The title of this article is bad. Further down they reference that ISW estimates 40,000 casualties for June. So killed and wounded. Still horrific, but even with Russia’s atrocious killed to wounded ratio more like 10-20k killed.

A) electricity is only a small fraction of energy use, as I stated before

B) there are also areas where none of the energy use is AI, cherry picking small regions to make your argument is dishonest

I’ll try one last time, but I won’t respond again. Its fine to think AI is a waste and energy shouldn’t be spent on in. Saying that it is worth the deaths of thousands of people in order to cut carbon emissions by a fraction of a percent makes you a psychopath.

Sure, fine. That’s a reasonable stance to take.

Saying its worth the deaths of thousands of people to knock maybe one part in a thousand of human carbon emissions is not.

Let me give you some scale. In 2024 estimated Power usage on AI was 415TWh In the same year total energy usage was around 592 Exajoules or around 164,444 TWhr.

Or to give you a visual:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++oooo

The "o"s are AI usage the +s are other energy usages, the +s are significantly more polluting as about 2/3rds of them are burning fossil fuels directly for heating and transport.

There are plenty of plans already in place. EVs are beating ICE cars, mass transit is coming back into fashion in a lot of places, hell you could even just increase taxes on it to drive down consumption.

All are things I’d suggest would be better than your sister/father/partner being killed in order to sour people on the idea of using LLMs.

Ok, just wanted to check I wasnt misunderstanding. Personally I’d rather just reduce gasolene consumption by 0.001% rather than kill off thousands to stop the energy use of LLMs, but thats just my preference.

To be clear, you think its a fair trade for thousands of people to die so that other people stop using a computer program you dislike. Am I getting that right?

Doesn’t help, your laser (or RF comms if you are using them) can still only send out a fixed amount of data per second, it doesnt matter if it is being sent to the ground or another satellite, once it is launched there is a hard cap on how much data can flow into/out of it in a given time and there is no way to improve that.

Free space laser communications are possible, but even then you are only talking about 10s of GB/s, and you cant add more lasers or receivers on a satellite already in orbit.

I dont really consider Phones to be general purpose computing device because they have always been very locked down, yes google is making android worse but it has pretty much always been a walled garden with a rusty but technically open back door.

I think the fact that microsoft started trying 14 years ago to push people away from standard executables and still has not made significant inroads tells you all you need to know there. Window’s fundamental value proposition is its backwards compatibility, Linux has no interest in locking things down even if it did it would be forked to a free version in hours. The only one where there might be a case there is on mac.

That’s already been tried though (google stadia) and it was a massive flop. There are limitations around latency that are hard physics based ones which wont be easily solved.

None of those exist or, as far I am aware, are being proposed for computers though? Yes there are some restrictions being brought in to block access to some content on the web (DRM, ID and age gating) which are shit, but I’ve heard nothing about using any of that to block access to general computing.

As much as people love doom mongering about big-tech coming for your PC, I just dont see it. There’s a temporary price spike in some components atm yes, but that will end when the AI bubble pops. Further than that I just dont see what people think is going to happen, outlawing linux? Banning the import of PC components? The amount of damage either of those would do to the economy is so huge It just wouldnt happen.

I don’t see how using terms correctly is doing “the devils work” if anything its a useful corrective to “chat bots do all the things” to explain to people that AI is an umbrella term that includes many things.