The leap in emissions is largely due to energy-guzzling data centers and supply chain emissions necessary to power artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The report estimated that in 2023, Google’s data centers alone account for up to 10% of global data center electricity consumption. Their data center electricity and water consumption both increased 17% between 2022 and 2023.

Google released 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide just last year, 13% higher than the year before.

Climate scientists have shown concerns as Big Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft continue to invest billons of dollars into AI.

  • @[email protected]English
    130•6 months ago

    So, lets get this straight. Humans are going to die. Animals are going to die. Plants are going to die.

    …so that corporations can make a few easier dollars before this whole planet burns in flames?

    Yes, corporationS. Plural. What? You think google is the only one using AI?

    • @[email protected]English
      91•6 months ago

      Literally not a single person on the planet thinks Google is the only one using AI. Agree with the rest though…

    • FlashMobOfOneEnglish
      11•6 months ago

      I mean, yeah.

      One of the hallmarks of our species is its insatiable, irrational greed.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•6 months ago

        and that’s unfortunately only true because the greedy groups have destroyed all the non-greedy ones by slaughter or forced participation

      • @[email protected]English
        3•6 months ago

        That’s a hall mark of our civilisation/society, not our species. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and the vast majority of cultures in that time have been relatively stable, with checks on excessive greed.

        (see Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn Of Everything for some good examples.)

    • @[email protected]English
      6•6 months ago

      I agree with everything except that A.I. doesn’t make money and may never solve a problem important enough to justify the cost.

    • just another devEnglish
      -13•6 months ago

      so that corporations can make a few easier dollars before this whole planet burns in flames?

      Sure. But they do that by providing services. Services like Gmail and (probably for a large part) cloud hosting for other companies, companies whose services you’re probably using as well.

      And honestly, it usually is more economical (Both financially as well as in eco footprint) for those companies to use cloud services that scale based on demand, rather than having a fixed set of servers running for the potential max capacity.

      Don’t get me wrong, increased carbon emissions is bad, but the picture is a bit more nuanced than “Google flip switch, kill animals, get money”.

      The AI hype (talk to your toaster!) will blow over, useful AI will remain and improve, this is just a hurdle along the way.

      • @[email protected]English
        14•6 months ago

        The AI hype (talk to your toaster!) will blow over, useful AI will remain and improve, this is just a hurdle along the way.

        I hope so. AI spam causing too much internet noise to the point where we can’t tell which one’s true or not would be one big hurdle.

        • just another devEnglish
          1•6 months ago

          Who knows, maybe it’ll teach people to be more skeptical of the things they read online, and actually look for the underlying sources.