AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions

josefritzishere

AI presents an existential threat to the continued existence of Homo sapiens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_crisis

onion2k

Now do Netflix and YouTube! How about golf courses, almond farming, and Disneyworld? Everything has a downside attached. Most things are terrible for the environment if you look at the raw numbers, and if you're not interested in them or they're things you don't use then it's easy to just dismiss them as pointless nonsense that we should stop doing. However, if you're only looking at the downside then you're being dishonest. The point is never "Let's stop this because it's bad for the planet", but "Is the net benefit worth the cost?" That could still be a no for AI, but there are things we ought to stop doing long before we come for AI. Notably golf. It's a terrible waste of land and water, and boring.

senordevnyc

Their estimated water usage by AI data centers for 2030 is about 9.8 trillion liters. The global almond crop is estimated to use ~8 trillion liters. So I vote we just ban almonds. Problem solved! Also, I find the framing of water usage in terms of “the water needs of Sub-Saharan Africans” to be manipulative and misleading. It appears they just picked a poor part of the world where per capita water usage is very low, so they could make it sound as bad as possible. But virtually none of these data centers will have a deleterious effect on water availability for those people. Alternative headline: “Despite massive growth globally, AI is projected to only use about a third as much water in 2030 as Turkmenistan” (~28 trillion liters, mostly to grow cotton in the desert). Or here’s another fun one: the entire annual global water usage of all of AI in 2030, including the water needed to generate all the power for AI, is about what golf courses use daily . So dumb.

sajithdilshan

The report seems genuinely dishonest. Every technology has its downside. The report complains about e-waste and mineral mining. Hasn't that been an issue since decades? If they truly wanted to have an honest discussion, they would have outline both the advantages and disadvantages and start a genuinely balanced public debate. The report is more like a doomsday fear-mongering for a lack of better words propaganda. The sad part is that reputed organizations like UN does this kind of things, it just reduce the trust of public in these orgs even more.

maelito

Well, extremely large US models trained all-year will way too much money, yes. Not models like Mistral, they consume way less resources.

throwthrowuknow

The title is incredibly misleading. AI is not using anything that would go towards the “billions” presented in the article. So unless they are proposing moving the billions to North America in lieu of building datacenters then I don’t see a valid argument.

api

I challenge people to look at some numbers here. Is it possibly excessive? Yes. But this is insane hyperbole. Of course that's how you get attention, I guess. Rational discourse is ignored. To get people to pay attention you have to make everything extreme and stupid.

metalman

total human resouce extraction and use counting water and air and soil use is over 1 trillion tons per anum, mining and construction make up 100 billion tons of that. These rates are rising, and are starting have negative climate and ecological effects for every place ,person and creature on earth. Life span averages for the whole planet may still be edging up,but have plateaud for developed countrys, and financial inequity is rising faster than the worlds gdp. So either AI changes that trend imediatly, or it is just more shit.

VCFundedGenYer

Really sad and telling to see this flagged. HN doesn't care about the environment.

gorpy7

i’ve noticed in the last month that HN discourse has improved- which i’m super glad for. this thread is a good example of lots of you seeing thru the hyperbole/rhetoric! one of the remaining errors that people make is sort of assuming ai as it is today or even last year is what ai will be 5 years from now. well, it’s going to get a whole lot better and i’m curious to see what that will enable. and although there is lots of fear about how the owners of the models will steer peoples’ world view, i see more of the basal views improving dramatically. what i mean is, people are educating themselves on fundamentals more efficiently and cutting through a lot of the bull that would otherwise lead them to scam or hype or… driven decisions. every once in a while i watch daytime tv and get blown away by the drivel and think, who would watch/be moved by this! that part of our society needs to die fast but it’s still here- it’s sort of forgotten, at least to me, but it probably is more impactful than we’d like to believe. so i’m encouraged by sort of what i would call death to bull and a cleaner path to decently synthesized knowledge. on the top end, it’s the enablement of dreams where previously a business is paperwork not the actual business of making and improving the sold product or experience. i look forward to seeing what people who are newly enabled will bring to the world.