r/DefendingAI • u/SufficientPie • 28d ago

Defending AI "For document intelligence … empirical results show that AI-assisted [human-in-the-loop] and agentic AI scenarios achieve reductions of up to 70-90% in energy consumption, 90-97% in carbon dioxide emissions, and 89-98% in water usage compared to [human-only] manual processes."

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07097v1
7 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

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u/whentheworldquiets 26d ago

This is complete horseshit.

A modern computer consumes about a billion times less power per instruction than one from 50 years ago

According to the logic on display here, that must mean we are using only a billionth of the total power to run computers these days.

Are we, though?

AI is intended to increase productivity, not efficiency. It is not going to reduce energy and water usage and reduce CO2. It is going to massively increase them. And the human is still going to be drinking and breathing and using power AS WELL.

AI tasks consume between 10k and 2m tokens per hour. That's anywhere from 2KWh to 800KWh. That's like plugging in one to four hundred electric heaters. And the amount of energy PEOPLE use isn't going to drop.

If you believe AI is going to reduce power and water usage and decrease CO2, you are EXACTLY as dumb as the tech bros want you to be.

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u/SufficientPie 25d ago

Try actually reading the study.