• kromem@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    If you spend an evening in talking with an AI instead of streaming a movie from Netflix in 4k you’d have used less energy. Which would be still less than just the gas used to drive a few miles away for a night out.

    And all data center usage is significantly less than something like A/C usage (which is likely to be increasing as temps increase).

    There’s a lot of legitimate grievances and concerns about AI — just today I was seeing a mathematician having an identity crisis in response to the unrelenting solving of open questions, something probably every field will soon struggle with adapting to — but the inflated perception of the environmental impacts means that so much less public attention is being spent on the actual culprits and possible solutions thereof.

    • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 hours ago

      Is that what Ai told you? Because that is complete bullshit.

      Just taking to Ai doesn’t use that much energy, except unless you let it make complicated code, but the energy it took for training the LLM’s for your evening conversation took so much energy, resources and caused so much pollution, you could fly an airplane around the world for an entire year and still pollute the earth less.

        • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          For me its mostly the cost to benefit ratio given my current electricity prices. At current prices I’m not even sure I’d break even financially for my maintenaince costs of solar (like battery replacement) versus just paying my utility bill. As energy prices change that might change but currently it doesn’t make sense for me, i still have a mortgage to pay and other major repairs to do to my house and ideally id have to prematurely redo the roof before installing solar.