Yes, I've mostly stopped eating meat because of its environmental impact. I've also stopped flying, and buy most of my clothes second-hand. So of course it makes sense to also minimize AI use. We can easily do many things, and unlike animal products, AI tools like image generation are not embedded in millennia of culture.
FWIW, I have a hard time evaluating the validity of "A glass of cow’s milk costs weeks worth of the average AI user’s resource usage."
My back-of-the-envelope estimation, with total power and water consumed, ended up with a few un-resolvable factors.
First, what is "the average AI user"? Is that just people, or does it include businesses, militaries, the police and other government surveillance organizations, etc?
As specific points, does the data collection and AI analysis by both the NSA and McDonald's count as part of the average AI user’s resource usage?
The report says "A spam filter and an image generator are both forms of AI" so am I an AI user because I have a Bayesian filter built into my email client? Because if so, my minuscule power use is nothing like the what's needed for typical image generation, causing the overall average use to decrease.
Second, the wholesale prices I see for power, water, and milk, are all subsidized values, either from direct government subsidizes (like funding dams in the US southwest, or farm subsidizes) or from incomplete pricing (like the environmental impact of burning natural gas for AI). How do I even convert a hundredweight of milk for the wholesale price into the size of a glass? Or did you use the retail price of milk?
In other words, how did you end up with your conclusion?
Comments
Yes, I've mostly stopped eating meat because of its environmental impact. I've also stopped flying, and buy most of my clothes second-hand. So of course it makes sense to also minimize AI use. We can easily do many things, and unlike animal products, AI tools like image generation are not embedded in millennia of culture.
FWIW, I have a hard time evaluating the validity of "A glass of cow’s milk costs weeks worth of the average AI user’s resource usage."
My back-of-the-envelope estimation, with total power and water consumed, ended up with a few un-resolvable factors.
First, what is "the average AI user"? Is that just people, or does it include businesses, militaries, the police and other government surveillance organizations, etc?
As specific points, does the data collection and AI analysis by both the NSA and McDonald's count as part of the average AI user’s resource usage?
The report says "A spam filter and an image generator are both forms of AI" so am I an AI user because I have a Bayesian filter built into my email client? Because if so, my minuscule power use is nothing like the what's needed for typical image generation, causing the overall average use to decrease.
Second, the wholesale prices I see for power, water, and milk, are all subsidized values, either from direct government subsidizes (like funding dams in the US southwest, or farm subsidizes) or from incomplete pricing (like the environmental impact of burning natural gas for AI). How do I even convert a hundredweight of milk for the wholesale price into the size of a glass? Or did you use the retail price of milk?
In other words, how did you end up with your conclusion?