I literally measured it on my computer…
Data centers are so low on emissions as to be a rounding error. It’s always a good thing to go for efficiency, but you need to go for the big things if you want to make a difference. Data center are a small thing. You mentioned New Delhi. You know their agriculture is such that they cloud the skies when they burn biomass for fertilization? Tens of thousand die each year because of that. They also use most of the water. That is a big problem, mechanizing their agriculture will make a huge difference. The data center won’t.
There is a pattern forming here. More automation increases efficiency! This is how our civilization went from everybody needing to work the field, to almost nobody working the fields.
AI training is a one off thing, it’s energy use as percentage will always go down to 0 relative to inference as models are used, and that energy use is already tiny compared to the stuff that is making emissions.
If you want to mitigate climate change, the biggest actions are:
- Eat less meat. Each steak is thousands of image generations
- Use less AC.
- Travel less, especially by plane and use more public transports.
Reducing AI assist will actually increase your footprint because AI assisted workflows that work use 1/10 to 1/100 of pure legacy workflows.
If you ever paid for a game, you also paid for jpgs. Those are called assets, and game developers are paid to make them. Almost all art is a commodity that is part of a product.
AI assist allows smaller teams to do bigger better project for less cost and less resources.
The USA is notoriously terrible at infrastructure. The USA did have cities running out of water, because the private company doing it couldn’t do it profitably, so the company just stopped delivering water. No AI needed.
The USA doesn’t have worker protection or environmental regulations, so companies can do terrible things to the local communities, like placing noisy bitcoin farms near citizens or having water intensive industries in water starved regions. It’s just a misalignment in incentives, shareholders there are valued above citizens need.
This is not a problem with technology. Technology cannot solve society issues.
The solution is for USA citizens to demand slightly stronger worker and consumer protections. Vote leaders that will give you that. When someone want to build a datacenter, there should be an environmental analisys so it can only be built if it’s sustainable and doesn’t harm the community. Same with all other industries.
Singling out a workload for datacenter is ignoring the forest for the tree. When someone like Musk places extra turnines with no permits the problem isn’t technology. The problem is the fines being less than the cost of doing it properly. USA citizens deserve better. Demand better from your elected leaders. Have those fines bite, enforce them, and the problem will go away.
