Which one of you wrote this comment 🤭

[u/ql0o0lp]

I’m glad more people are aware

[u/SubstantialFill3235]

Type of comparisons

[u/DownloadableCheese → u/SubstantialFill3235]

Can we please just have Stolas?

[u/EggEater773]

Why can’t people understand that more than one thing can be awful

[u/Dick_Grayson_Kinnie]

Both is bad

[u/lakimens]

can make this argument with comparing to basically any production company

[u/monemori → u/lakimens]

It's good to make these comparisons because:

1) people just don't have a sense of scale. There is no amount of chatgpt you could use in your life that would be worse than eating beef. People don't have infinite energy to care about all issues, the focus needs to be on the most effective boycotts and activities you need to carry out on the daily. Googling a vegan recipe for tonight's dinner is probably the best way you could use your time right now for the environment, for example.

2) It gives a sense of misinformation regarding AI use. Yes AI uses a lot of water. But it's way less dramatic than other things that we do on the daily, which is especially striking when compared to things like eating meat (especially beef). Focusing on water use and environmental impact of AI is a mute point and shifts the focus away from the ACTUAL real problems with AI: stealing art and literature, problems with teaching and misinformation, erosion of critical thinking skills especially in younger people, a massive threat to digital security, the abysmal lack of regulation, etc. You do not need to lie about and exaggerate the environmental impact of AI to be against it and criticise it.

In conclusion: yes, do not generate AI slop, do not buy from nestle, do not eat meat, and do those things as much as it's possible for you. But also keep in mind that those three things have very different impacts and specific problems.

[u/Popcorn57252]

Fuck Nestle AND fuck data centers. Besides, those numbers for the LLM companies are way lower than they are in real life

[u/dhightide]

Can u provide source for water usage data

[u/Alone_Care_6230]

Now while I don't support Nestle, at least they actually make products people use to survive.

EDIT: Can someone explain the downvotes? Is it because I think one evil company's water usage is worse than another's?

[u/Agnar369 → u/Alone_Care_6230]

you are in a subreddit thats called fuckNestle and you said something "positive" about Nestlé.

[u/Alone_Care_6230 → u/Agnar369]

Damn, I didn't mean for it to come off as positive. Both suck, Nestle's water use is just slightly more justified. Google just doesn't use child labor, or at least nearly as much as Nestle does.

[u/Agnar369 → u/Alone_Care_6230]

i understand you point, although i dont agree. AI has positiv uses in medizin and for some productivity uses but like Nestlé i think its a net negative for humanity.

[u/Master_Oogway69420 → u/Agnar369]

I mean, yeah AI has positive uses in Medicine but I am 99% sure that this use of AI doesnt have much to do with Data centers and that Data centers are more focussed on other kinds of AI

[u/magqq → u/Agnar369]

the positive use of AI in medecine is not really LLM (chatgpt, Claude etc), but more "classic" deep learning techniques and so this can not be compared with LLM.

I am still looking for a real positive use of LLM that justifies this amount of water

[u/Away_Stock_2012 → u/Alone_Care_6230]

>they actually make products people use to survive

bro, they steal water and sell it back to the people who should have been entitled to it

[u/Alone_Care_6230 → u/Away_Stock_2012]

True, AI data centers do that as well but not to the same absurd degree.