this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I wonder what the energy/environmental impact is vs a traditional search.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Completely terrible. An AI "search" takes as much electricity as hundreds to thousands of normal searches.

'AI" is TERRIBLE for climate change because they're increasing demand for electricity so much that they're keeping coal plants going that were even scheduled for decomissioning because they use A LOT of power.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I’ve been trying to find a search engine that doesn’t use AI for this very reason, but with little luck. Any suggestions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't DuckDuckGo not have AI?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Not to my understanding?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This can be resolved by building the data centers to cold countries like here in Finland. Servers are very good at converting electricity to heat, and the heat can be used to heat homes.

Microsoft Azure data center in Espoo is going to heat up 60% of the city's district heating network.

Also the electricity here in Finland is one of the cleanest, like in all Nordics (hydro, wind, nuclear)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

The electricity would be better spent on heat pumps. Computers convert 100% of their electricity into heat. Heat pumps convert 200-400% of their electricity into heat.

(I'm being lose with my wording for brevity's sake)