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Prediction vs Reality
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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Ai data centres used about 0.5% of global electricity production last year. Electricity production is about 26,000 TWh annually, versus total energy production of 185 TWh annually, so AI was about 0.07% of all energy consumption. Energy production causes the bulk of greenhouse emissions: 73.2%, putting AI on 0.05% (this is unfair to AI, because electricity is cleaner than the average energy production which includes just burning gas for heat).
In comparison, trying to find something small on https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector my favourite comparison is that energy for making paper consumes more than 10x as much as does AI.
A large TV might consume about 100W while on, so 100Wh to watch for an hour. To reach the same consumption with AI, you'd need to run about 55 expensive (the upper estimate I found was 6700J - I assume this means long coding answers, research or image generation) chatgpt queries.
Personally I think it unlikely that someone would reach that 1 prompt per minute at that expensive estimate, so all yourself: is AI really "burning entire areas" compared to just watching TV?
It has it's problems but this is a moral panic.
It all well and good comparing data centre energy usage with global production. But you miss out the important reality that a good chunk of the data centres running today and in the near future are using fossil fuel power on-site, without a grid connection, which is so much worse.
Be honest. Even if every single data centre did that, would it worse enough to really change the picture? It's still going to be less than paper production by a long way for a long while.
You're fighting a losing battle here, some people just have decided that AI is bad no matter what. There are quite many here on lemmy, which is a shame because there are good and bad sides about AI, but IMO it for sure is here to stay, so discussions would be interesting, again IMO.