I mean, sure, fine, maybe they don’t, but goddamn, their lead in is atrocious:
The datacenter industry is set to emit 2.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide between now and the end of the decade, three times more than if generative AI had not been developed.
Yeah, and the automobile industry would produce significantly less if the car had never been invented.
I’m sorry for the snark. For some real numbers, in 2019, global air flight was just a hair under 1 billion. That is significantly higher than the emissions for datacenters. I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t be looking at the carbon footprint of data centers. What I’m saying is that if your lead in is “This is more because if we didn’t have it there would be less,” you don’t have a strong premise to stand on. That is poor journalism, and like the majority of other things I see related to AI, it’s there to get clicks, because AI is a hotbutton issue, and it’s easy to be on the side that rails against it.
I mean, sure, fine, maybe they don’t, but goddamn, their lead in is atrocious:
Yeah, and the automobile industry would produce significantly less if the car had never been invented.
I’m sorry for the snark. For some real numbers, in 2019, global air flight was just a hair under 1 billion. That is significantly higher than the emissions for datacenters. I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t be looking at the carbon footprint of data centers. What I’m saying is that if your lead in is “This is more because if we didn’t have it there would be less,” you don’t have a strong premise to stand on. That is poor journalism, and like the majority of other things I see related to AI, it’s there to get clicks, because AI is a hotbutton issue, and it’s easy to be on the side that rails against it.