Comment on 6 Tips for Finding Cheap Hardware for Self-Hosting | Hardware Haven
foxymochakitten@slrpnk.net 3 weeks agothank you for being honest about it but please remember that each and every AI query is absolutely devastating to the environment!! It’s pretty easy to just type up a quick summary (or let someone else do it) rather than do that damage
45o3b@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
That is not accurate. My AI query used far less energy than the average gamer uses in a minute of gameplay.
I’m not a gamer, but I’m curious – do you hold the same attitude towards video games?
foxymochakitten@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
No, but it’s not the energy use I’m talking about (though I’ll do some research on video games now, there’s always more for me to learn!) - I’m referring to the water usage. The average ChatGPT session (with multiple queries) is the equivalent of destroying roughly a bottle of water. But if we are thinking about power, data centers also run diesel powered generators when there’s a high demand for queries which spew out pollution. And then its worth considering that each data center as a whole is pretty awful, and if there were less demand for them, i.e. people not using genAI, the CEOs would be motivated to make them less shitty… every query shows them that, yeah, this IS a great idea and they should build more data centers :/
I don’t mean to like make you feel bad for making a quick tl;dr using AI, it’s just that this is pretty important to me! We all have to pick and choose our battles, but of all the things we do in our day-to-day lives that impact the environment and the world around us, typing up our own summary instead of using AI seems like a really easy option to me.
The usage of commercial AI’s hosted in data centers encourages the growth of that industry with the construction of more data centers, which are hazardous to the populations that live around them, encourage pretty severe water waste in areas with already dwindling groundwater, and collectively use a tremendous amount of particularly polluting electricity since the local grids cannot adequately supply them, meaning many resort to using inefficient portable power generation on-site, and in many cases is causing energy prices to spike.
While I personally think that AI use is virtually always detrimental (since there is growing evidence that AI usage appears to cause people to atrophy their critical thinking skills, and many deferring to incorrect answers), for those that still insist on using it, using a self-hosted local LLM is the most ethical option, as it does not encourage the construction of more data centers, and avoids feeding multinational fascist corporations with more data.