Notices by Gerry McGovern (gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green), page 2

"You might ask how AI generates something so completely bananas. It’s because AI can’t tell the difference between true and false. Instead, a complex computer program plays probabilistic language guessing games, betting on what words are most likely to follow other words. If an AI program hasn’t been trained on a subject — unusual last names, for instance — it can conjure up authoritative-seeming but false verbiage."

https://kansasreflector.com/2024/06/22/artificial-intelligence-has-spread-lies-about-my-good-name-and-im-here-to-settle-the-score/

Spurred by an increasing number of power-hungry data centers, the keepers of the electric grid in Northern Virginia are embarking on an ambitious, multi-billion-dollar plan to bring more electricity.
“This is impacting the entire region, and all because of Loudoun and Prince William counties approving data centers,” said Karen Sheehan, director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County. She noted that ratepayers across the region will pay for the improvements.

https://protectpwc.org/2023/08/30/prince-william-times-data-center-driven-power-crunch-prompts-planning-for-new-high-voltage-lines/

What good is AI if you don't have a planet to use it on?

Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report on Wednesday, and it's mostly bad news. Last year, Microsoft's emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI."

https://au.pcmag.com/news/105283/microsofts-emissions-spike-29-as-ai-gobbles-up-resources

The Great Lying Machine is eating our environment and spewing out toxic misinformation. Big Tech has become a clear and present danger to all our futures.

Data colonialism

U.S tech giants are building dozens of data centers in Chile. Locals are fighting back. Multiple groups are working to keep Amazon, Google, and Microsoft from doubling the number of centers in the country, fearing environmental devastation.

“It’s turned into extractivism,” said Tania Rodríguez, a member of the Socio Environmental Community Movement for Land and Water (Mosacat), an activist organization. “We end up being everybody’s backyard.”

https://restofworld.org/2024/data-centers-environmental-issues/

"Tiehm’s buckwheat is a rare wildflower that lives on one site in Esmeralda County. The proposed Rhyolite Ridge Lithium Mine would destroy its habitat and surround it with an industrial open-pit mining operation. Experts will discuss how this would irrevocably degrade the flower’s habitat and lead it to likely extinction, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Reports on dust deposition, pit wall stability and hydrology will be presented."
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/press-conference-monday-highlights-plant-extinction-indigenous-concerns-of-rhyolite-ridge-mine-2024-05-30/

The Silent Spring has become The Silent Summer, The Silent Autumn, The Silent Winter. Under the guise of the Green Transition, Big Tech and Big Mining are coming for the Last of Biodiversity, the Last of the Indigenous, keen to finish the job their imperialist great grandfathers started. The only thing more dangerous than an imperialist is a righteous imperialist.

"As open pits continue to spread in the African continent as a result of large scale lithium mining activities, a coalition of Non Governmental Organizations has commenced campaign for consideration and adequate protection of host communities."
https://independent.ng/lithium-mining-group-moves-to-protect-host-communities-against-adverse-effects/

We're here for the lithium to build our bright green clean, sustainable, renewable future. We're so sorry you have to die so that we can live in disposable luxury.

Since 1970, there has been a:

49% decline in marine life

50% decline in insects

66% decline in wildlife

69% decline in vertebrates

83% decline in freshwater species

Birds: 60% decline in Ireland in 50 years

Lions: 90% decline in Ghana in 40 years

Forest elephant: 60% decline in 12 years

Leatherback turtle: 95% decline in 20 years

SEI whale: 50% decline in 20 years (47 left)

Earthworms: 33% decline in UK in 20 years

Mammals:

3% wildlife

97% humans and livestock

Is this progress?

‘Climate capitalism’ can help scale green solutions, new book says

"Some people say that the title of your book is an oxymoron — that, in a sense, capitalism is the root cause of the rapid growth of industrialization."

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/climate-capitalism-can-help-scale-green-solutions-new-book-says

When Big Tech is challenged on its energy, material and water use, it's response is always that its working on being more efficient, finding ways to keep growing but in a "greener" way.

We must challenge the Growth Death Cult.

Our environment simply cannot cope with this incessant growth of data, data centers, servers, chips, smartphones, laptops, earbuds.

There is no infinite growth on a finite planet. Driven by Big Tech, we have already bust past multiple boundaries.

It's not sustainable.

Making public officials promise that if any taxpayers file official requests for information, Google will be the first to know, this is how our democracy is stolen. Every day, we sell our democracy and basic rights to Big Tech for convenience, “cheap” data storage, some always-on entertainment and a few “free” services. We sell ourselves and our environment so cheap.

"ChatGPT consumes a lot of energy in the process, up to 25 times more than a Google search. Additionally, a lot of water is also used in cooling for the servers that run all that software. Per conversation of about 20 to 50 queries, half a litre of water evaporates – a small bottle, in other words."

AI is predicted to consume twice as much energy as the whole of France by 2030

Training GPT3, took 1,287 MWh (Megawatt hours) of electricity.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/world-all-news/1042696/chatgpt-consumes-25-times-more-energy-than-google

Since 1970, humans have pumped so much groundwater, we’ve altered the Earth’s tilt. “It is, in a way, mind boggling,” the researchers who discovered the tilt, stated. Humans are causing so much polar ice to melt that we are changing time. We are slowing the Earth’s rotation and may have to subtract a leap second very soon.

https://www.science.org/content/article/humanity-s-groundwater-pumping-has-altered-earth-s-tilt

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-is-slowing-the-earths-rotation/

"The British Crown and other colonial states relied on racist concepts like the Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius, known as the unowned lands doctrine, to seize Indigenous lands and ignore or subvert the laws and institutions through which Indigenous Peoples had successfully managed these territories. The consequence has been cultural loss, alienation, impoverishment, conflict and environmental degradation."

https://theconversation.com/historic-haida-nation-agreement-shows-the-world-how-to-uphold-indigenous-rights-229447

@dgavin
In 2024, China Water Risk estimated that China's data centers would use about 1.3 trillion liters of water annually, which is sufficient for 26 million people's residential needs. The amount would surpass 3 trillion liters a year by 2030.

That's a lot of water, and data center water use is growing exponentially.
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/303669/20240417/ai-data-centers-strain-chinas-water-supply-claims-new-study.htm

@paninid @aral

Accused: "Your honor, it would be impossible for me the live at the standard I have become accustomed to were I not to rob banks."

Judge: "That sounds like a reasonable defense."

“It would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.”
OpenAI

What we criminalize in individual behavior, we call "innovation" when it comes to Big Tech. The whole system is bought and owned by Big Tech.

"As AI’s influence on society grows, questions arise about its impact on greenhouse-gas emissions: will its myriad applications help to reduce the world’s carbon footprint or hinder climate progress? The answer will depend on how AI models are developed and operated, and what changes result from their use. And scientists simply don’t know how all that will pan out — a worrying situation when there is so much at stake."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01137-x

Is science asleep at the wheel when it comes to AI?

AI cannot exist without stealing

“The only practical way for these tools to exist is if they can be trained on massive amounts of data without having to license that data,” Sy Damle, a lawyer who represents Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said of A.I. models last year in a public discussion about copyright law. “The data needed is so massive that even collective licensing really can’t work.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i00.8P1o.ArdmHhNbUNbm&smid=url-share

In a city called The Dalles, in Oregon, USA, local people were worried that Google’s water use was soaring. As is so often the case, the city officials, who had given Google hundreds of millions in tax breaks, had no intention of letting anyone know how much water Google was using. It was up to a local paper, The Oregonian, to try and find out. They were forced to bring a case to court. City officials were ordered by Google to claim that Google’s use of scarce public water was a “trade secret”.

AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning.

AI will make bitcoin's environmental devastation look like a picnic.

"If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day, the IEA says, the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt-hours a year — the amount consumed by about 1.5 million European Union residents."

https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/3/28/24111721/ai-uses-a-lot-of-energy-experts-expect-it-to-double-in-just-a-few-years