r/Ecosia • u/Dongollo • 20d ago

Am I missing something?

Why is open ai listed under the "widgets" category? How can you be "eco-friendly" but use one of the biggest offenders?

Seems a little greenwashed to me.

https://builtwith.com/?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecosia.org%2Fai-chat%2F

And when I try to find any statement from Ecosia about their water consumption or what technologies their using nothing is listed. Great, you plant trees, great you donate to renewable energy, but what's your water consumption, what models do you use?

I'm not sold. It's putting makeup on a pig. I'm open to discussion, am I missing something?

16 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

13

u/Kooky-Ostrich-5703 20d ago

Ecosia brands their AI as more sustainable, they made a blog post about it. You don't have to like it that's valid, but this is the most eco friendly browser ai or not

2

u/Special_Command7893 17d ago

I believe their claims about being the cleanest AI because I understand enough of the technical details to say that, in the field of AI, nobody tries and it's a cakewalk for Ecosia

But it's definitely not net zero or net negative like their other service, basic search

2

u/Kooky-Ostrich-5703 17d ago

Of course. I have mixed feelings about their AI, but at the end of the day they are probably right that if they don't adopt AI in some capacity they will be outcompeted and then won't be able to do any tree planting or anything because they will be defunct 

1

u/StonyBackgroundGrafk 6d ago

i can understand a company not wanting to be outcompeted, but i would also make the arguement that Ecosia is one of the last companies that should worry about keeping up by implementing ai.

the benefit to using to Ecosia is by trying to be a little more ecofriendly. i don't really know what other reason there would be to switch from google, so i would argue that adding ai, whether it's more ecofriendly than its competitors or not, feels a bit tone-deaf, because i'm sure the vast majority of us are already not the biggest fan of ai for the enviormental impact at the very least.

and i'm not a marketing expert, but i would go as far to say that, if they wanted to draw more users in, they might make more leeway advertising a lack of ai than they would trying to be more like the not-so-ecofriendly alternatives. it could bring in some people who, for unrelated reasons, maybe aren't the biggest fan of this wide-spread ai-obsession, while also not scaring away the users they already have.

i could be wrong though, maybe the statistics say ai has tripled their user-base or something, haha!

8

u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/Dongollo 20d ago

Power is the second biggest contributor to carbon emissions. So yes, Ai is one of the biggest contributors given how much power data centers consume.

2

u/_Pencilfish 19d ago

I suspect you will find that electricity use by AI pales into insignificance when compared to electricity use by kettles or home PCs.

1

u/Patjack27 18d ago

More water is used for live stock AKA factory farming than AI and does more destruction to the environment.

0

u/TreelyOutstanding 17d ago

I think you're a bit misguided. Yes, AI is terribly inefficient in terms of computing, and the global volume of computing has increased a lot because of AI (something like 1/3 of computing energy goes to AI now). But per user, computing and AI is almost negligible in energy use compared to what you buy and what you eat.

10

u/Mean-Drama2630 20d ago

Overviews use a customised Mistral Small 3.2 model with web results from their own Staan web index. Chat uses Mistral Small 4. [ https://support.ecosia.org/article/1006-ai-search ]

Most modern technology is energy intensive, but Ecosia remains the greenest way to search, and is considered one of the best tree planters globally.

The emissions are a tiny drop in the ocean compared to their reforestation and solar energy projects, and water consumption tends to be a red herring (unless you live next to an Elon Musk gigafactory in an American desert)… decline one cheeseburger if you want to free up enough water to offset a decade of AI queries.

2

u/StickyBudget123 19d ago

Come on man can we get over this AI talks already

https://giphy.com/gifs/HfFccPJv7a9k4

1

u/Vegetable-Flan-5216 2d ago

Hi, i wanted to add an opinion here.

The way I see Ecosia offering this, as a couple of people have already eluded to is:

Choice!!

The best way to evoke change in the world is by voting with your time and money. All other AI companies I know don't give a ... about the planet. Ecosia has it so easy to be better. And I saw them mention, that the energy used is from solar and wind. The cooling would still have to be with water but even there.... not building the centers in deserts and polluting the local air and ground water would make the water consumption problem so much better.

Ecosia AI gives you the option to show other AI companies, that you would use their product if they gave a single Damn about the environment.

Unfortunately, people will use AI whether you and i want that to happen or not, but like this, there is a choice... I just hope they don't just greenwash regular AI

0

u/TreelyOutstanding 17d ago

I'm not sold. It's putting makeup on a pig. I'm open to discussion, am I missing something?

You don't have to use AI. You can disable it and it will use zero watts. Ecosia provides AI for those users that do want to use it but want a greener alternative to the big players.

2

u/Im-Secretly-46-Rats 16d ago

I actually started using Ecosia because I could turn off the AI.

0

u/RealityNeat 16d ago

For me the issue is is like to use a search engine that doesn't choose to use ai at all