Link catchup August 2024

Aug 19, 2024

Hi! Happy nearly-end of summer to all who celebrate. This is the issue where I clear out my interesting-to-me-and-maybe-to-you stuff collected from other newsletters, old school RSS feeds, and midnight doomscrolling.

Climate / internet stuff first, “Other” second. And conferences in the middle.

If you like this sort of thing, please consider upgrading your subscription. The more who do, the more incentive I have to do this sort of thing (sad, I know).

Google’s carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

Emissions up 50% compared to 2019. Figures are taken from Google’s 2024 environmental report.

Electricity demand is forecast to grow as much as 20% by 2030, with AI data centers alone expected to add about 323 terawatt hours of electricity demand in the U.S.

According to Google, it’ll be worth it:

AI holds immense promise to drive climate action. In fact, AI has the potential to help mitigate 5–10% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030
- Google Environmental report, introduction

Their source for the 5-10% figure is the Boston Consulting Group rather than an academic study.

I asked Notebook LLM to summarize the report’s findings on AI:

## Google's Strategies for AI's Environmental Impact The sources outline three main strategies Google is deploying to manage AI's environmental impact: **model optimization**, **efficient infrastructure**, and **emissions reductions**. **Model Optimization** Google's strategy is to reduce the energy required to train an AI model. This is done by leveraging research and techniques, such as quantization, which have been shown to reduce the energy needed to train an AI model by up to 100 times and reduce associated emissions by up to 1,000 times. **Efficient Infrastructure** Google aims to build the world's most energy-efficient computing infrastructure, supported by responsible water use practices and a commitment to minimizing waste. * This includes continually improving the power efficiency of AI hardware, such as with their TPU v4. * Their data centers remain some of the most efficient in the world and are working to optimize their use of electricity, water, and materials. **Emissions Reductions** Google aims to reach net-zero emissions across all of their operations and value chain by 2030. In 2023, they achieved 64% carbon-free energy on average across all of their data centers. * Google works with its supply chain to improve environmental data collection and reporting and to develop decarbonization roadmaps. * They are also working to reduce the embodied carbon impact of growing machine learning demand at their data centers.

For laughs, I asked it to assess the quality of the sources:

Source Quality Assessment The report cites a variety of sources, including Google's own reports, external academic sources, and consultancies with vested interests. Impartiality: Google's own reports may not be entirely impartial, as the company has a vested interest in presenting itself positively. Academic: Some of the sources are academic. The report references an academic paper on balancing nature with urban density. The sources also cite the work of the IPCC and other scientific research organisations. Consultancies: The sources also cite consultancies with vested interests. The report quotes Nicholas Stern, the chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. The report also cites Boston Consulting Group, which provides estimates for AI's potential impact on global GHG emissions. It's important to note that these consultancies may have their own biases and agendas. The sources provide a mixed bag in terms of impartiality. While some sources are more likely to be impartial, it's crucial to be aware of the potential biases of all sources.

So what are we using AI for?

What do people really ask chatbots? It’s a lot of sex and homework. (WaPo)

Mainstream coverage of internet emissions pt xxiv

Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns (The Guardian)

Cites the usual “data centers = 6% electricity” figures, but this article is mostly about data waste or “dark data” : “68% of data used by companies is never used again”.

Good points here about the money and time wasted by consumers from backing up everything unnecessarily.

These days, I’m more interested in the mental cost of having a humongous uncurated personal data cloud. I know that somewhere I have thousands of unsorted photos; my dropbox is a shitshow; my gmail is almost out of storage, etc. I can’t bring myself to declutter because I don’t know where to start. I just checked and the internet says this is bad for my health.

[Article idea: digital de-cluttering for your mental health (and some climate gains too probably)]

How I imagine my data SHOULD be organized

Events

Copied from the ClimateActionTech newsletter.

BBC Climate Creatives: October 2nd, Online

Green IO: London, Sept 19th

Other things I clicked this month

Public Work image search

“The Search Engine for public domain works”. I think I’m in love? Part of Cosmos.so - a pinterest alternative - “where ideas are sacred”.

Life anti-check list

87% :(

Gamergate at 10 (Links I would gchat you…)

Gamergate was the point where I started getting super-depressed about the probability that the internet will do far more harm than good. Thankfully, this retrospective has a section titled “Did anything get better as a result of Gamergate?” which made me feel a little happier. Quotes:

Both Twitter and Reddit made substantive changes to their content and harassment policies in the wake of Gamergate.
- …but then Elon broke the moderation team at twitter.
…there are far more women and non-binary people working in gaming today than there were 10 years ago, according to the International Game Developers Association. Admittedly, “far more” is still not “a lot”.
The games researcher Adam Jerrett has argued, for instance, that video games grew more “values-conscious” in the wake of Gamergate.
DEI teams come standard at most large U.S. and Canadian development companies.
Less tolerance within the industry for the type of rhetoric that defined Gamergate 10 years ago.

But:

That’s inside the video game industry, though. Outside, the legacy of Gamergate looks a lot more durable. And next week, I’m talking to Elle Reeve about one of the scariest aspects of that legacy: the rise of the internet-incubated alt-right and the larger white nationalist movement.

Follow Caitlin’s newsletter for more fun internet topics.

Personal update

I’m back from a long family vacation and returning to freelance work + job hunting. If you know of anywhere that needs a climate-adjacent UX designer / strategist, please let me know.

ttfn,

James

SustainableUX

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