The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

Absolutely needed: to get high efficiency for this beast … as it gets better, we’ll become too dependent.

“all of this growth is for a new technology that’s still finding its footing, and in many applications—education, medical advice, legal analysis—might be the wrong tool for the job,”

  • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    The issue this time around is infrastructure. The current AI Summer depends on massive datacenters with equally massive electrical needs. If companies can’t monetize that enough, they’ll pull the plug and none of this will be available to general public anymore.

    This system can go backwards. Yes, the R&D will still be there after the AI Winter cycle hits, but none of the infrastructure.