gerrymcgovern

gerrymcgovern, 1 month ago to random

In a city called The Dalles, in Oregon, USA, local people were worried that Google’s water use was soaring. As is so often the case, the city officials, who had given Google hundreds of millions in tax breaks, had no intention of letting anyone know how much water Google was using. It was up to a local paper, The Oregonian, to try and find out. They were forced to bring a case to court. City officials were ordered by Google to claim that Google’s use of scarce pubic water was a “trade secret”.

gerrymcgovern, 8 months ago to random

"Its estimated that spam consumes more than 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year, the same amount as 2.4 million homes. It also produces the same amount of green house gas(GHG) emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars."
https://www.techbusinessnews.com.au/does-email-spam-affect-the-enviroment/

gerrymcgovern, 12 days ago to random

"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.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/world-all-news/1042696/chatgpt-consumes-25-times-more-energy-than-google

gerrymcgovern, 1 month ago to random

Asked if a restaurant could serve cheese nibbled on by a rodent, the Microsoft / New York City government official AI chatbot replied:

“Yes, you can still serve the cheese to customers if it has rat bites,” before adding that it was important to assess the “the extent of the damage caused by the rat” and to “inform customers about the situation.”

AI is spewing out this sort of surreal garbage all over the world right now. AI is a monumental grift.

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-city-chatbot-misinformation-6ebc71db5b770b9969c906a7ee4fae21

gerrymcgovern, 1 month ago to random

AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning.

AI will make bitcoin's environmental devastation look like a picnic.

"If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day, the IEA says, the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt-hours a year — the amount consumed by about 1.5 million European Union residents."

https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/3/28/24111721/ai-uses-a-lot-of-energy-experts-expect-it-to-double-in-just-a-few-years

gerrymcgovern, 6 months ago to random

In one generation, we will have extracted, consumed and wasted more materials than in all of previous history, than in all the time humans have been on the planet.

And the rich 10% will have done 50% of this consuming and wasting.

The poorest 50% will have done 10% of this.

We can transition all we want. Our lifestyles are not sustainable.

We must embrace Degrowth

gerrymcgovern, 8 days ago to random

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."

https://au.pcmag.com/news/105283/microsofts-emissions-spike-29-as-ai-gobbles-up-resources

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.

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

Degrowth is the only hope

Imagine a world where you work three or four days a week. In your free time, you play sports, spend time with loved ones, garden, and engage with local politics. Overnight shipping, advertising, private jets, billionaires and SUVs no longer exist, but health care, education, and clean electricity are free and available to all.

We must massively reduce our energy and material consumption to have any hope of saving our environment.

https://grist.org/looking-forward/the-growing-popularity-of-degrowth/

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

AI gave “people extra marks if they listed "baseball" or "basketball" – hobbies that were linked to more successful staff, often men. Those who mentioned "softball" – typically women – were downgraded.” AI rejects marginalised groups, because they don’t play the “right” sports. One person, rejected by AI, changed their birthdate to be younger. AI then selected them. These are not flaws of AI. They are features.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240214-ai-recruiting-hiring-software-bias-discrimination

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

"Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta combined more than doubled their energy consumption between 2017 and 2021."

And they will double their energy and water and material demand again by 2026.

Is anyone anywhere in government paying the least bit of attention to the environmental catastrophe that Big Tech is massively accelerating? Or have all our politicians been bought off by Big Tech?

https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/115850/ais-rise-is-having-an-enormous-environmental-impact/

gerrymcgovern, 7 months ago to random

Data colonialism: Poor people in poor countries clean up toxic mess in AI, so that rich people and rich countries don't get exposed to the toxicity.

Meta negotiations with moderators in Kenya collapse
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/16/meta-moderators-talks-collapse/?guccounter=1

‘It’s destroyed me completely’: Kenyan moderators decry toll of training AI
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/ai-chatbot-training-human-toll-content-moderator-meta-openai

Kenyan Workers on $2 Per Hour make ChatGPT Less Toxic
https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

Mental trauma: African content moderators push big tech on rights
https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/sci-tech/2023-10-16-mental-trauma-african-content-moderators-push-big-tech-on-rights/

gerrymcgovern, 8 months ago to random

Bitcoin is a grift
Bitcoin is a con
Bitcoin is a scam

Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index: Bitcoin mining consumed 85 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year as of September 2023, equivalent to 0.38% of global electricity consumption and more than the annual electricity consumption of countries like Belgium and Finland.

Digiconomist estimates 130 TWh per year, more than the annual electricity consumption of countries like Sweden and Argentina

https://www.tekedia.com/the-environmental-effects-of-bitcoin-mining/

gerrymcgovern, 8 months ago to random

If we deleted 90% of the data we have, everything would work better and we'd need 90% less data centers.

After 90 days, the probability of a piece of content being reused is 5%
Data Is the New Oil, and That Makes It an Environmental Hazard, Bill Tolson, Spice Works, 2021
https://www.toolbox.com/tech/big-data/guest-article/data-is-the-new-oil-and-that-makes-it-an-environmental-hazard/

91% of content gets no traffic from Google
https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/

95% of apps are unused after 90 days.
https://andrewchen.com/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-users-is-normal-and-that-the-best-apps-do-much-better/

gerrymcgovern, 1 year ago to random

Over 60 years of life, if you keep your smartphone for an average of two years, then you'll need 30 devices. If you keep your phone for five years, then you'll need 12 devices. The European Environmental Bureau has stated that extending the lifespan of smartphones and other electronics by just one year would save the EU as much carbon emissions as taking two million cars off the roads annually.
https://gerrymcgovern.com/tips-for-more-sustainable-smartphone-use/

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

"Until last month, nobody outside of YouTube had a solid estimate for just how many videos are currently on the site. Eight hundred million? One billion? It turns out that the figure is more like 14 billion—more than one and a half videos for every person on the planet—and that’s counting strictly those that are publicly visible."

Over 80% of Internet traffic is video.
Video is thousands of times more polluting than text.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/how-many-videos-youtube-research/677250/

gerrymcgovern, 5 months ago to random

"Every Bitcoin transaction uses, on average, enough water to fill "a back yard swimming pool", a new study suggests. That's around six million times more than is used in a typical credit card swipe, Alex de Vries of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, calculates."

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67564205

gerrymcgovern, 5 months ago to random

"Half of all the oil consumed since the dawn of the modern oil age in 1859 has been consumed from 1998 through 2021."

That's 23 years in which we consumed half of all the oil ever produced.

Between 1970 and 2020, 75% of all human-caused CO2 was produced.

The astonishing acceleration of the devouring of our environment is almost beyond comprehension

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-10/acceleration-forever-the-increasing-momentum-of-mineral-extraction/

gerrymcgovern, 5 months ago to random

Electric bikes are displacing four times as much demand for oil as all the world’s electric cars.
https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-bikes-and-mopeds-are-cutting-demand-for-oil-far-more-than-electric-cars-213870

“I use my e-bike on journeys in my area, including towns 10 and 15 miles away. I am a middle-aged chubster with two very dodgy knees. Some days, I can cycle more easily than I can walk. I live in a very hilly, very windy part of rural Scotland. The e-bike is transformative and brings me great joy.”
Ruth Watson, @kuantancurls

gerrymcgovern, 2 months ago to random

AI execs who urgently need more energy to power their tech revolution are turning to fossil fuels

AI is driving a massive demand for electricity.

Despite earlier commitments, some executives now say clean energy may not meet AI's growing needs.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-energy-electricity-data-centers-fossil-fuels-tech-revolution-2024-3

This was always going to be the case. Big Tech will never let the saving the environment get in the way of its insatiable greed.

There's a reason why the environmental collapse has run in parallel with the rise of Big Tech

gerrymcgovern, 2 months ago to random

Big Tech's lack of transparency is undemocratic

Google warned Dorchester County, USA, that the amount of water it needs from the county's utility to cool computer server farms and other equipment it plans to build is a closely guarded "trade secret." Google has imposed a gag order on officials elected by the public, warning them that they must not tell the public anything about Google project.

Big Tech is a threat to democracy.

https://www.postandcourier.com/business/charleston-google-data-center-public-records-oregon-portland/article_c5f00fd8-d6f9-11ee-b3c1-f3f5e0012225.html

gerrymcgovern, 4 months ago to random

20mph limits reduce emissions by 25%
20mph limits reduce casualties by 20-30%
20mph limits increase travel choices
20mph limits make little difference to travel times
20mph limits are popular Make 20mph the urban/village norm
https://www.20splenty.org/briefings

0% of people die when hit at 23 MPH
25% die when hit at 32 MPH
New York Department of Transportation.

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

“Investigators digging through Tesla’s trash discovered hazardous waste violations at more than 100 facilities. Within a couple days, the Elon Musk-led company agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle the suit that says the company “intentionally” and “negligently” disposed of materials that should have been handled with care.”
How bad is Tesla’s hazardous waste problem in California?, Justine Calma, The Verge, 2024
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/3/24058476/tesla-hazardous-waste-suit-settlement-california

gerrymcgovern, 3 months ago to random

"The Nordic states are letting go of values and infrastructure resources that are dear to the welfare state – from shared access to public resources to democratic values and universal access to communication and electricity – while intensifying digitalization and dependencies on Silicon Valley companies."

The public values of openness, affordability of connection and universal access to infrastructure are under threat by Big Tech.

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/reimagining-public-values-in-algorithmic-futures/whats-new/dismantling-public-values-one-data-center-at-the-time