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-58

AI helps lighten the load on the electric grid – without skimping on people’s energy use. (theconversation.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Does the sheer amount of claims that boil down to "chrust us" in this text feel fishy for anyone else? They claimed a lot of stuff, but the only thing resembling a description on how the system works boils down to

It automatically collects data on how people use energy in their homes and identifies opportunities to charge and discharge home battery storage.

You don't need machine learning for that. Unless they're using the vague term "artificial intelligence" for something else; this vagueness also smells fishy to be honest.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Plus absolutely no mention of how much energy the Merlin AI servers will consume, when AI server farms are known to consume enough energy to power a village or small city..

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

This, too. With some numbers they could even reason "look, this system demands X% energy, but you're predicted to economise Y% in the long run, and Y > X". But there's nothing like that in the text.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps it's part of some effort to counter the bad reputation ai has been getting on the high energy demands? I grew up to be doubtful of any seemingly inoffensive news article out there

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Perhaps. But they suck at it - people might be willing to suspend their disbelief and look over small issues when they're overexcited, but AI's phase of overexcitement is long gone, they'd need to show something more concrete to counter the bad rep. And poorly made propaganda is bound to backfire.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

The term AI is used for everything. If a company is selling a watch with an alarm feature, they would call that AI.

Power companies are already doing what they are doing now.

What exactly is this more than averaging out numbers in a database separated by time ranges, then getting a numbers from the load on the grid?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

They mention things like "learning" thermostats, which are completely useless devices, considering if I had the exact same schedule every day I would just program it accordingly. Instead it annoys me by constantly being wrong because it's trying to "guess" when I'm going to be home.

I assume this system will be similarly annoying.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

yeah sometimes by ai they mean chat bot algorithms trained off of datasets and sometimes they mean anything thats an algorithm

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

My colleagues and I have developed an artificial intelligence system that helps buildings shift their energy use to times when the electric grid is cleaner.

Meanwhile, AI systems are getting trained while using the equivalent of several countries' use of electricity.

What a bullshit article. The headline itself is so deceptive it makes my blood boil. Now everyone will think AI is a net positive for reducing power usage while it's all the contrary.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Basically a press release