this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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The fundamental problem is that there’s money to be made by consuming more and more “sustainable” resources. The real solution is to reduce consumption on a global scale.
And how do you intend to "reduce consumption", may I inquire?
Not OC, but some ways to "reduce consumption" are reducing our usage of inefficient technology by replacing it with more energy/resource efficient means.
Examples include replacing individual automobiles with mass transit, building more dense cities to reduce consumption of construction materials/ vehicle miles, and not training massively large language models in facilities that consume more energy than an entire small country.
... gotta admit this is quite a bit more sound than I anticipated
As for LLMs, people don't really like when others say they can't explore the applications of tech, even if it's unsustainable, so there'f bacaklash ofc
In real world application, increased efficiency doesn't decrease energy usage nor decrease labor required to live. Tech has gotten more efficient since the industrial revolution, but demand for technology has increased exponentially, energy use is astronomical, and workers still work more hours.
Always I see this kind of "mixed" good/bad points comments. Wonder what it is and where does it come from...
Now to get on track: The topic is simple ANY computer infrastructure CONSUMES a LOT of POWER so if you want to be easy on the PLANET RESOURCES we need to you use it WISELY
Here are some suggestions:
stop people surveillange(aka gathering "advertising" data) and data hording from people devices like smartphones, routers, tv, smart anything like your fridge, ai assistant and other useless shit that only SPIES on you/us/me!
stopping running companies servers that do nothing and are useless or created for scopes that are not meaningful or that provide a real use;
stop creating and working for companies that do not promote/create technologies that support people and their long run sustainability...
...
I can continue with so many examples...
There are great ideas about taxing consumption, while getting rid of tax on labour.
This may be true of chopping down forests or mining coal. But we can use nuclear power. And the earth has plenty of water -- does chatgpt need clean drinking water specifically?
Datacenters moved to using evaporative cooling to save power. Which it does, but at the cost of water usage.
Using salt water, or anything significantly contaminated like grey water, would mean sediment gets left behind that has to be cleaned up at greater cost. So yes, they generally do compete with drinking water sources.
There's no way nuclear gets built out in less than 10 years.
Thank you for explaining that. I didn't understand the need to use drinking water.