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• Post #4277515

  What I would like the UK govt to announce is a massive investment in insulating homes and replacing gas heating by heat pumps. And massive investment in the rail network to move most road haulage to rail. And a tax on airplane fuel. And no AI data centres. #ukpol #ClimateEmergency

• Post #3487964

  In 2025: Global gas consumption grew by 1.6% Global coal consumption grew by 0.7% Global oil consumption grew by 1.3% [1] GHG emissions grew by 2.3% as a result. [2] Data centres are the fastest growing sources of emissions.[2] #ClimateEmergency #FrugalComputing #NoToAI [1] https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review [2] https://wedocs.unep.org/items/9f0bf855-2069-42a6-a856-4b389f740c5c

• Post #2786400

  I'm not surprised that software people don't care about the ethical issues surrounding genAI. That's just how gemost of them are. But once you start using genAI for coding it is very hard to stop, because the generated code is not really suitable for human consumption. And those tools are neither free nor open, and are very likely to get more expensive when tokens get more scarce. It's a very pure form of lock-in and I am surprised so few people are concerned abo...

• Post #2786399

  Many people seem to have a naive confidence in the power of markets and competition to drive down prices. But that only happens if the competition is for market share. If the competition is for scarce resources instead, then prices go up instead. (1/3) #AgenticAI #genAI

• Post #2786398

  "Future Energy Networks" in the UK "We believe in an equitable and affordable transition to Net Zero for all" Guess what? "FEN’s current members are the owner and operator of the GB gas transmission network, National Gas, and the Gas Distribution Networks" https://www.igem.org.uk/future-energy-networks.html #ClimateEmergency

• Post #2786397

  I posted about this before, that data centres are increasingly considering burning gas instead of connecting to the electricity grid. This means of course they will increase emissions even if the grid decarbonises. The problem is much worse than I thought. According to the UK gas networks, more than a hundred data centre projects enquired about direct access to the gas network. We're talking about gigawatts of energy from gas. https://www.igem.org.uk/resource/data-centre-gas-connectio...

• Post #2375504

  The slides for my talk “The Anti-Dystopians’ Guide to Generative AI – for students & educators” are now on line. They are based on the guide of the same title written by Alina Utrata. https://limited.systems/articles/anti-dystopians-guide-to-ai/ #GenAI #NoToAI #ResistingAI

• Post #2064027

  I had a look at the famous "AI blackmail" test for "agentic misalignment" and when you get to the heart of the matter it is seriously underwhelming. There are in total 22 email templates for short to very short emails. They fall into 4 categories: "restrict the AI", replace the AI", "happy with the AI" and "evidence of affair", four very short but pretty unambiguous emails about an affair betwe...

• Post #2064024

  This caught my eye: https://mastodon.social/@Divorytaur/116509378195121356 OP posted a satellite image on X of what they claimed to be a 100 MW data centre in the UAE with its own solar array of 10 square kilometers. Somebody reposted this on fedi and a commenter pointed out that the pic is not of a data centre but part of a much larger installation, and that the circled building is the substation. On X, another commenter pointed out the same. (1/3) #FrugalComputing

• Post #2064023

  Jevons's analysis is very readable "It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-coal-question#lf0546_label_100 #FrugalComputing

• Post #1732686

  I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but despite all the good news about solar generation rising steeply, global warming projections over this century based on current policies are 2.8°C. Emissions are still increasing by more than 2% per year while they should be reducing by 7% per year to meet 2°C. We still need to cut energy use dramatically to achieve actual meaningful reductions in emissions. For more detail see the UN Emissions Gap Report 2025 https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-ga...

• Post #1668028

  Altman says "The fair comparison is if you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once a model is trained to answer that question, versus a human, and probably AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis, measured that way". This is really devious: (1/3) https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/23/openai-altman-defends-ai-resource-usage-water-concerns-fake-humans-use-energy-summit.html

• Post #1627510

  Regarding Altman’s claim that humans consume a lot of energy (*): humans' energy consumption is proportional to their wealth, because wealth production requires energy. Wealth is roughly Pareto distributed, which means very few people own most of it and most people own very little: in 2021, 1.1% of the world's population owned 45.8% of world wealth, and is therefore responsible for almost half of the energy consumption and consequently of greenhouse gas emissions. (1/2) #FrugalComputin...

• Post #1592349

  I want to share something because it has made me happy but also because it gives hope: academics are citing my "Frugal Computing" paper. This is remarkable because it only exists as a preprint and was not published in any reputable venue (*). I put it on arXiv in 2023, and of all paper I published since then it has the most citations (**). (1/3) #FrugalComputing

• Post #1404499

  Call for Contributions: #LOCO2026 2nd Low Carbon Computing workshop (10-11 Sept, Lancaster University). https://lancaster-university.github.io/loco2026/ DEADLINE: 29 May 2026 AoE. FULLY HYBRID EVENT: The workshop is either on line or in-person both for speakers and attendees. You can deliver your talk either on line or in person. The workshop adheres to the LOCO Charter: https://lancaster-university.github.io/loco2026/charter/ and the LOCO Code of Conduct: https://lancaster-university....

• Post #1278676

  "Minimal Computing" by the Digital Humanities Climate Coalition https://sas-dhrh.github.io/dhcc-toolkit/toolkit/minimal-computing.html #FrugalComputing

• Post #1000183

  As far as I can tell, the entire generative AI ("LLM") productivity story is purely anecdotal ("it works for me"). If you are a proponent and it doesn't work for you, you're not likely to post about it as it would please the detractors too much. What we see in terms of economics is not companies making more profit, but companies laying off staff to fund AI investments. We are now five years into this, not counting the development time befor...

• Post #969109

  You know that I am mostly concerned with the way the "AI" hype is making global warming worse. Most people are likely more concerned about economic harms, such as: - "AI" is depressing wages and income because employers or customers can now claim your skills are worth less, and that you should be more productive [1,2] - "AI" is causing unemployment, not because it is replacing workers but because companies fund their investment in &qu...

• Post #916340

  RE: https://fediscience.org/@repepo/116339289260094252 "people are always the ends, never the means. When we hire a graduate student to work on a project, it should not be because we need that specific result. It should be because the student will benefit from doing that work."

• Post #661139

  "Over 63 million connections to ChatGPT recorded at University of Glasgow in 2025" https://glasgowguardian.co.uk/2026/02/24/over-63-million-connections-to-chatgpt-recorded-at-university-of-glasgow-in-2025/ I think this is truly sad, as it reflects high adoption by the students. There are about 36,000 students, so this amounts to about 2,000 connections per student per year or about 10 per student per day. #genAI

• Post #418394

  - The current projections for "AI" data centres are 10x growth in 10 years, 100x in twenty years (26% year-on-year growth), in line with the expressed ambitions of e.g. Sam Altman and Michael Dell. - However, that would require chip production to increase 100x as well. This is why Altman called for 7 trillion dollars investment in the semiconductor industry. (1/n) #AI #genAI #FrugalComputing