AI energy consumption: should we limit our AI usage to save the planet?
https://thepurposemachine.substack.com/p/ai-energy-consumption-should-we-limit
by ruudniewen
AI energy consumption: should we limit our AI usage to save the planet?
https://thepurposemachine.substack.com/p/ai-energy-consumption-should-we-limit
by ruudniewen
28 comments
Nah. Aren’t limiting anything else so may as well go full speed into the void
AI is not the big energy deal people claim it is. It’s mostly powered from clean energy.
All the flying people are doing post-covid is a much bigger issue.
We are locked into millions of years of ecological recovery from the damage already done. Accelerationism followed by collapse and restructuring is unbelievably, looking like the least harm option.
The speed of the change in atmospheric carbon and methane will do enough irreversible damage that talk about saving the planet and avoiding the worst of climate change is doing more harm than good. A technological moonshot or societal collapse leading to population reduction is the only attainable goal now, if we try to keep limping along with half assed climate goals we will only make everything worse with no hope of any positive technological outcome.
While we still have a global supply chain, max out development of carbon capture, plastic decomp, green construction methods and AI decision supports. Then if we collapse at least we gave ourself a chance before embracing human decline, because avoidance isn’t an option anymore.
Yes, we very much should, and it’s always depressing to see these comment sections because this is an issue where a subset of the supposedly climate aware just shut off their senses and say “well, other things are using energy, and I don’t want to stop” – the same excuse everyone gives for every other wasteful use
ChatGPT says yes
Non issue. The problem is and always will be the source of that power. A lot of AI is powered by green sources, hell, they are building their own nuclear power.
My contrarian view despite the alarming increase of energy usage is no.
Instead let’s use this opportunity to get online more clean energy and on top of that let’s push and get nuclear and SMR online commercially. SMR is much closer than it ever was.
Instead of limiting, let’s use this opportunity to transition and it might just be the tipping point (pun intended) to get legacy infrastructure on clean energy.
Yeah, but considering how badly we’ve dealt with climate change so far, I have little hope we will
These kinds of questions are pointless in 2025. We already know the answer to “should we” questions regarding curbing GHG emissions. It’s always yes. The questions now about these things need to be “how do we” and “will we” questions. While the former can generate some meaningful discussion, I think we already know the answer to the latter.
The Pandora’s box has been opened
There is no going back
Too much money to be made
Not at all. We should focus on clean and renewable energies. We WILL use much more energy worldwide moving forward. Unless if we revert to cavemen.
Ideally, using the AI to help us completely solve our energy and other issues would be the plan.
Instead, they’re going to build it and use it to remove labour costs from their companies and put people in poverty.
I used it for a few months but realized I was having to redo everything, not to mention i felt dumber. Cancelled my paid subscription and don’t really use it anymore. Just use my brain.
It would be nice if that ai wasn’t being thrown onto everything.
AI energy consumption is just icing on the cake.
It’s not really a core issue. Limiting AI won’t save the planet. It’ll only delay the tragedy from happening quicker.
The fundamental issue is how we produce our energy and over consumption to begin with.
AGI when implemented in advanced robotics will cause commodity prices to plummet (nearly free labor), making solar panels basically free…
Automated mining, refining, tooling, assembly, shipping… and it can build more of itself… which scales the rest faster. that’s what I’m hoping for.
At some point we run out of room for solar panels and we will need to do the math on launching them into space.
Assuming we don’t wipe ourselves out first. Gotta stay optimistic though
Is there any feasability to a personal limit on energy from the grid (with a ratio of the grid energy coming from fossil fules built into the equation) and a person can use/delegate/sell that energy anyway they want short of things like pollution or manufacturing meth of course? Its not like the world shouldnt have high energy AI processes, but we also shouldnt be increasing coal and oil burning so that we can AI to our hearts content.
Lots of people are opposed to AI so they have have leapt on this environmentalist critique as a winning argument. It’s important that we pick our arguments not based on whether they support our conclusion but on whether they make sense.
As someone who cares deeply about the environment, I’m a little tired of seeing this argument, so I have to speak straightforwardly. It is an extremely bad argument, based on flawed logic, dubious comparisons, and general ignorance of economics and energy production—and leads people to support proposals that would actually be worse for the environment.
The argument about relative efficiency is badly flawed. We now have people confidently claiming that AI queries require 100x more energy than Google searches, as if this comparison makes any sense at all. As a simple example, a ChatGPT query can generate a top ten list for an arbitrary subject. Or you could get a human to do it—over several hours, multiple Google searches, accessing multiple websites, compiling it in a word Processor, and using a monitor the whole time. This is at least 100x more energy than the ChatGPT search. This is to say nothing of the fact that LLM and generative-AI models will improve in efficiency, and indeed have already improved in efficiency by 100x *since that stupid argument was first made*.
Let us say for the sake of clarity of thought that there are some cases in which generative-AI is less efficient and some where it is more efficient, and the percentage of cases in which it is less efficient are somewhere between 0% and 100%. It is impossible to know this in advance in respect of all possible applications (including ones that no one has yet thought of), and any attempt at top-down regulation will necessarily introduce and enforce inefficiencies as a matter of law. The way to regulate efficiency of energy usage in this industry *as in every single industry* is to put the cost of negative externalities of energy usage *at the point of production*.
Focusing specifically on the energy usage of AI is stupid. You should focus on taxing energy production so that *all of our economy activity across all industries* is conducted efficiently. Micro-managing the use cases of new technology through top-down regulation makes absolutely no sense—and it is counterproductive, because you are likely to unintentionally prohibit usages that are more energy efficient.
Should we limit our AI usage to save the planet? This is totally the wrong question. “Should we limit our energy usage to save the planet?” is the question. The answer is yes, obviously—across the board, in the totality of all industries and human activity. We don’t do this by picking random scapegoats. We do it by properly taxing energy production.
Excuse me, we?
Wait till you find out how much energy a human researcher needs to process your inquiry.
ai needs to be 100% banned
Yes
Energy Consumption wouldn’t be a problem IF, we had viable large scale production of solar and wind. For now, that means no AI in the US for atleast 4 years.
Yes
I’ll bite. How much energy am I consuming to hit the token limit on ChatGPT GPT-4o?
The answer is obviously yes, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
We don’t have control over anything, the richs decide for us.
They want to play with AI by sacrificing many lives and destroying nature, so lives and nature must be sacrificed.
AI is our only possible hope of reversing climate change. People can’t fathom the possible impact of 100M Above PHD level agents that work 24/7. Let alone a ASI.
Use AI to overthrow the governments and build a utopian society…hopefully
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