Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
The point is that servers don’t belch black smoke when they send you one file. This model is the size of a four-hour Youtube video. How many people watch how many hours of video, every single day? We only see this hand-wringing minutia over internet use when talking about neural networks, and it’s getting weird.
Much weirder when people try to shift blame off corporations pushing stuff on people without their consent, and on people minding their own business.
Weren’t you just telling me that data centers would use energy regardless anyway? I can’t keep track of these talking points, except it seems like they’re all pro AI.
The root comment opens with ‘don’t use Chrome.’ This tangent is about specific overblown fixation on power use… for downloads.
I am telling you to apply your own criticism of bandwidth to anything else Google does. Four gigs to every desktop Chrome user is still a drop in the bucket compared to a streaming service. If the average Chrome user has watched two movies online, they’ve done just as much environmental damage. Which is to say: not much.
Does consent change how much power a server uses?
Here, yes. Two exabytes of data transfer could have been one or zero.
I don’t get the point you’re trying to make here.
The point is that servers don’t belch black smoke when they send you one file. This model is the size of a four-hour Youtube video. How many people watch how many hours of video, every single day? We only see this hand-wringing minutia over internet use when talking about neural networks, and it’s getting weird.
Much weirder when people try to shift blame off corporations pushing stuff on people without their consent, and on people minding their own business.
Weren’t you just telling me that data centers would use energy regardless anyway? I can’t keep track of these talking points, except it seems like they’re all pro AI.
The root comment opens with ‘don’t use Chrome.’ This tangent is about specific overblown fixation on power use… for downloads.
I am telling you to apply your own criticism of bandwidth to anything else Google does. Four gigs to every desktop Chrome user is still a drop in the bucket compared to a streaming service. If the average Chrome user has watched two movies online, they’ve done just as much environmental damage. Which is to say: not much.