The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

Absolutely needed: to get high efficiency for this beast … as it gets better, we’ll become too dependent.

“all of this growth is for a new technology that’s still finding its footing, and in many applications—education, medical advice, legal analysis—might be the wrong tool for the job,”

    • pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      7·
      1 day ago

      It should be clarified that it’s 99.99% Bitcoin mining that’s wasting all that energy, any other crypto that still uses mining is basically irrelevant when compared to it

    • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.spaceEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      I found this article from last year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

      Our preliminary estimates suggest that annual electricity use from cryptocurrency mining probably represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption.

      The wide range should not be too surprising, it’s a mess to keep track of, especially with the current administration. Since then, with Trump immediately pledging to support the “industry”, I can only imagine it consuming even more now.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        113·
        2 days ago

        That’s a huge amount of electricity even at it’s lowest. Are they building the AI to crypto mine is also another question. I could see these sneaky bastards combining the two somehow.

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            21·
            1 day ago

            I was thinking how it probably helps by getting into nanoseconds with buying and selling stocks. I have found that there are very few coincidences with huge technologies, tons of cash pouring in and dark money. I could be wrong though.

            • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.mlEnglish
              2·
              7 hours ago

              Trading has nothing to do with cryptocurrency mining. Also, any high-frequency trading firm worth their salt is using FPGAs for the things where performance really counts.

        • Loduz_247@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 day ago

          As for OpenAI and Microsoft, they’re betting on energy with a company called Helion Energy. They say they’ll have it ready by 2028. Whether they’ll achieve that? We’ll see.

          • Almacca@aussie.zoneEnglish
            5·
            1 day ago

            I looked that up and it’s a fusion reactor, apparently, from what I can figure out from their nigh-illegible website.

            …[reads further] …

            It skips the steam cycle. That’s fucking cool. I really hope they get it working.

                • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                  2·
                  5 hours ago

                  there’s lots of handwavy things. They even said they “discovered new physics” to explain some disappointing (perfectly predictable, by other established nuclear physicists) results. “Oh the physics equation was wrong, we just need to make everything 25% bigger”.

                  Also, the emitted radiation levels will be insane once it’s scaled up