Comment by pjmlp
15 hours ago
What a surprise with all the wars going on, and AI depleting Earth resources, what a change from about the pandemic era when everyone was into paper straws and cups and promising to be a better person, because that is what was going to change anything.
All data centers in aggregate (AI and all other uses) use about 1.5% of electricity production, which itself is about 20% of total energy use.
So when people are focusing on AI above all other energy uses, it doesn't really paint an accurate picture of what's going on.
You can split up every single industries/topics/&c. into "yeah but it only use 1.5% of energy", "yeah but it only produces 1.5% of the co2"
Guess what happens when you add them up...
This kind of logic only works if the percentages for each industry are all equally that small, so you can treat them as all equally bad, but they are absolutely not.
>Guess what happens when you add them up...
I'll guess, they add up to 100%?
I don't see what's the insight here.
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Wasn't crypto a significant percentage as well? And that was before the AI buildout started.
Not even close. Crypto has always been able to cut their own emissions before needing lots of compute.
AI on the other hand cannot, and still needs thousands of wasteful data centers.
It will normalize though once everyone is out of a job
I've heard many different groups tell me their small fraction is not the small fraction that matters.
It's not really about which one matters. They all matter. But here is a rough breakdown of global fossil fuel energy usage:
* Electricity: 27%
* Industry: 24%
* Transportation: 15%
* Agriculture & land use: 11%
* Buildings: 7%
Then within electricity, data centers use about 1.5% of global electricity. Within data centers, AI accounts for somewhere between 15-20% of energy use.
So if you take 27% × 1.5% × ~17%, you find that AI is currently responsible for something like 0.07% of global fossil fuel emissions.
It definitely matters in the "every bit matters" sense, but also the numbers paint a really different picture than you'd get from statement like the one we started with.
What otheer industries are hyping the need for tens of gigawatts, maybe hundreds? On top of that they are hyping the idea of building utterly unrealistic space stations that would cost 10 times what the ISS cost. So maybe people are focusing on the dishonesty instead of the energy use. One or the other I suppose.
AI is nothing compared to automobiles and heating, construction and shipping.
It uses a bunch of energy, but not so much compared to moving yourself around in a car of plane.
Yes. The obsession with demonizing AI/data centre loads seems to be a deliberate distraction from the much, much larger carbon loads of the economy at large relative to which IT power consumption is a tiny proportion.
I think it's much less cynical than that. People both fear and dislike AI, recognize that the "it may destroy my livelihood and commodify human creativity" complaint falls on deaf ears, and are latching onto anything resembling a credible ethical complaint that people may actually listen to.
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Most people pushing back against data centers simply don't want invite something into their city that will use up resources (likely raising prices), while the big selling point is that it will put them out of work. You can say that won't actually happen and everyone will keep their jobs, but that has not been the messaging. CEOs want to know how many people they can get rid of once they start using AI. Why would anyone sign up to have that in their backyard?
Animal agriculture is around 15% of global emissions, and AI is probably .1% to .5%, but sure, stop using LLMs. That will solve the problem.
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A bunch of energy, water and Earth rare materials, nothing really to care about.
I would be fine if LLMs disappeared tomorrow, but if I couldn't heat my house, I'd freeze to death. But I guess some would argue that everyone needs to live in a city with district heating.
Which in turn are also relatively small compared to the damages of cattle and fishing.
Seriously adapting our diets around being more sustainable. I'm not advocating for veganism or such, but at least to understand that eating a burger pollutes as much as driving a large vehicle for 50 miles and that maybe we can substitute that with poultry or eggs or cheese many times.
What about putting trees down for soya fields?
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It is also much more likely to use renewable energy. Data centers look at the local energy mix when planning where to put one. (though they are perhaps taking energy that would otherwise be shipped to a different city/state)
This is definitely not always the case[0], let's not pretend these companies give a fuck about the communities in which their data centers operate[1].
0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...
1: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/texas-hood-county-cr...
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> AI is nothing compared to automobiles and heating, construction and shipping.
When the oil in your frying pan is smoking, adding a tiny bit more heat may be unwise.
Yeah that assumes that AI is an absolute negative. What if it impacts positively? I mean you gotta spend money to make money.
As we all know, global warming wasn't happening until AI data centers started being built. They are honestly a drop in the bucket