Save The Planet
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In moderate climates in the US, peak loads are typically the hottest and sunniest hours of the day since condenser units are the most energy-hungry appliance in most homes. Clouds notwithstanding, peak solar generation would typically align (or closely align) with peak load time.
Batteries would also help a lot - they should definitely be subsidizing the installation of those as well but unfortunately they aren't yet (at least not in my state).
This is incorrect. Look up the “duck curve” or if you prefer real-world examples look at the California electricity market (CAISO) where they have an excellent “net demand curve” that illustrates the problem.
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Nah dawg im pretty sure the most used product this century is food.
the most used product of this century is actually your momma
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Which is why the "let them work correctly" part. It gets completely botched over and over again
Please explain what you mean by "letting them [prices?] work correctly".
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1 prompt is avg 1Wh of electricity -> typical AC runs avg 1,500 W = 2.4 seconds of AC per prompt.
Energy capacity is really not a problem first world countries should face. We have this solved and you're just taking the bait of blaming normal dudes using miniscule amounts of power while billionaires fly private jets for afternoon getaways.
A lot of things are solved, but capitalism means that we need a profit motive to act. World hunger is another good example. We know how to make fertilizer and how to genetically alter crops to ensure we never have a crop failure. We have trains and refrigeration to take food anywhere we want. Pretty much any box that we need to check to solve this problem has been. The places that have food problems largely have to do with poverty, which at this point is a polite way to say "I won't make money, so I am okay with them starving"
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Man, this is one I've tried to wrestle with multiple times. I feel like there are monumental benefits to trans-Atlantic/trans-Pacific recreational flights (really just most long international flights). Banning those would almost certainly increase feelings of isolation, and probably make the already-rampant xenophobia plaguing the world even worse. There really aren't viable alternatives to flying for getting across a multi-thousand-mile-wide ocean - boats are too slow for the average person, and building trains over the ocean is impractical. Maybe the focus should be on making planes more environmentally friendly, instead of outright banning them?
The thing is tourism does more damage than good, hence saying frig recreational flights. If people are determined to travel, make them sign up to educational holidays.
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Yes, yes you will. But you (and other people like you) running your AC contributes more power draw than the boogeyman AI does. The point is "limit your AC usage" is valid and saying "but but but AI!!!!" isn't.
No, it's totally valid to say "Limit the AI power wastage" because it's an insanely huge waste of energy. These motherfuckers are building nuclear reactors and running illegal methane gas turbine generators to power their bullshit-generating systems because they can't get enough juice from the existing power grid.
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Please explain what you mean by "letting them [prices?] work correctly".
For starters, how much it takes for thing A to be done - that's how high a price must be. So no such thing as "Sony (or was it some other company) just casually decided that games on this platform will cost more, because fuck you" or in your case: no such thing as lobbying drops down bill by 75% while also shifting resource providing (like water) to third parties
Next - visibility: whatever I get done for me, even if I do not pay exactly for that, I should still see the price. So no such thing as free requests to LLMs, which we know cost fuck ton of resources
Next - whatever I pay, even in taxes, I decide where that money goes. So no such thing as "income tax NN%, government decides to murder children half the globe (or just a country border) away, and you go work harder to make us more money to do exactly the same thing"
There also must be a heap of other problems I do not see, but I lack education and attention to get those on my own
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This is incorrect. Look up the “duck curve” or if you prefer real-world examples look at the California electricity market (CAISO) where they have an excellent “net demand curve” that illustrates the problem.
This curve has changed somewhat since this study in 2016. More efficient home insulation, remote working, and energy-efficient cooling systems have large impact in this pattern. But assuming you have a well-insulated home, setting your thermostat to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the day will shift this peak earlier and lower the peak load at sunset, when many people are returning home. More efficient heat pumps with variable pressure capabilities also helps this a lot, too.
Given just how many variables are involved, it's better to assume peak cooling load to be mid-day and work toward equalizing that curve, rather than reacting to transient patterns that are subject to changes in customer behavior. Solar installations are just one aspect of this mitigation strategy, along with energy storage, energy-efficient cooling systems, and more efficient insulation and solar heat gain mitigation strategies.
If we're discussing infrastructure improvements we might as well discuss home efficiency improvements as well.
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This curve has changed somewhat since this study in 2016. More efficient home insulation, remote working, and energy-efficient cooling systems have large impact in this pattern. But assuming you have a well-insulated home, setting your thermostat to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the day will shift this peak earlier and lower the peak load at sunset, when many people are returning home. More efficient heat pumps with variable pressure capabilities also helps this a lot, too.
Given just how many variables are involved, it's better to assume peak cooling load to be mid-day and work toward equalizing that curve, rather than reacting to transient patterns that are subject to changes in customer behavior. Solar installations are just one aspect of this mitigation strategy, along with energy storage, energy-efficient cooling systems, and more efficient insulation and solar heat gain mitigation strategies.
If we're discussing infrastructure improvements we might as well discuss home efficiency improvements as well.
Study or no study, you can see this problem in the real world https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook#section-net-demand-trend
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Let’s do the math.
Let’s take an SDXl porn model, with no 4-step speed augmentations, no hand written quantization/optimization schemes like svdquant, or anything, just an early, raw inefficient implementation:
So 2.5 seconds on an A100 for a single image. Let’s batch it (because that’s what’s done in production), and run it on the now popular H100 instead, and very conservatively assume 1.5 seconds per single image (though it’s likely much faster).
That’s on a 700W SXM Nvidia H100. Usually in a server box with 7 others, so let’s say 1000W including its share of the CPU and everything else. Let’s say 1400W for networking, idle time, whatever else is going on.
That’s 2 kJ, or 0.6 watt hours.
…Or about the energy of browsing Lemmy for 30-60 seconds. And again, this is an high estimate, but also a fraction of a second of usage for a home AC system.
…So yeah, booby pictures take very little energy, and the usage is going down dramatically.
Training light, open models like Deepseek or Qwen or SDXL takes very little energy, as does running them. The GPU farms they use are tiny, and dwarfed by something like an aluminum plant.
What slurps energy is AI Bros like Musk or Altman trying to brute force their way to a decent model by scaling out instead of increasing efficiency, and mostly they’re blowing that out of proportion to try the hype the market and convince them AI will be expensive and grow infinitely (so people will give them money).
That isn’t going to work very long. Small on-device models are going to be too cheap to compete.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kc978dg
So this is shit, they should be turning off AI farms too, but your porn images are a drop in the bucket compared to AC costs.
TL;DR: There are a bazillion things to flame AI Bros about, but inference for small models (like porn models) is objectively not one of them.
The problem is billionaires.
I'm really OOTL when it comes to AI GHG impact. How is it any worse than crypto farms, or streaming services?
How do their outputs stack up to traditional emitters like Ag and industry? I need a measuring stick
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79 is like my ideal temp. Cities must love me.
I continuously have to remind myself that Fahrenheit is a thing so I don't get a panic attack when I read comments like yours.
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Your HA dashboard derailed this conversation for me. lol.
I would love to know more about the equipment you are using to push this info into your HA.
I'll write up a post now in [email protected]
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Study or no study, you can see this problem in the real world https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook#section-net-demand-trend
Ok now go just one step further and ask yourself what variables factor into this.
There's a reason that pattern exists, and it isn't because solar and cooling hours don't align.
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No, it's totally valid to say "Limit the AI power wastage" because it's an insanely huge waste of energy. These motherfuckers are building nuclear reactors and running illegal methane gas turbine generators to power their bullshit-generating systems because they can't get enough juice from the existing power grid.
Yes, it is valid to say "limit AI usage", that's not what this conversation is about. It is about people saying "I don't need to limit AC because AI uses so much so why should I bother".
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nobody wanted according to whom? It's literally the most used product of this century stop deluding yourself.
All datacenters in the world combined use like 5% of our energy now and the value we get from computing far outweighs any spending we have here. You're better off not buying more trash from Temu rather than complain about software using electricity. This is ridiculous.
People hate AI so much (for many good reasons!) that they can't see or accept the truth: many many people want to use it, not just "billionaires"
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Yeah, that thing that nobody wanted? Everybody has to have it. Fuck corporations and capitalism.
Just like screens in cars, and MASSIVE trucks. We don't want this. Well, some dumbass Americans do, but intelligent people don't need a 32 ton 6 wheel drive pickup to haul jr to soccer.
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nobody wanted according to whom? It's literally the most used product of this century stop deluding yourself.
All datacenters in the world combined use like 5% of our energy now and the value we get from computing far outweighs any spending we have here. You're better off not buying more trash from Temu rather than complain about software using electricity. This is ridiculous.
Where are you getting your false information. Its certainly not the most used. And, the reason it's used at all is from advertising and ownership of the media by the billionaire class to shove the gibbity in our faces at every waking moment so people use it. They're losing money like never before on ai.
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AI without demand but also destroying the planet. Typical complex line of thought on the Internet.
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...but kittens with 5 tits!
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The thing is tourism does more damage than good, hence saying frig recreational flights. If people are determined to travel, make them sign up to educational holidays.
Do you think "having tourism" would do more damage than "not having tourism"? Because that's what we're really comparing here. Tourism may be a net negative, but if the absence of tourism is a bigger net negative, well, I'd argue that "having tourism" is the better option.
Obviously making tourism into a net positive should be the goal, but that's a whole different discussion (which your idea of "educational holidays" probably fits into). But I don't think we get there with a blanket ban on most forms of air travel. Not to mention, making air travel more efficient/greener would have huge ripple effects across multiple industries. That seems like a no-brainer approach to me, at least in the long term.
