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We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
(www.technologyreview.com)
this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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The energy issue almost feels like a red herring for distracting all idiots from actual AI problems and lemmy is just gobbling it up every day. It's so tiring.
That's because it IS an issue, together with many other issues like disinformation, over reliance, wrong tools for wrong (most) jobs, etc.
Ypu know what I don't hear on lemmy? People complaining that crypto world consumes more energy than AI world and one of those is far more useless in grand scheme of things.
So how comes it is A issue for AI, but everyone seemingly has forgotten about crypto?
Last I heard, securing one transaction on chain is equalivent to powering US household for many days (feel free to fact check). In comparison, generating LLM text for entire hour on your PC is pretty much the same as gaming for two hours (very approx., your gpu is unlikely at 100% load), which means gaming world is far more destructive energy wise. Are you getting triggered yet?
That's because one has all the big tech companies madly rushing to implement it everywhere, while the other even Ubisoft has abandoned and is more or less stuck to their own cult
What stone did you live under? The huge power consumption of crypto was often debated. You just don't hear too much about it because people don't really talk about crypto much anymore. Now it's mostly just people pro crypto who discuss it. And obviously they tend to talk leas about the downsides.
Eh, that enormous energy consumption hasn't change, y'know. For Bitcoin, for example, the basic concept is still that ALL wallets have to process ALL transactions, which scales as well as studfing a walrus in a mini Cooper. Bitcoin is extremely energy inefficient and is simply not a good replacement for transactions for the entire world.
Same goes for all other block chain technologies, they're fundamentally flawed and won't ever be good. If you want a good alternative to visa and MasterCard, you'll need something fundamentally different from blockchain tech.
... Oh, so so the terawatts of power wasted is no longer a problem because people don't really speak of it anymore and cryptobros tried to debate it.
If I'm living under a stone, you're straight up stoned.
I have both heard and said that crypto uses a lot of energy on Lemmy.
What do you think this is, 2016 Tumblr?
This? Hipster 4chan from everything I've seen. Altought nowadays 4chan tends to be less hateful/extreme, especially when it comes to calls for genocide/killings of Jews
That's not true if you were to use off-chain transactions (i.e. lightning network)
"That's not true"
"But not true only if you use non-mainstream transaction method that was not part of the original design and is only supported by selected cryptos, meaning not universal"
K
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's nice that things are improving, but it's safe to say that things will improve for AI too (energy-wise), hella lot of people now working on optimization and it looks very promising, even by just splitting large models into many smaller ones by topic
I just wanted to clarify the confusion that was in my head for a moment after going after the truth and fact checking. If I buy a pizza with Bitcoin and Lightning Network (which is the only one in use at most legal places), it's not like I'm using 1600 kWh... The original message is misleading in that regard.. Practical and concrete reality are different. But theoretical, if that pizza wanted a normal transaction it would use such amount of energy and take days (that's why they wouldn't use that)... So... There's that.
Anyway, the dichotomy 'AI or Crypto' is false. I am not taking sides. But you do you, enjoy.
the ones that give up on all the "desirable" aspects of cryptocurrencies? The payment isn't final until it is on chain. You don't need to trust anyone to figure out if you're on the right chain in the first place. Off-chain shit defeats this. What's the point, other than dressing up the horse before beating it some more?
You don't hear so much about it because it has faded a bit into the background and crypto bros work hard spreading misinformation about how awesome Bitcoin is.
Technically, blockchain tech is interesting, bit nothing more than that. Blockchain technology is fundamentally flawed. Requiring everyone to confirm the same transactions by having everyone make the same CPU / GPU / memory intensive calculations is just dumb and it won't scale to anything that could sustain the daily transactions of even a single small country, let alone the world.
At least AI has a whole lot of pieces that are fundamentally "useful". As it currently stands, AI will need completely new concepts and technologies to be able to grow in capabilities and shrink in power requirements, but at least the prices that are there are reasonably useful.
Blockchain technology is fundamentally flawed for just about any application at all.
Having said all that, fuck AI companies. AI could be a great new tool for humanity but instead we hacet all sorts of shitty assistants being shoved down our throats. Oh, and AI revenge porn, that too
The international energy agency estimates that the total electricity consumption for AI worldwide was around 415 TWh per year as of 2024. That's more than the UK uses.
Are you fucking serious? All I ever see on Lemmy is prople saying "AI slop" over and over and over and over again... in like every comment section of every post. It could be a picture that was actually hand-drawn, or a photograph that was definitely not AI, or articles written by someone "sounding like AI". The AI hate on Lemmy is WAY overpowering any support.
I think you misunderstood me here as we're in agreement already
I definitely did! I guess maybe you can see why I was so exasperated. 😳
Partly, yep. Seems like every time I try to pin down an AI on a detail of a question worth asking - a math question, or a date in history, it'll confidently reply with the first answer it finds ... right or wrong.
I don't think accuracy is an issue either. I've been on the web since inception and we always had a terribly inaccurate information landscape. It's really about individual ability to put together found information to an accurate world model and LLMs is a tool just like any other.
The real issues imo are effects on society be it information manipulation, breaking our education and workforce systems. But all of that is overshadowed by meme issues like energy use or inaccuracy as these are easy to understand for any person while sociology, politics and macro economics are really hard.