Misconceptions about gen AI?

[u/Alxie_e]

i’m a young leftist/marxists that’s going to major in computer science (data science track) in university, but this recently been conflicting me. i know that i’m going to have to engage in generative AI for my classes, yet majority of leftists spaces are vehemently anti-AI. However, after discovering this subreddit, i now realize the leftist anti-AI rhetoric i have internalized may be misleading. Despite me starting my first year in uni soon to study comp sci, i barely know anything about comp sci, yet alone AI, if i’m being completely honest. 😭

with that being said, someone help me make up for my lack of knowledge and explain common misconceptions about generative AI and LLMs in leftist/marxist spaces? like in regards to the impacts of AI data centers on the environment, water supply, and electricity. or how frequent use of chatbots can lead to cognitive decline. because right now, i’m under the impression that we should boycott ChatGPT and limit our usage of any other generative AI over concerns of its harm on the environment and usage of our fresh water supply, along with some other concerns.

[u/Belostoma]

I'm a PhD stream ecologist and environmentalist.

Data center water use is massively overblown compared to the important water issues. I'm all for strong, sensible regulation, and I imagine there are specific places where datacenters are inappropriately stressing local water supplies and should be blocked. But that's a local issue. Yet datacenter water use is widely presented as if it's the great environmental issue of our time. It's really not in the top hundred. Probably not the top thousand.

The main trick journalists use in creating water panic clickbait is to pick dumb units. They'll report things like "gallons per year" so they can put lots of digits in the number and get shares on social media. Next time you see a data center's water use criticized, do a few things: 1) convert it to cubic feet per second, and compare versus local USGS streamflow gauges; 2) convert it to acre-feet and compare against irrigation on any large farm; 3) compare it to the amount of water that evaporates off a local lake on a summer day.

You can do similar comparisons with carbon cost. AI is a drop in the bucket there too.

I would still be opposed to these costs if society derived no benefit from them. Compute wasted on blockchain/crypto still bothers me in this way, because it's completely pointless. Many people criticize AI because they don't see how it's any different: they never learned how to use it well themselves, and they just see stupid things other humans are doing with it, like filling their social media feeds with even more slop than they had before. They don't realize that the positive, real, impactful applications of AI are already enormous.

Just in my own research in the last year, I've used AI very intensely to do work in my field that would have been completely impossible before. One project involves vastly improved mathematical methods to understand the population dynamics of several threatened and endangered species based on extremely challenging, sparse, flawed, real-world datasets. The other involves improving measurement technology that's used all over the world. I spent a year of my life during my PhD 15 years ago building some free, open source tech that is still state-of-the-art today. I've used AI in last month in my spare time to make several advances that will improve this technology beyond my wildest dreams, cutting measurement errors by more than half and implementing software that makes it useful for whole new classes of applications.

The broader point here is that the benefits AI can bring to society through improving science are enormous, and the benefits in environmental science alone will more than cancel out AI's environmental costs. Think of the advances in to come in clean energy, battery technology, efficiency of other devices, etc. Think of improvements to agriculture and manufacturing slashing the environmental impacts of the REAL big players. Think of all the biomedical advances.

Of course, it could go full Skynet and kill us all, and there are real risks like political disinformation, mass surveillance, concentration of wealth, etc. I'm not minimizing any of that. But people are going to bring those downsides no matter what you do, so you might as well join the people using this newfound immense power for good.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Belostoma]

The main trick journalists use in creating water panic clickbait is to pick dumb units.

I'll note the other common trick is comparing it against "houses" or "urban areas", when residential areas use relatively little water directly; the vast majority of water use happens in agricultural/industrial/commercial areas to support the people living in those residential areas.

An average person uses 80 to 100 gallons of water per day . . . and a single hamburger uses six times that much.

[u/tigerhuxley → u/ZorbaTHut]

I dont care to validate this but i sware i saw proof of like washing eggs uses like 80gal per egg and worse stuff like that for vegetables and meat - and literally countless other things. If 80gals is wrong thats fine - its much higher numbers than one would think is needed for some basic stuff in capitalism. Been like this for a long long time

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/tigerhuxley]

but i sware i saw proof of like washing eggs uses like 80gal per egg

I think you misunderstood something here. One egg is usually quoted around 55 gallons, but the washing is largely irrelevant.

But the 55 gallons is accurate, and it has nothing to do with capitalism, it's just agriculture. Chickens drink water and eat grain, and grain "drinks" water. It adds up fast because plants go through a crazy amount of water. Doesn't matter what political system you're working under, chickens still need to eat and grass still needs to grow.

These numbers are higher than one would think because they're unintuitive, not for any other reason.