to be left behind" reactions. Both lead to a very unethical situation.

We can expect more misleading papers to be published by the big LLM providers. Don't fall in the trap, wait for actually peer reviewed papers from academia. Unsurprisingly the results aren't as good there.

ETH Zurich spearheading an effort for more ethical and cleaner open models. That's good research, looking forward to the results.

I recognize myself quite a bit in this opinion piece. It does a good job going through most of the ethical and practical reasons why you don't need LLMs to develop and why you likely don't want to.

I don't think I'm ready to give up just yet... Still, I recognise myself so much in this piece it feels like I could have written it (alas I don't write as well).

Not only the tools have ethical issues, but the producers just pretend "we'll solve it later". A bunch of empty promises.

That's a good overview of the energy demand, it doesn't account for all the resources needed of course. Now of course like most articles and studies on the topic, it's very inaccurate because of the opacity from the major providers in that space. The only thing we know is that the numbers here are likely conservative and the real impact higher. Mass use of those models inferences is already becoming a problem, and it's bound to get worse.

Even with conservative estimates some uses are very much energy hungry... Especially when they support a surveillance apparatus. Many reasons to not get there.

Don't confuse scenarios for predictions... Big climate improvements due to AI tomorrow after accepting lots of emissions today is just a belief. There's nothing to back up it would really happen.

I hope people using Grok enjoy their queries... Because they come with direct environmental and health consequences.