Researchers Just Found Something Extremely Alarming About AI’s Power Usage

Experts are warning that we’re rolling out generative AI tools without a full grasp of their true environmental impacts.

“Ultimately, we found that the common understanding of AI’s energy consumption is full of holes,” MIT Technology Review wrote in a recent analysis.

While image generators used the equivalent of five seconds of microwave warming to generate a single 1,024 x 1,024 pixel image, video generators proved far more energy-intensive. To spit out a five-second clip, the researchers found that it takes the equivalent of running a microwave for over an hour. If they’re consuming far more power as the length increases, the math doesn’t look good.

Meanwhile, tech giants are investing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure buildouts, sometimes abandoning climate goals in the process. In its 2024 environmental impact report, Google admitted that it was woefully behind its ambitious plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, seeing a staggering 13 percent increase in carbon emissions year over year, in large part due to its embrace of generative AI.

Researchers Just Found Something Extremely Alarming About AI's Power Usage

The carbon footprint of generative AI-based tools that can turn text prompts into videos is far worse than we thought.

futurism.com

 

[Tall Timbers]

AI seems increasingly like a monster. Mankind would be much better off without it, I think. That's wishful thinking on my part. AI will increasingly become a part of our daily lives whether we like it or not.

 

[Andiamo]

AI will increasingly become a part of our daily lives whether we like it or not.

In the hospital papers they gave me to sign for my upcoming admittance, one section stated that my treatment may involve AI.
My trust is in the Lord.

 

[Tall Timbers]

In the hospital papers they gave me to sign for my upcoming admittance, one section stated that my treatment may involve AI.
My trust is in the Lord.

Wish they weren't so vague about that...

 

[Andiamo]

I will be getting a copy and when I do I will post that paragraph here for FYI.
Its funny how when you are needing surgery and all this stuff is in your paperwork to sign. As if you have a choice.

 

[Tall Timbers]

It would be interesting if after investing hundreds of billions on AI computing and data storage centers around the world, they're not able to successfully monetise it due to astronomical power costs.

 

[pixelpusher]

I will be getting a copy and when I do I will post that paragraph here for FYI.
Its funny how when you are needing surgery and all this stuff is in your paperwork to sign. As if you have a choice.

One of these days all the EULAs and other things we were coerced into having to be able to get along are gonna be null and void all of a sudden like.

 

[Margery]

I'm plowing thru this - YouTube -the prophecy roundtable livestream with Haller, Gillette, Garcia, Townsend and Wood on AI and Technocracy. Taking a break, I can't seem to concentrate enough- still too foggy

Also just finished listening to Haller and Mlenick - YouTube on the Gaza plan.

You know what they have in common- Technocrats ruling Gaza using AI and of course the rise of Technocracy, fueled by the AI Race- who gets to win the AI war - they get to control the planet.

And Jared Kushner. Yeah that one!

In short- the rise of the systems that the AC will use during the Trib.

 

[Margery]

At around the 30 minute mark Pete Garcia in that Rountable, brings up the military aspects of AI

and Patrick Wood chimed in with something that worries him.

Something about the NATO leaders, Prince Charles and Trump all having some type of concerns about how AI is impacting the military- the use of drones, the way that AI might be presenting a challenge in how warfare is conducted. Something about making coordinated changes in policy.

Might be a nothing burger, I haven't grasped all the details, and I'm only 30 minutes in but it's certainly interesting. Take me with a grain of salt today, I'm still pretty foggy.