>mar. 02 juin 2026 at 08:13, Pjotr Prins <[email protected]> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I think the environmental statement is the weakest part of GCD008, or
> at least the most exaggerated. There is no denying that *current* AI
> deployments are energy intensive and dirty - just like coal was in the
> 19th century driving the industry revolution - but that is simply due
> to stupidity and, in part, to the early days of the success of
> transformers and based on the simplistic idea that bigger data centers
> lead to better models. This is already proving not to be true because
> of the flattening out of model performance. And whatever way you look
> at it, it is peanuts compared with other emissions. In the larger
> sense, CO2-wise we live in the age of crazy.
In case someone is seeking for a few figures about what exactly we’re
talking about here, there is a lot of currently ongoing research on
the topic. Take for example:
https://scholar.social/@wim_v12e/116651846550896918
Equivalent references as research publications are easy to find, with
similar conclusions.
Then, to get a more accurate idea of the impact of this recent
technology on the world where our descendants are expected to live in
a close future, consider that: "France has 17 operational nuclear
plants [...] providing 61GW of capacity" [0]. Projections expect a
yearly ~ 10% rise in data center power consumption, expecting ~ 2 GW by
2033 [1].
C.
ps. I’m not mentioning here heat increase, CO2 emissions or water
consumption, among others.
[0]:
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/france-ai-data-center-build-out-emmanuel-macron/
[1]:
https://www.cleanbridge.co/insights/energy-transition/cleanbridge-global-data-center-market-report-2025/regional-market-overviews-gdc2025/france-gdc2025/
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