For me the problem with AI generated thumbnails in any environmental or scientific blog is that it makes me doubt the whole text might be a AI Hallucination and I just immediately click out.
AI images just kill all credibility for me.
It goes double if they’re using generated infographics with garbled text. There was clearly zero proofreading, and that absolutely means the article wasn’t fact checked either.
The bar is so low, it’s underground, and they’re still tripping over it.
Cleantechnica moment.
Big time
When the environmentalism memer is being petty about the small issues instead of making the discussion about the big sectors of personal consumption like heating/power source, nutrition and mobility
And yes, AI in creative sectors bad
Looool:)) Remind me, who produces most plastic in the world? Or most CO2? Or dumps largest amount of heat in the air?
Surely, some random John Does of some nation, right?
Surely, some random John Does of some nation, right?
im not sure what youre implying with the last part, ill ignore it as long as its unclear
Remind me, who produces most plastic in the world? Or most CO2? Or dumps largest amount of heat in the air?
What a peer reviewed study across 168 countries named “Keeping the global consumption within the planetary boundaries by Peipei Tian et al. Nature magazine.” found was commented in an article about it:
The richest 1% of the world’s population produces 50 times more greenhouse gasses than the 4 billion people in the bottom 50%. BUT if the world’s top 20% of consumers shifted their consumption habits, they could reduce their environmental impact by 25 to 53%. (550€/month in Europe is richest 15.2%)
(…)The study also shows that changing consumption patterns in just the food and services sectors could help bring critical planetary boundaries back within safe limits. And just last month, Hubacek co-authored a paper describing how the livestock sector is dangerously transgressing several of the planetary boundaries (…)
Its a problem with more than one scapegoat. Of course big corporations create the goods, but theres also a demand by 8 billion people for example to just highlight one
I am implying what is clear as day: discussion about pollution must be about big companies, not about whatever individual human beings emit.
And the richest 1% should not be what it is today, but that is another thing completely - why do you suddenly bring it up?
Demand by 8 billion people, you say. I walk out of my house and can’t walk 50m without seeing some plastic garbage (literally: bags, packages etc.). Did those 8 billion people want it? Or need it? Or demand it?
Also who’s to say the person isn’t running the AI model locally off of renewable energy?
You don’t have to use a centralized service, shit like ComfyUI exist
Its the training of AI that uses lots of energy, once its trained actually running it uses essentially fuck all. I can generate an image for like 0.0005kWh, it would use significantly more power to create the image myself as the PC would need to be on for much longer.
I don’t mind AI generated images too much, depends a bit on context though. Background images to a low budget video which is mostly speech and just gives something to look at is something I have seen a few times and doesn’t seem too bad. Probably won’t be looking at them much anyway.
Whataboutism? Are only certain topics allowed to be discussed? Are memes prohibited to strictly serious and important issues?
Memeing like this more harmful than helpful for solving the problem due to big sectors very hard to change and therefore people like to shift to other sectors to ignore actual solution
Yes you’re right, people are not smart and will lose track of the greater picture if we distract them. Forgive me.
… /s
what a coincidence that media in ie mobility is all about electric cars vs cars instead of the other actual solutions to then point at little kid with public transport written on demo sign with laughter as subtext
?
?
Their point being electric cars still burn fossil fuels at generation and other alternatives aren’t discussed much at all in the MSM, however what a lot of foreigners don’t seem to get is our public transportation is trash and bike lanes are mostly non-existant except in nicer cities.
I live 15ish minutes from work, I own a hybrid vehicle that gets good mileage but I also own an ebike, if it were safe for me to bike to work, I’d do it. But I have no option aside from either entering a highway (which I don’t believe is even legal for an ebike) or going over an extreme distance out of the way to have any kind of roads (which don’t have sidewalks or bike lanes and have a MPH of 50 assigned) I can not safely do it.
I’m not sure how we got here, but when discussing EVs this criticism always comes up, and forgive me if I’m making an incorrect assumption about you but it’s almost always from someone living in a North American city. Your points are valid in the context of your own area, but the world is a lot bigger and there are so many regions that have developed to require cars that cannot be switched to primarily public transport. Public transport can link small towns to each other for example, but they cannot bring every single inhabitant to and from their own address, and not everyone is able to just get out and walk instead.
The simple truth is that electric vehicles are better than vehicles that run on fossil fuels, and that is a valid and sensible opinion to have. Yes we should also have more public transport and walkable areas, but that is not a valid point against the introduction and distribution of EVs.
I mean, iOS produces them on-device 😂
And how much CO2 was produced training the AI that was put on your device? How many slaves spent how many hours generating data to train that AI? How many slaves cut down how many forests to extract the materials that how many slaves turned into the chips that ran the training process?
If only he didn’t generate that image! I can’t believe he made Apple generate that whole model!
And how much CO2 was produced training the AI that was put on your device?
I mean, fuck Apple and fuck AI. But at some point “I noticed your picture was rendered with software that uses electricity that may have come from a fossil fuel power source, so I’m going to disregard environmentalism carte blanche” is just reactionary anti-environmentalist rhetoric couched in smug liberalist language.
I’m unsure about that. But seeing how stupid it is, and knowing that Apple produces green energy through Apple Energy LLC, I suspect not enough CO2 was produced 😂 /s
And how much CO2 was produced training the AI that was put on your device?
Depends on where the data centre was that did the processing
If in nordics or france then practically nothing, if in California then depending on the day/time of year, how much wind/solar/battery was going probably minimal
https://electrek.co/2024/12/31/california-grid-100-percent-renewables-no-blackouts-cost-rises/
if somewhere with only coal plants then a decent amount
Focusing climate change on individual contribution alienates people from the movement. Instead of wasting your energy making one person feel bad, maybe focus on the corporations that are actually responsible for producing that CO2 and cutting down those forests while hiding that reality from the consumer.
I actually don’t know, how much was it?
Also when they’re not vegan.
As long as they’re reducing their meat intake that’s ok with me :) I say that as a non-vegan who has greatly reduced my meat intake
Ok, here’s my perspective. I hate Gen-AI (specifically and solely the generative kind), I think in nearly 100% of its use cases there are more effective and more ethical solutions. Its really sketchy to me for any artist to be using or supporting AI with/in their work. My understanding is that while training the AI does take significant server farm work (on a similar scale to like, storing the data for streaming video), the actual AI model produced is relatively small, and therefore doesn’t take that much energy to run. So, good on them for doing environmental work, my hangups will entirely be on the ethical side of their AI usage.
I’m with you on more ethical solutions being available, but efficient? In turns of total energy usage required to go from (often unethically acquired) training data to a manifestation of a prompt as an image, maybe.
But regarding the effort and efficiency when purely generating an image? I think not.
There is a person on Lemmy running GenAI models locally (on their own machines) using solar power, and honestly, that’s totally fine by me. I’m also fine with a DM generating some art for their next hombrew game they run with a couple of friends.
Acquisition of training data and the environmental impact of data centers (not only for AI usage) are still problems to be solved, though.
Ok, I didn’t say efficient, I said effective. I said AI images are less effective than manually created ones, and I stand by that. Honestly, if that guy is sourcing his data ethically, more power to him.
Alright, that one is on me half-assing my reading. I’m with you on effectiveness.
My understanding is that while training the AI does take significant server farm work (on a similar scale to like, storing the data for streaming video), the actual AI model produced is relatively small, and therefore doesn’t take that much energy to run
Yeah, you can run most models on a mildly powerful gaming computer and be able to generate images
My rig actually takes less power to Gen images than it does to run some games on Max settings
Because this is what we need to be focusing on, not environmental responsibility from large polluters.
We are continually approving oil, gas, and coal projects, yet let’s focus on the contradiction of environmentalists existing in a system where their very existence causes them to emit, regardless of how careful their choices.
Don’t worry about this, it’s fine
It’s just sitting there menacingly next to the Athabasca river.
Insert the comment about how too many leftists care more about doing nothing wrong than doing anything good
This meme has strong, “Any environmentalist that doesn’t unalive themselves, isn’t trying hard enough.” vibes.
This is whataboutism.
It’s more like a false dilemma, claiming we can only focus on or solve one or the other. Our largest focus should be the largest polluters as mentioned, but it’s also ok to want to challenge the use of AI in messaging about social action.
It’s not an issue of focus, but cohesion and messaging. Focusing on internal moral purity alienates people and divides us against the larger enemy.
You again🤺
You are in favour of purity of focus
I disagree with you, and @[email protected] - respectfully.
I’m not trying to detract from AI’s issues, or insist that we can only address one issue at a time. However, if I was given $100 Million to address these issues, I’d be investing 99 millon into dealing with water, land, and mining related issues, as those can have immediate effects. Emissions are such a hard one to address, since it requires buy in from literally everyone (look how hard that was with COVID, and people were dying right there and then due to it). Regulating and reducing AI emissions seems a lower priorty to me compared to things like better O&G regulation which are likely to have larger impacts on overall emssions.
I don’t disagree with you. I said fighting pollution should be the number one priority. That should in fact take all the money. But it’s also possible to call out a journalist or publisher or activist in their comments or social media or with an email or whatever if you want to challenge their use of AI. I never said we should spend a bunch of money on what I think is just a personal action, which is why I think it’s a false dilemma.
How has this got anything to do with a meme community that makes memes?
Is focus not rival?
Some people seem to think we can only operate as a hivemind
Lol 100%
Can you prove that AI uses more resources to draw thumbnails than a human artist?
Photography exists!
Are you saying paying a photographer to travel and take a photo uses less resources?
You’re doing very complex mental gymnastics just to simp for AI friend
Well, no. I’m just unwilling to handwave the associated costs like you are.
Photographing isn’t free either.
Stock images can be used over and over and over and over…
AI generated images too.
We can admit that that is not the appeal of AI image generation and does/will not happen very often
Isn’t the whole thing about AI that it generates “bespoke” images on demand rather than pulling from a prearranged catalog?
You can “bespoke” abstract reusable image if you want. Oh, and maintaining a catalog with a huge amount of “not quite fit but might be good enough images” isn’t free either.
Mental gymnastics
Exactly. AI is just better for a significant percentage of purposes. You completely ignore all the costs of the “traditional” creating of the images while exaggerating the ones of the AI generation.
You can “bespoke” abstract reusable image if you want.
But the AI output engine doesn’t.
maintaining a catalog with a huge amount of “not quite fit but might be good enough images” isn’t free either
It is significantly cheaper and less energy intensive than generating new images on demand. That’s before you get into AI images as the same quality of “not quite fit but might be good enough images”
A human drawing a thumbnail in 15 minutes consumes 0.025 kWh. An AI creating an image consumes between 0.06 and 0.3 kWh, so between 3 and 12 times as much. Both have massive supply chains that go into producing and maintaining them.
I can make a GenAI image on my PC in 3 seconds. 0.06 kWH is outrageously wrong.
including the training data?
If you’re going to factor in the energy already expended whether or not db0 generates an image to calculate the energy of that image, then you’ll have to amortize it across whatever millions or billions of images generated using that model.
You certainly have to account for it, but surely some consideration must be paid to the fact that most of these images are quite useless. I’ve probably generated 100s of midjounrey pictures myself, to very little benefit except seeing what it was capable of. If we treat these usages as equal to cover image for a blog, I don’t think it’s quite fair. Not to mention the actively harmful usages (CP, deep fakes etc).
I’d say the generated image for the blog and any other drawn or photographed image for the blog are equally worthy or worthless. You’re there to read the article, the imagery is entirely superfluous if it can be adequately replaced by a generated image.
If you’re talking about needing to generate 5 images to get one to use for the article then yes you’d sum their adjusted costs but those images you generated for funsies are still accounted for because they served their purpose.
15 minutes is crazy fast and assumes they just get exactly what they want first go. You need to factor in running your PC using Photoshop or equivalent, which is fairly resource intensive, sustained over what is realistically 40-60 minutes at best, sourcing assets from servers which are using energy to serve the images. Compared with AI which has high usage for sure but it’s extremely short bursts.
I don’t really have a horse in this race eitherway, but what about finding a person who can draw a decent looking thumbnail in 15 minutes? Probably that’s gonna be using various webservices such as fiverr or something along the way?
But the whole idea of comparing them is kinda funny. As if that human would just be turned off and not consuming any energy if they weren’t making a thumbnail for your blog. Though maybe they’ll make a cup of coffee they wouldn’t have otherwise before getting to work. You never know!
Everyone is a NPC, they only activate when you’re close to them or when you contact them, otherwise they are in standby mode
Not to mention the power requirements for transferring funds digitally
Yes.
*watches in anticipation*
Honestly, any blog claining to be informative qhile usung AI thumbnails makes me extremely wary. If they can’t even find a stock photo, who’s to say they did any research, or worse, just wrote the entire article with gen ai
Agreed
i detect ai image, i leave. evn on lemmi on my fav subs. evn if it's from nicies peeps i kno.
(i say, while being an LLM enthusiast)
What the AI is designed smart and caches the answer of the most common answers in order to save enegy. I don’t know if that makes sense.
You’re just describing normal search engines, though.
I would hope all AI is designed smart as a starting point
