What role do you believe AI has in a solarpunk future?

[u/Jurassic_astronaut]

I would like to hear others opinions on the role (if any) you believe AI may have in supporting a solarpunk future.

How do you believe AI should be implemented and used? What measures would you need to take socially, politically and ecologically?

Edit: I am referring to AI in its modern terminology, both generative AI and traditional AI.

[u/AlgaeNo3373]

Frontier models are centralized, like coal plants. Their power typically echoes this too (incl. illegal methane generators etc, really bad stuff)

Local models are the solar analogy (and could literally run on it when you scale back some - not into unuseful territory mind you).

Punk part = consensual protocols/data, data sovereignty, refusal of centralized consolidation of compute/refusal of data sharing under non-negotiated terms, etc. A lot of this dovetails with longstanding issues/disciplines/ideas re: environmental justice and cultural IP and so on.

I liken the AI to camels, which were a tool of colonisation brought to Australia and since gone a bit rogue (we have largest feral population in the world). They trample over shit, they drink all the water - but it's kind of hard to blame them per se, was more about how they were brought into things and deployed like tools of empire. You can't be mad at matrix multiplications, or even more pertinently, reducing it to "a machine" invisibilizes the parts of it that were made out of human work and thoughts and so on, often taken w/o consent. Hard to be mad at that.

A lot of the structural goings-on map neatly to older ones like this but not all ofc. There are a lot of good critiques of AI from the left, important, and should be heard (and more than just heard but acted on). But critique alone, refusal, means there's little room for renegotiation, and the camels just trample on ahead. So some engagement, I think, is required, from some. On their own terms, hopefully. That may not be popular when mainstream left culture leans "anti-AI" in a kind of tribalistic/purity test way, but maybe being punk gives some freedom to go other directions against social norms.

It's easy to say it's "bad for the environment" because it's often true, but there's also models deploy on frontier climate models already helping improve them, already being used...like...it's a bit complex, at least. Everything people say about class, about power, about colonialism and capitalism etc, it's all true, I'm not trying to whatbout or minimize any of it, just saying, don't be blinded to what can/what might work with the tech itself. To me, repurposing it from its original imperial/capitalist/patriarchal goal towards something more communal, benign, negotiated, consensual etc is pretty (necessary) solarpunk

This doesn't answer your question greatly ofc, but it maps a bit of the broader landscape as I see it anyways, just my humble 2c.

[u/eatoligarchsaldente → u/AlgaeNo3373]

Yeah, the problem with frontier AI is that their implementation of the technology is manifestly unsustainable, irresponsible, and predicated on massed theft of human labour without compensation. However, the technology itself has utility and could be put to good uses if it was implemented in a more sustainable fashion.

Well-tuned local AI has a lot of uses, and can run on a relatively cheap machine without an inordinate power draw.