Disallow or discourage use of "AI" tools (Christoph Cullmann)

[Konstantin Kharlamov]

On Fri, 2025-05-16 at 09:52 +0930, Justin Zobel wrote:
>  On 16/05/2025 00:48, Konstantin Kharlamov wrote:
> > On Fri, 2025-05-16 at 00:29 +0930, Justin Zobel wrote:
> > >  Ethical issues aside, AI has other impacts as well, most notably
> > > environmental via the huge amounts of energy required to first
> > > train
> > > AI and then even using it.
> > >  
> > Maybe it's just me, but I never understood the reasoning behind "AI
> > consumes too much power". I mean, I am all for ecology, but this
> > implies improving technologies, not the opposite. Maybe I'm missing
> > the
> > point, but such reason to me seems equal to "stop using phones and
> > computers, because they consume energy".
> >  
> Using a mobile phone cannot be compared to the power used by data
> centres to train AI in the slightest.
>  
> Just straight off the top of my head, your phone and computer
> automatically go to sleep by default. Servers do not.
>  
> It's also a matter of how these data centres are powered.
> Corporations will often go for the cheapest source which is often
> dirty non-renewable sources of energy.

Thank you for clarification, I see. I think best course of action here
would be creating some penalties for companies using too much energy,
which may lead to companies investing into research for more efficient
energy production. (this is very simplistic way to describe it, because
going that way would require thinking of a lot of nuances, like company
size, energy amount, etc, etc).

Penalizing plain people I don't think would move anything forward,
because a lone person wouldn't have the equipment to experiment with
energy sources, it has to be someone working fulltime for a university
or a company.