To be fair, the article linked this idiotic one about OpenAI’s “thirsty” data centers, where they talk about water “consumption” of cooling cycles… which are typically closed-loop systems.
They are typically closed-loop for home computers. Datacenters are a different beast and a fair amount of open-loop systems seem to be in place.
But even then, is the water truly consumed? Does it get contaminated with something like the cooling water of a nuclear power plant? Or does the water just get warm and then either be pumped into a water body somewhere or ideally reused to heat homes?
There’s loads of problems with the energy consumption of AI, but I don’t think the water consumption is such a huge problem? Hopefully, anyway.
But even then, is the water truly consumed?
Yes. People and crops can’t drink steam.
Does it get contaminated with something like the cooling water of a nuclear power plant?
That’s not a thing in nuclear plants that are functioning correctly. Water that may be evaporated is kept from contact with fissile material, by design, to prevent regional contamination. Now, Cold War era nuclear jet airplanes were a different matter.
Or does the water just get warm and then either be pumped into a water body somewhere or ideally reused to heat homes?
A minority of datacenters use water in such a way Helsinki is the only one that comes to mind. This would be an excellent way of reducing the environmental impacts but requires investments that corporations are seldom willing to make.
There’s loads of problems with the energy consumption of AI, but I don’t think the water consumption is such a huge problem? Hopefully, anyway.
Unfortunately, it is. Primarily due to climate change. Water insecurity is an an issue of increasing importance and some companies, like Nestlé (fuck Nestlé) are accelerating it for profit. Of vital importance to human lives is getting ahead of the problem, rather than trying to fix it when it inevitably becomes a disaster and millions are dying from thirst.
Search for “water positive” commitment. You will quickly see it’s a “goal” thus it is consequently NOT the case. In some places where water is abundant it might not be a problem, where it’s scarce then it’s literally a choice made between crops to feed people and… compute cycles.
AI is the ultimate Enshitification of the world.
I love how ppl who don’t have a clue what AI is or how it works say dumb shit like this all the time.
There is no AI. It’s all shitty LLM’s. But keep sucking that techbro cheesy balls. They will never invite you to the table.
Honest question, but aren’t LLM’s a form of AI and thus…Maybe not AI as people expect, but still AI?
I also love making sweeping generalizations about a stranger’s knowledge on this forum. The smaller the data sample the better!
Maybe the digital world. We could always go back to living in the real world I guess.
Things easily could be better for the vast majority of us in the present day, but let’s not forget how shit we were in the past as well.
Hes gonna be the first one the ai kills and i look forward to it
There’s an alternate timeline where the non-profit side of the company won, Altman the Conman was booted and exposed, and OpenAI kept developing machine learning in a way that actually benefits actual use cases.
Cancer screenings approved by a doctor could be accurate enough to save so many lives and so much suffering through early detection.
Instead, Altman turned a promising technology into a meme stock with a product released too early to ever fix properly.
No, there isn’t really any such alternate timeline. Good honest causes are not profitable enough to survive against the startup scams. Even if the non-profit side won internally, OpenAI would just be left behind, funding would go to its competitors, and OpenAI would shut down. Unless you mean a radically different alternate timeline where our economic system is fundamentally different.
I mean wikipedia managed to do it. It just requires honest people to retain control long enough. I think it was allowed to happen in wikipedia’s case because the wealthiest/greediest people hadn’t caught on to the potential yet.
There’s probably an alternate timeline where wikipedia is a social network with paid verification by corporate interests who write articles about their own companies and state-funded accounts spreading conspiracy theories.
AI models can outmatch most oncologists and radiologists in recognition of early tumor stages in MRI and CT scans.
Further developing this strength could lead to earlier diagnosis with less-invasive methods saving not only countless live and prolonging the remaining quality life time for the individual but also save a shit ton of money.
That is a different kind of machine learning model, though.
You can’t just plug in your pathology images into their multimodal generative models, and expect it to pop out something usable.
And those image recognition models aren’t something OpenAI is currently working on, iirc.
Wasn’t it proven that AI was having amazing results, because it noticed the cancer screens had doctors signature at the bottom? Or did they make another run with signatures hidden?
Looks like it was a long game, and Altman didn’t just win, that fucker WON!
ALT-MAN? Holy shit!
