They might be rational, but taking things out of context as much as happens with any AI / environment narrative gives off a strong "arsenic-free cauliflower" smell.
1. Dismiss it by believing the projections are very wrong and much too high
2. Think 20% of all energy consumed isn't that bad.
3. Find it concerning environmentally
All takes have some weight behind them in my opinion. I don't think this is a case of "arsenic-free cauliflower", maybe unless you claim #1, but that claim can't really invalidate the others on their rational, they make an assumption on the available data and reason of it, the data doesn't show ridiculously small numbers like it does in the cauliflower case.
I can't speak for you but I'm certainly not qualified to opine on the predictions so I won't address the 20% figure since I don't find it relevant.
> data centers account for 1% to 2% of overall global energy demand
So does the mining industry. Part of that data center consumption is the discussion we are having right now.
I find that in general energy doesn't tend to get spent unless there's something to be gained from it. Note that providing something that uses energy but doesn't provide value isn't a counterexample for this, since the greater goal of civilization seems to be discovering valuable parts of the state space, which necessitates visiting suboptimal states absent a clairvoyant heuristic.
I reject the statement that energy use is bad in principle and pending a more detailed ROI analysis of this, I think this branch of the topic has ran its course, at least for me :)
Ok, but that's the figure that would be alarming, AI is projected to consume 20% of the global energy production by 2030... That's not like the mining industry...
> I find that in general energy doesn't tend to get spent unless there's something to be gained from it
Yes, you'd fall in the #2 conclusion bucket. This is a value judgement, not a factual or logical contradiction. You accept the trade off and find it worth it. That's totally fair, but in no way does it remove or mitigate the environmental impact argument, it just judges it an acceptable cost.
I starting writing a response to your post, but as I kept writing and investigating, it became clear that the MIT article you linked is just overflowing with false statements, half truths, stretched truths, and unsourced information.
It is legitimately one of the most misleading pieces of press I've read in a while.
The 21% value is unsourced, the single image = full phone charge is wrong in so many ways I had written 3 paragraphs picking apart both the MIT publication and the huggingface paper's methodology, and so on.
I'm happy to be given evidence that AI is ruinous in terms of more than its social effects, but this publication has made me incredibly suspicious of anyone claiming this to be the case.
Huh, my search is also turning up nothing. I could swear I heard a story about cauliflower originally being yellow and getting replaced with the white cultivar due to the guy who grew it marketing it as "arsenic-free" cauliflower despite the fact that the yellow one had no arsenic to begin with. Either I'm getting Mandela effected or I'm hallucinating -- which of course only AI models are capable of ;)
