partial_accumen

Fiber is, for the most part, indigestible, your body can’t really break it down into simpler sugars that it can make use of.

And just for clarity, just because humans can’t break those down doesn’t mean the entire animal kingdom can’t. So its fiber to us, but usable carbs for lots of other creatures.

We can do this without anyone dying, as long as we all work together.

Have you met humanity? We don’t do “all work together”.

Lots of people will likely die if this goes forward. You’re okay with that? Are you okay with being one of the dead?

Its not rolling back the clock imo. We have already pulled out those resources. They are in our possession. We don’t need to mine fresh rare earth metals.

So if your policy goes into place, all extraction of rare earth materials stops at, lets say, midnight. We’ve got some spares on the shelf, but without replenishment, and knowing that replen will never come from virgin materials again, those components are horded.

With the global knowledge of this, industry and consumers rush to buy up remaining stock. In three months most electronics stores will be bare electronics. This includes mobile phone stores too. In about 2 months we’ll see new automobile supplies dry up because specific critical control modules simply can’t be built new anymore. Most cars on the road today will break, and simply be parked or scrapped because replacement parts are simply non-existent.

Existing deployed systems all over the world will start to break and not be fixed anymore. Simple things like digital signage at stores will break and remain dead or be ripped out altogether. Lines (queues) will be much longer as many kiosk driven activities now have to be done by humans. Think airport or train check in. Delays in post or package shipping will increase as transport infrastructure starts to break down.

Most of the western world will still have food for many months, but variety will decline dramatically. Anything delivered by aircraft will suddenly cost much MUCH more money because carriers will be trying to keep low hours on now (mostly) un-repairable aircraft.
New computers will start getting bigger again and slower again. Much of the benefits of these materials making computers smaller, faster, and require less electricity.

It will take probably a decade for your recycling program to come online at any scale that can replace what we have for supply chain right now. Even then, recycling can’t easily replace some of the materials as they are bonded chemically during time of manufacture so many lower cost semiconductors simply stop being made.

None of this speaks to the massive economic impact to the world where tens of millions of jobs start to disappear because the world they did relied on affordable devices which are now a premium priced item. Economic upheaval felt by this will make the tariff war we’re going through right now seem like an ideal fantasy.

It will be very eerie to watch our societies and technologies slowly crumble before our eyes and things that were considered near throwaways be now treasured relicts of the past of an age of abundance.

Thats the thing. Compute ENABLES all of that industry. Compute ENABLES all that residential energy usage. Compute ENABLES commercial businesses to operate.

Those sources are referring to direct energy usage, but isn’t accounting for indirect production enabled by that technology.

I agree with this, but this is why I asked you the second question in my original post to you. That question was “And all the services you consume that use these?”

So if you’re saying “yes” to that too, then you’re essentially wanting to roll the clock back to life back in 1940 or so. The consequences on human life will be devastating if we do that. It may be cutting the human population on Earth in half. A good chunk of what compute enables is human life.

I am not going to lie, i just don’t have the energy to put together all the research that has been done on the energy consumption of AI neural networks for you.

I did all that before i answered you because I wanted to make sure my thinking was accurate.

Total electricity (not energy, because energy is oil, gas, coal, etc, tool, just talking electricity here) used by all data centers in the USA for all computing is about 5% of the total USA electricity consumption. source.

They are consuming more energy than entire States in the USA use.

True, but I’m not sure what relevance that has. Lots and LOTS of industries use way WAY more electricity:

“The industrial sector accounts for 33% of all the electricity used in the world (the largest sector for energy consumption is residential housing, followed by commercial businesses). According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, in the United States, 77% of all industrial electricity goes to manufacturing, 12% to mining, 7% to construction, and 5% to agriculture. From the list of high energy consumption industries in manufacturing, chemicals account for 37%, followed by petroleum and coal products at 22%, paper and paper products at 11%, primary metals 8% and the remainder is made up of food, non-metallic metals and all other categories.”

source

Then theres cryptocurrency.

I’ll agree its a waste, but of the 4.4% used by ALL datacenters 1.5% of that is crypto.

AI, by itself, last year was about 1% of the 4.4%.

If you’re rationally focused on CO2 reduction, all of compute is a drop in the bucket compared to a number of heavy industries. Again, my numbers here was only about electricity, which does have CO2 concerns, but lots of those other industries use way more electricity in addition to other CO2 producing energy sources (like natural gas/coal/oil, etc).

So if your true goal and concern is CO2 reduction, your priorities should be going after the much bigger fish.

You don’t think nations in Africa or Asia use computers, electronics, telecommunications equipment, medical device for things like imaging or chemical analysis in their logistics or supply chains?

Ahh! I understand now! You didn’t read the thread you’re responding to where the OP said these metals shouldn’t be mined at all. You just jumped in and provided an answer for a question you didn’t understand, then you attack my response because of YOUR misunderstanding. You think you’re responding to a tariff question, and not the OPs position of climate change.

Please try to read what you’re replying to next time before you make yourself look foolish like this again.

A good improvement, but an important distinction from the headline alone:

This energy savings comes with a caveat. “It is sort of a best case because the 30 percent applies to the network stack or communication part of it,” Karsten explains. “If an application primarily does that, then it will see 30 percent improvement. If the application does a lot of other things and only occasionally uses the network, then the 30 percent will shrink to a smaller value.”

Otherwise, ya, hermit life FTW

It won’t be hermitage for us, it will likely be death from starvation and disease. Global supply chains, including those for food production and distribution required modern technology. If you’re going back to pre-computer world you have to roll the clock back for how much of a population the world was able to support. The first transistor was made in 1947, which is arguably the beginning of modern electronics (a few vacuum tube computers existed before this time).

World population a few years later in 1951 was 2,536,927,035. The world population today is 8,231,613,070. So your suggested change will kill off about 5,694,686,035. Even Marvel’s Thanos was only trying to kill off half of the population, and here you are suggesting Thanos wasn’t going far enough where you want about 70% of everyone dead.

To think either one of use would survive is hubris.

What you’re suggesting is “pennywise and pound foolish” if your goal is CO2 reduction. Semiconductors and Rare Earth metals are required for our best weapons against CO2 emissions, those being wind turbines and PV solar panels.

We are eroding our planet of its life by causing drastic changes to our climate, caused by burning up massive amounts of fossil fuels to power our “AI”.

Energy demands are far FAR larger than the minuscule (by comparison to other energy users) AI data center waste.

Not stopping now will only add more Co2 emissions to our planet’s atmosphere, which will increase global temperatures.

Fossil fuel lovers will back you 100% on reduction of semiconductors as it means a lock-in for electricity generation to mostly fossil fuels.

So no modern electronics or computers then? So back to maybe basic transistors at best? You’re cool with that?

Are you willing to give up all the products that need these? And all the services you consume that use these?

I understood it as power causes responsibility, and therefore, no power means no responsibility.

I agree with this.

If they’re just correlated, then there’s no way of knowing if no power is also correlated with no responsibility.

If you’re using that line of thought, then I’ll also agree with you that there would be strong correlation with “no power equals no responsibility”, but I’m not sure how that fact is helpful or moves us forward in a line of thinking. When someone cites the argument of “correlation vs causation” usually means “we can’t tell if its actually causation. Its possible its just correlation”. Yet here we agree it is unambiguously causation. Your first sentence in this post encapsulate this perfectly.

“I understood it as power causes responsibility”. cause = causation

This is why I was confused with your citation of the “correlation vs causation” argument.

I’ve seen the same thing in some people over 60. The ones that don’t do this are the ones that continue to embrace new ideas, read, travel to experience other cultures, and learn/speak additional languages.

I don’t know if there is a magic formula to avoid the fate you’re describing. I’m doing what I’m seeing those that don’t fall into that trap do.

…and even those are likely pre-ElonSeigHeil purchases.

I’m not seeing a correlation only argument here. Where would there be correlation without causation with what I’ve posted?

The “give away” requires a request. I think Florida would simply like to look at everything private without having to ask.

I always thought the bigger miss of the common phrase is this: If “With great power comes great responsibility” then the converse must also be true “With NO POWER comes NO responsibility”. The level of responsibility must scale in direct proportion to the amount of power you have. If your boss is blaming you for something you have little to no control over, then it isn’t your responsibility, and you deserve no blame.

Your manager saying “You need to find someone to cover your shift” would then be bullshit. Unless you have the power to hire additional staff, allow for allowed time off for regular life events, or increase the pay of staff to make others more readily want to take the shift, I don’t see enough power for it to be your responsibility.

I have no problem with the work these scientists are doing establishing the basic research and proving the principal works. Basic research is the foundation that leads to future large scale projects. However, at this time we are a long LONG way from any large scale practical application of this. The amount of power generated is very VERY small, and that assumes everything goes perfectly.

In a real rain storm dirt could easily block the tubes cutting off the effect and stopping power generation, as an example. This doesn’t mean the underlying principal is flawed, but more work will have to be done to make a practical application out of this, now proven, principal.