I don’t know about the carbon emissions, the water thing in the article is extremely misleading. It claims that AI is using up more water than the entire yearly consumption of bottled water. The water usage estimates include the water used to cool the power plants generating the power (running the data center).

The last study on this said that the actual usage of water in the data centers is 12% of the total water usage estimate. Data centers don’t normally use that much water. It would be like Niagra Falls pouring water over every data center.

Simple reality check: If you look at the cooling system outside any given data center—if they’re using as much water as d article suggests—they’d be emitting a massive cloud of water, 24/7. It would be so much, they’d need a cooling tower on par with a nuclear power station.

So what’s with the statistic? If you look at any given power plant on Google Maps you’ll see cooling ponds all around it. That’s the water they’re talking about. It’s part of the build of the power plant. It’s not using potable water that would be going into people’s houses.

Having said that, 12% of the water usage is potable water—in the worst-case data center/power plant matchup scenario. Where you have an older data center that doesn’t use modern closed loop cooling systems that don’t lose as much water to evaporation. I don’t know what the statistic is, but I can sure you it’s a lot better than 12%. A wild guess would be 4-6%.

Background: I was a security consultant for many years and traveled all over the US going into many data centers (sometimes, by breaking in! Hah). Inside, they’re loud AF (think: standing next to a jet engine) and outside they’ll have some big ass cooling units that are also kinda loud but not as loud as some of these articles make them out to be.

That was about 7 years ago but I doubt much has changed since then. I guarantee that those data centers are still being used and have been renovated to support AI-style hardware. The power from the utility was just increased and more cooling units were added. I seriously doubt they did much more than that.

From what I’ve read about the new “giga scale” data centers, they’re much more efficient (and quieter… Outside). Those are the ones we want. If we replaced all the old stuff with new stuff, the statistics in articles like this would drop by and order of magnitude (just a guess).

Historians of the future will mark this event as the beginning of the end of civilization.

Regulate data centers already! Make it mandatory that they be self-powered by renewable energy. Problem solved.

We learned this lesson in the 90s: If you put something on the (public) Internet, assume it will be scraped (and copied and used in various ways without your consent). If you don’t want that, don’t put it on the Internet.

There’s all sorts of clever things you can do to prevent scraping but none of them are 100% effective and all have negative tradeoffs.

For reference, the big AI players aren’t scraping the Internet to train their LLMs anymore. That creates too many problems, not the least of which is making yourself vulnerable to poisoning. If an AI is scraping your content at this point it’s either amateurs or they’re just indexing it like Google would (or both) so the AI knows where to find it without having to rely on 3rd parties like Google.

Remember: Scraping the Internet is everyone’s right. Trying to stop it is futile and only benefits the biggest of the big search engines/companies.

Well they didn’t cause an accident which is better than many drivers 🤷

It’s not a shame. Have you tried this? Try it now! It only takes a minute.

Test a bunch of images against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Ask it if the image was AI-generated. I think you’ll be surprised.

Gemini is the current king of that sort of image analysis but the others should do well too.

What do you think the experts use? LOL! They’re going to run an image through the same exact process that the chatbots would use plus some additional steps if they didn’t find anything obvious on the first pass.

I don’t think it’s irresponsible to suggest to readers that they can use an AI chatbot to examine any given image to see if it was AI-generated. Even the lowest-performing multi-model chatbots (e.g. Grok and ChatGPT) can do that pretty effectively.

Also: Why stop at one? Try a whole bunch! Especially if you’re a reporter working for the BBC!

It’s not like they give an answer, “yes: Definitely fake” or “no: Definitely real.” They will analyze the image and give you some information about it such as tell-tale signs that an image could have been faked.

But why speculate? Try it right fucking now: Ask ChatGPT or Gemini (the current king at such things BTW… For the next month at least hahaha) if any given image is fake. It only takes a minute or two to test it out with a bunch of images!

Then come back and tell us that’s irresponsible with some screenshots demonstrating why.

Or like isn’t the UK the most surveiled country with their camera system?

Ahahah! That’s a good one!

You think all those cameras are accessible to everyone or even the municipal authorities? Think again!

All those cameras are mostly useless—even for law enforcement (the only ones with access). It’s not like anyone is watching them in real time and the recordings—if they even have any—are like any IT request: Open a ticket and wait. How long? I have no idea.

Try it: If you live in the UK, find some camera in a public location and call the police to ask them, “is there an accident at (location camera is directly pointing at)?”

They will ask you all sorts of questions before answering you (just tell them you heard it through the grapevine or something) but ultimately, they will send someone out to investigate because accessing the camera is too much of a pain in the ass.

It’s the same situation here in the US. I know because the UK uses the same damned cameras and recording tech. It sucks! They’re always looking for ways to make it easier to use and every rollout of new software actually makes it harder and more complicated!

How easy is the ticket system at your work? Now throw in dozens of extra government-mandated fields 🤣

Never forget: The UK invented bureaucracy and needles paperwork!

What model? I highly recommend trying AnimePro Flux in ComfyUI. It generates really great images in just six steps which is like 8 seconds for a 768x768 image on my 4060 TI 16GB. It’d be even faster on your 3080.

Why’d you give up on local image generation? With FLUX-based models and tools like ComfyUI, it’s actually better than what you get with cloud-based services. You have a lot more control, and the wide availability of LoRAs makes it much more fun/useful, IMHO.

Having said that, if you don’t have a modem GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM, it’s not going to be a great experience. 16GB is preferable.

My great wish is for there to be affordable, fast GPUs with at least 32GB of VRAM. That would be enough to play a modern AAA game while also running other AI workloads at the same time (e.g. as a secondary aspect of the game).

I have two really fantastic game ideas that can’t really exist without the average gamer having access to that level of hardware. Not for fancy graphics; for the AI possibilities 😁

I hope the SCOTUS justices aren’t using 3-strikes-you’re-out ISPs! All it would take is three random DMCA takedown notices and they’d lose Internet.

Democrats: “Pay transparency laws increase pay for workers across the board!”

Republicans: “YES! Exactly! Finally we agree on something! This is why we fought so hard to block them!”

You jest, but if conservatives have their way, you’ll soon have to verify your ID by uploading a video every time you visit the site (if not logged in). Even for non-adult content!

Because the reason for the ID isn’t to “protect the children” or anything like that. It’s about control. Conservatives want the power to decide what people get to see and ID verification systems are just a small part of that.

So… just like on Earth, the majority of the universe is full of wimps! And Black Holes are the universe’s version of, “suck it up, buttercup!”

New maximum age to run for office just dropped: 66

I’m in the camp of, “if it’s good, why should I care?” However, I’m all for transparency! Passing off AI-generated music as human-generated is fraud. Be honest!

There’s a LOT of grey areas though. If you’re a vocalist and you’re using an AI-generated background? How’s that any different from pressing “play” on a sequencer or even an audio file (of some sequenced or drum track)?

If you’re a lyricist, the actual music isn’t as important as the lyrics. Does it matter if they used AI to generate the music or should every lyricist be forced to pay someone to make the music for them or master an instrument (or sequencer)?

What if you’re trying to translate your music into a different language and use AI to translate it? Is that AI-generated music? You can give your whole damned song to AI and it’ll convert to a different language in-place without having to re-record it. It even uses your singer’s voice!

To me, it’s incredible technology and it’s enabling artists of all kinds to do cool things with their music. It seems rather paternalistic to suggest someone’s creativity doesn’t “count” if they didn’t sweat or spend years practicing to create it.

Yep! There’s really only ONE operating system that doesn’t do rsync over SSH. Can you guess which one? 😁

BTW: FolderSync does it on Android for free… https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.tacit.android.foldersync.lite (only OK-ish GUI but it works).

What should be illegal is patents like this!

I just use rsync over ssh via a cron job 🤷

It’s been working fine for over 20 years on all my various PCs.

It created a lot of jobs. It just didn’t get the usual network effects of having a lot of people employed because they were all incentivized to stay working at these big tech firms.

The solution is to make it easier for said tech employees to form their own tech startups using local talent. That way they’re likely to break away from US tech and forge their own paths.

I don’t know what the situation in Ireland is for starting such business but clearly it isn’t in great shape. The government obviously focused on the big players at the expense of the small (local) ones.