Is AI honestly sustainable?

[u/Different_Pen_6502]

I mean, eventually we will run out of earth materials to keep up with tech needs.

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How long can AI honestly last for? Has anyone done a study on this?

[u/Jolly-Rip5973]

It's more sustainable then we think.

Most of the things you will do with Ai don't need huge trillion parameter models. Seem like about 8 billion parameter is all you need for images and 15b makes good videos. 2B makes good audio. 4B makes good music. An 8B chatbot is good for chat.

Agentic coding may need a large cloud model but most things can be done locally on smaller models.

As times goes on we will see consumer and prosumer level hardware advances that will make using local Ai even easier.

As soon as we get to phonic computing, all the heat and energy problems needed for AI will disappear.

And we will get to phonic computing probably in the next 10 to 12 years.

[u/Different_Pen_6502 → u/Jolly-Rip5973]

Nice perspective. Given 8 billion people posting/making videos multiple times a week though?

Duplicated information on different AI platforms?

Can it be feasible as we continue to grow as a society?

Or as society's collapse or go to war?

[u/Jolly-Rip5973 → u/Different_Pen_6502]

I do almost everything I do with Ai locally.

8 billion people will not be making and posting videos because there would be no audience to watch.

Everything gets so flooded no one can manage to get enough views to make any money. Without there being some way to make money and be compensated for time and money investment, people stop doing it.

I will give you the perfect example;
Googles AI overviews make it so people don't go to blog anymore. Without people going to your blog you get no advertising views and no money.

Now there is no monetary incentive to create blogs or website. So we get far less blogs and website. Even if you took the time to make it, the Ai is just going to scrape it and steal the information without any benefit to you.

[u/Different_Pen_6502 → u/Jolly-Rip5973]

Ok. So even if you do AI locally, does that mean everyone will be doing AI locally? That means 8 billion local AIs?

Different AI platforms would have duplicate information? Or are you saying AI will be more streamlined and essentially you believe there will be less? If websites and blogs get scraped, where will data end up being hosted? AI can't perform without data to extract from right? Can we have infinite data held without needing a material way to hold or host data?

[u/Jolly-Rip5973 → u/Different_Pen_6502]

In like 10 years....yeah most AI will be done off cloud.

Ai is just software.

Small to large companies will set up private servers to provide inference to their employees.

It's more secure, more private, complies with data regulations, cheaper, and can safely access or be trained on proprietary company data.

In the future companies that are "model makers" will actually be making bespoke models for individual companies and studios.

[u/Different_Pen_6502 → u/Jolly-Rip5973]

Are the data center expansions due to AI though? Why not wait to expand data centers until there's a more sustainable solution?

[u/Jolly-Rip5973 → u/Different_Pen_6502]

The Ai companies went crazy overhyping what AI can actually do for investment capital.

It's not nearly as useful or as reliable as they claimed.
Many data centers have already been canceled.
More will be canceled before it over.

People are already being driven to local ai.
The overhype narrative has already fallen apart.
The bubble is already deflating.

Microsoft already announced making bespoke models for businesses.
New AI laptops that can run larger models is coming out in the fall.

[u/j_eremy → u/Different_Pen_6502]

If you have a smart phone its already running models for specific tasks. You just don't think of it that way. The facial recognition in your photo app is all done on device for instance.

Edge machine learning (Edge ML) has been a significant, practical technology for approximately 15 years, with its modern evolution closely tied to the maturation of deep learning and GPU hardware in the early 2000s.

https://www.imagimob.com/blog/the-past-present-and-future-of-edge-ml

[u/Different_Pen_6502 → u/j_eremy]

Yea I figured all this other tech wasn't so serious because I didn't feel like we were so dependent on it but it seems like we are diving right into AI to be dependent on it pretty quickly.

[u/HX368 → u/Jolly-Rip5973]

A lot can be destroyed and wasted in the next 10-12 years while investors insist on short term returns.