Global warming appears to have shifted into a faster gear. After removing the effects of El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycles, researchers found that the planet has warmed at roughly 0.35°C per decade over the past ten years, compared with just under 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015. The acceleration, which becomes visible around 2013 to 2015, appeared across five major global temperature datasets with more than 98% statistical certainty.
Hmm I wonder if it might have anything to do with all the data centres popping up everywhere??
But AI will fix it though!!! /s
Honestly, AI is a very cool technology. I work it in and I love it, but it’s amazingly disappointing that instead of building models up fold proteins and advance humanity, we built propaganda bots, surveillance and people outsource their intelligence.
And we could have invested heavily into more efficient competing, but instead we just burn the world.
Scientists were already ringing the alarm, and the corporate overlords answered with more data centers! Surely AGI will figure it out!
wouldn’t it be funny if agi will be achieved and the only solution it finds against global warming is shutting down all AI?!
I wouldn’t say that they have that much effect yet.
Yeah, there’s localized effects. Like where I live, particulate matter and ozone skyrocketed after they installed a massive gas-powered datacenter in the neighboring town. But globally, it takes forever for these effects to pile up and cause a dent. Which is why they are measured in average increase per decade.
They have the effect of massively increasing our energy consumption at a time when we desperately need to cut down on it. Just to mention one thing in the slew of disastrous things this AI bubble is causing to our ability to just do the bare minimal to counter our climate disaster.