AI environmental and societal concerns

[adrian]

I am sure many of you have seen @Ex-user's comments about AI data centres in the in the ProcessWire 3.0.257 – Core updates thread. It seems like we have lost them from the community, but I do think a Pub topic about the darker side of AI is worthwhile.

I have watched the video that was posted and here is another one worth a watch.

I must admit that Claude code is making me much more productive, so it's a strange situation to be in.

I do worry about all of the environmental and human health concerns posted in that other video and all of the societal ones in this video and so I think it's important that we are at least aware of these things when we talk about AI in ProcessWire.

Let's keep the dialog respectful and productive.

 

[monollonom]

[deleted]

Edited Thursday at 10:41 AM by monollonom

[ryan]

Quote

I am sure many of you have seen @Ex-user's comments about AI data centres in the in the ProcessWire 3.0.257 – Core updates thread. It seems like we have lost them from the community, but I do think a Pub topic about the darker side of AI is worthwhile.

@adrian Thanks for bringing this up. It seemed like x-user came here to troll with an expectation that ProcessWire should ignore and blacklist anything having to do with AI. That doesn't seem realistic. But it did make me wonder, are there any other CMS projects that are taking this approach? It seems unlikely. I imagine we're not too many years away from the point where a CMS project can't compete if it's not involved in the AI space in some way or another.

I also think that the AI changes are coming whether we like it or not. So we can either jump on and grow, and make things better, or get left behind, and perhaps get left without a job. If it's only the people that dismiss environmental concerns using AI and voting with their wallets, then there's no incentive for these companies to do better. X-user would make a greater difference to the world by being an AI user that cares and chooses companies based on their values. And I think that's what we all should do. Whereas abandoning anything having to do with AI does nothing to improve the direction of AI and seems a little like self-sabotage.

In the future, and with users that care, there will be pressure on AI companies to do things right. For example, when they build that next data center, they will also build a giant solar array or wind farm to power it. Depending on coal and gas plants for electricity is not sustainable, and now it's more costly than solar. Coal and gas is EOL'd. It may be that the power demands of AI push us towards sustainable solutions faster than otherwise, and we need that as quickly as possible. My opinion: We can't dismiss AI and complain. We have to participate and push for better solutions when there are opportunities to do so. If we sit out, there will be no such opportunities.

The environmental problems were here long before AI. As I understand, the root of it is power generation. The US (at least) is not solving the power generation problem in a way that can overcome the politics, corruption and outright stupidity. But I also think that it's very likely AI that will be in some way responsible for the solutions for these problems. There are so many problems to solve that are bigger than any of us have answers for. And if there are solutions for these problems, I have no doubt they'll be coming with the help of AI in some fashion. From my perspective blacklisting AI solves nothing and instead is abandoning the problems and giving up. 

[diogo]

Chris Ferdinandi has a valuable opinion on the subject. I would love to agree with him, but I honestly don't know if I can afford to https://gomakethings.com/training-your-replacement/

While you're at it, check his others posts and subscribe to the newsletter, he is a very insightful guy 🙂

[ryan]

@diogo 

Thanks, that post is well written and relatable. Interesting comparison with React. I agree with a lot of it, but not really with the AI conclusions. Admittedly, so far I'm not using AI to write code for me, and not sure when/if I will. Instead, I'm using it more as a coding companion. I write the code, and AI looks over everything I do and helps me spot issues and improvements, which it does extremely well. 

My use of AI so far is very minimal compared to what some others here are doing. But even with this minimal use and understanding, it's clear to me that the world is changed. I don't know about all the other stuff AI is used for, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are some big bubbles. But at least as far as using AI with code (even just as a helper), it is mind blowing, we are in a new world. I think the comparisons to outsourcing and React communicate a lack of experience with AI. But to be fair, I'm also writing about something I don't have a lot of experience with either. I do like this blog and the author's style, looking forward to reading more of his posts.  

[WireCodex]

This topic is truly interesting, as is how people react to it. But if you examine the data and statistics, many things come to light. It's true that data centers, both for AI and for hosting and cloud services, consume a lot of energy, but, for example, no one ever talks about gamers who also use powerful graphics cards. Check this out:

- OpenAI is on track to operate well over 1 million GPUs by the end of 2025. Reports suggest that roughly 200,000 GPUs were used to train the GPT-5 model.

- Total Gamers: Estimated 3.32 billion in 2024, projected to exceed 3.5 billion by 2025, representing roughly 40-45% of the global population.

[teppo]

Wish I had more time to put into this, but for now just a few random thoughts, sorry in advance for the long rant:

I, too, do see the issues that AI is causing (or at least some of them). But this train is not easy to stop. Programming is just one area it is affecting, but in this context I am personally leaning towards the conclusion that AI may well decimate the whole concept of humans writing code for a job. And if things continue to evolve at this pace I don't think it is going to be a decades long process.

A few years ago I tried to create a module for ProcessWire from scratch using ChatGPT, and it was a miserable failure. Now Claude is at a stage where I don't think I can truly justify writing code myself from a productivity (or quality) point of view. AI has also made the devops part of my work quite different from what it used to be, and I see no evidence of things slowing down in the near future.

For us who work in IT and more specifically programming / development, it seems to me that in the big picture there are a couple of options: get a new job that isn't (yet) as tightly coupled with AI, or keep up with the changes. Also, I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of what Ryan has written in this thread; it's quite a bit easier to influence things positively from the inside 🙂

There will no doubt be some cases where AI is not going to be as prominent, at least for a while. But it seems to me that those are either somewhat niche, or specialized cases. Gamers and the game industry, for example, have been pushing hard against using AI, which I completely understand.

... and of course I may be wrong, and this whole thing may come crashing down any moment. Predicting the future is not easy.

By the way, it would be interesting to hear about ways to make AI use less of a problem. A co-worker mentioned https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk, which is a Rust tool that claims to reduce AI token consumption by as much as 60-90%. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but e.g. cutting your token use to half should also cut your energy consumption to half, right?

(For the record, I have not yet tested RTK properly, so can't say if it works that well.)