“We walk for the water we need. If we don’t walk, who will give it to us?” asks Juan, a middle-aged man born in the Indigenous rural community of Maconí, Mexico. “It’s a four-hour journey each day to fetch water … Since last year, there hasn’t been rain, and this year it’s the same.” The bean crop has withered and there’s no corn to make tortillas, he told Ana Valdivia, an AI expert from the U.K.’s Oxford Internet Institute.
Since 1970, there has been a:
49% decline in marine life
50% decline in insects
63% decline in Irish birds
66% decline in wildlife
69% decline in vertebrates
83% decline in freshwater species
Dams and mining key cause of freshwater fish collapse.
Dams?
Is that where we get our sustainable, clean, green energy from?
Mining?
Don't we have to mine those green metals?
The Green Transition: killing everything on earth so humans can keep consuming, sorry, devouring
@beans_please
The action we must take is to radically slow down energy and material use. Instead, we are living this illusion that we can just transition from one energy source to another and everything will be fine. It won't be. 14,000 football fields of forests are cut down every year in Myanmar alone to make the charcoal used in the Chinese solar industry.
We must act but we must act on the right problem, which is overconsumption.
What good is AI if you don't have a planet to use it on?
Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report on Wednesday, and it's mostly bad news. Last year, Microsoft's emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI."
The Great Lying Machine is eating our environment and spewing out toxic misinformation. Big Tech has become a clear and present danger to all our futures.
Ah, Brad, Brad, pull the other one, fella. Maybe for once in your life could you be honest? It's the good AI will do your stock price. That's all you care about.
Imagine you're out there in the marketplace selling a Fact Machine, and this Fact Machine is constantly lying. And when you're challenged, when you're asked: "What good is a Fact Machine that lies all the time?, your response is literally the following:
"Factual accuracy in large language models remains an area of active research.”
That's like saying:
You being able to sit on this chair we just sold you is an area of active research.
"ChatGPT consumes a lot of energy in the process, up to 25 times more than a Google search. Additionally, a lot of water is also used in cooling for the servers that run all that software. Per conversation of about 20 to 50 queries, half a litre of water evaporates – a small bottle, in other words."
AI is predicted to consume twice as much energy as the whole of France by 2030
Training GPT3, took 1,287 MWh (Megawatt hours) of electricity.
@Chee_Koala
We are in the beginning of a global environmental collapse driven by the massive overconsumption of energy and materials causing the degradation of water, soil, air, biodiversity, and along comes AI with massive new energy and material demands. That's the so what. We're devouring our environment. To have any hope of avoiding catastrophic environmental collapse, we must massively reduce our energy and materials consumption. We must prioritize things that are truly useful.
@HumanServitor
I don't doubt the power and potential of AI. I've been reading up on it since the 1980s. This modern AI has been designed by advertising agencies (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon) with the purpose of creating functioning addicts to drive consumption. It will excel at this. It is the ultimate Persuader and Enforcer of the Growth Death Cult. Once we were human. Then we were consumers. Now we become devourers.
@tobi82
I think the answer to what is necessary must come from a common conversation within the community. A deep, long conversation and a consensus view has some chance along the path to wisdom. The conversation must also involve listening to what the birds and the bees, the fish, the water, and the trees, want. We can only save our environment if we first truly become part of it again. What I'm talking about is the opposite of what we think of as individualism.
In these situations, I often think of Samuel Beckett, the ultimate Irish cynic and fatalist. And yet, when he was needed, Samuel Beckett joined the French Resistance. He fought so that he and others could be free to not to believe in anything.
@dimillian
Are you saying AI is as important as breathing.
What about when it becomes a choice to give a poor person water or give the data water, who should get the water? Right now, these choices are happening, and data centers and AI are getting water first.
This ChatGPT-type AI is a giant scam. It comes from the same cultural mindset that gave us bitcoin. It's pure grifting. Can't even tell the truth if it tried. It's DNA is white supremacy. The only killer app it has is advertising.
“They almost annihilated us, and that genocide continues. To destroy the environment you have to destroy the people who protect it.”
Juan Benito Mancias, Indigenous Texan
All over the world, right this very moment, industrial civilization is coming for the last of the Indigenous. They are seeking to finish the job their colonial ancestors started, often under the banner of the Green Transition, of clean, green and renewable energy. It is a twin attack.
The oil and gas drilling is continuing, and the “green” mining is exploding. The only thing worse than a greedy coloniser and greedy imperialist, is a righteous greedy colonizer and imperialist. One who, as he destroys the remains of what is truly, honestly green, clean and renewable on this beautiful Earth, can laugh and sneer that he is doing it for 2-ton EV SUVs, scooters, vapes and earbuds. Will you be a witness for the last of the Indigenous? Will you be a witness for the last of Nature?
"Despite the best efforts of automakers and companies like Apple, states continue to push forward with popular “right to repair” reforms that make it easier and more affordable for consumers to repair tech they own. While they vary in potency, New York, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota have all now passed some flavor of right to repair reforms."
"On 23 April, the EU Parliament adopted the ‘right to repair’ directive with an overwhelming majority of votes in favour of the directive. The aim of the legislation is to incentivise consumers to choose repair over replacement, thereby extending the lifecycle of products and bolstering the repair sector in the process."
@dgavin
In 2024, China Water Risk estimated that China's data centers would use about 1.3 trillion liters of water annually, which is sufficient for 26 million people's residential needs. The amount would surpass 3 trillion liters a year by 2030.