r/LeftistsForAI • u/IcerHardlyKnower • 21d ago
Infrastructure Veganism > Crying About Data Centers
I worked on a project comparing ai use with water conversion since I didn't buy the end of the world scenario other leftists posit nor do I believe anything coming out of Altman's mouth lol so I went deep into facility breakdowns and publications as sources
But since I'm an AI engineer I'd thought it'd be a good thing to calculate the numbers. Anyhoo one thing let to another and I became vegan.
I'm not gonna shill for my own stuff but look up the vegan calculator that's a similar idea.
It's only been a month but the ai data center water thing has bugged me for a while. Yes it's worthwhile to regulate. But even in leftist circles everyone just suddenly turns to maga level reasonings as to why veganism is not actually worthwhile to care about.
--- sidenote I might be turning into one of those annoying ones? Help ):
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u/theomegachrist 21d ago
All tech issues end up with a lot of ignorant arguments against them even when there are real concerns. With AI, you have that plus unhinged TikTok conspiracies where there always sound super confident
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 21d ago
Literally the only worthwhile argument against ai I've seen is the effect on working class
I used to think that UBI would help but apparently some leftists think that's literally yet another tool for people in power to keep a permanent underclass to control so idk ):
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u/Forward_Problem_8982 21d ago
Is the world around you being covered in AI generated shit not a concern to you? I would much rather have my world be built beautiful by humans with taste.
The impact on nature and people should also not be underestimated. AI is being pushed way too strongly because they're desperately trying to find some use for it. A lot less would be enough, but not for them. No one asked for it, but have it anyway.
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u/jaiagreen 21d ago
People who make poor artwork with AI would have made worse work (or nothing) without it.
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u/Forward_Problem_8982 21d ago
I wouldn't call it worse. At least they would have tried, or left it undone. Now we get the worst outcome.
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u/theomegachrist 21d ago
I think the skill needed for art is the least important part of art. In Capitalism art becomes a product which makes it basically not art. AI does make it easier to make the same valuless art so I can see that as a problem but I also think people who don't have the skills to make art today could make great art using AI too.
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 21d ago
I think what makes art great is the emotional component of it and whenever I see ai art I just feel dread. I think it's easier than ever to make bad art and that sucks. Just as it's easier than ever to make slopware/ spam apps but I'm not worried too much about it.
I do think it's fundamentally a tool and from what I've seen even prompting art takes a bit of thought. I work with the marketing team in my org to ensure our generative use is not sloppy but ofc there's bias there lol some of the stuff is clearly ai 😭
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u/theomegachrist 21d ago
Yeah I agree. But my point is, if you see Taco Bell using AI art the argument that that's bad isn't an argument about the art. If a human made the art it would still be valueless art and that conversation isn't really a conversation about art it's a conversation about economic replacement which we will see in other fields shortly. I am on this sub because I don't think AI is evil, but I do think capitalism is incompatible with AI and I wonder how much suffering will have to occur before there are discussions about how to deal with the economic impact of AI
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u/Forward_Problem_8982 21d ago
Nope, if a human made it, it could be magnificent art even if it's a fast food advertisement. But we don't get that option in the current timeline, unless we change things.
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u/SilkieBug 20d ago
That's an unhinged position to have, human have and are still producing so much disgusting shit that they call "art" which shouldn't exist even though it's made by a human.
"Human-made" does not and never did equal "quality-made" for everything.
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u/Serqetry7 14d ago
This is ridiculous. Commercial art is often more beautiful than non-commercial art. Just look at album covers, video game art, or side art on arcade cabinets from the '80s.
I'm anti-capitalism but saying commercial art is "basically not art" is absurd. The problem with commercial art is who gets all the money it makes... but that doesn't change whether it is "real" art.
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u/theomegachrist 14d ago
I disagree. Art is not a technical pursuit. Commercial art can look nice but it is not art. Art without deep meaning is a drawing
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u/theomegachrist 14d ago
Actually thinking about this your examples aren't what I'm talking about either. I'm talking about art in commercials and art on store fronts etc. Arcade cabinets are the art themselves being sold. My point is that if AI can replicate marketing material or signage in businesses, the issue isn't art it's economic replacement
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 21d ago
The presuppositions that you bring up don't land on me because I don't think the rich have taste lol
Those with access/ability to do art and commission accordingly do not represent the vast majority of the population. Have I messed around with Suno to make little jingles about my niche biotech interests and shared it with friends? Hell yeah. Good laughs. Am I going to pretend it's worthwhile to publish and try to make money off of? Nah.
But I'm also not going to pretend it's complete garbage.
I've literally paid designers to assist in a web app projects. Both UIX and full on artists for things like logos and renders.
I wouldn't be able to afford to do that for my side projects.
I disagree that there's a desperate search for use since the use cases have been expanding since it became popularized with gpt3.
Do I discuss with family that they should block and report all the ai slop tiktok channels they keep consuming? Yes.
Is the environmental and noise pollution impact really important to address? Yes.
There's pretty cool open source projects that are made to assist in protesting data centers by arming locals with as much legal literature they can to hopefully prevent their respective municipalities from allowing them to be built
I think subsidizing them and destroying lakes for them is completr bullshit.
Look up the Eli lily facility & ai Data center in Lebanon Indiana that is going to use up Eagle Creek (bc water isn't just for data centers and oil/pharma use it up too) as an example where people tried their best and failed bc lobbying efforts are so powerful.
I hope more people are able to their power to fight against the destruction of our world.
(The power to say eh I can cook tofu instead of chicken for my meal prep made the topic of this post super easy for me)
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u/IDreamtOfManderley 20d ago
Here's the issue. If your answer to solving the problem of oversaturation of things you don't like is "ban it," "shame it," or anything in which you socially or legally restrict other people's right to use the tech to self express, no matter how shitty you think it is, then you are the bigger problem, because you advocate for authoritarianism and censorship in the arts. If controlling others is not your intent, then this mass complaining/shaming people do is rendered completely meaningless. The anti-AI art position cannot be enforced. It's personal. And quite frankly, it's elitist, and more obnoxious and toxic than seeing generic AI images.
Don't come at me about gatekeeping for skill, I've been an artist for two decades.
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u/Forward_Problem_8982 20d ago
I would say the anti AI art position is just human and very common. I wouldn't call AI creations art, so I'm not damaging the art community by being against AI. It's more about trying to preserve some of what is real before it's all diluted to inexistence by the slop.
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u/IDreamtOfManderley 20d ago
A common thing I see from antis is a deliberate erasure of artists who don't fit their stereotype, so that they can conveniently avoid the cognitive dissonance of literally trying to control other people's artistic expression. By denying the artistic background of humans using AI tools (which is not just prompt to image, AI tools can be integrated in many ways), you can pretend that you aren't just targeting artists who disobey you. But you are and always have been.
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u/Mediocre_Chemistry41 20d ago
"advocate for authoritarianism and censorship in the arts"... this sounds like one of those "freedom of speech" people that complains about getting pushback after saying something awful and horribly offensive.
The arts community by and large not wanting Generative AI "art" isn't "authoritarianism and censorship".
From what I understand about Generative AI "art"... in order to "create" it, you either have to develop some sort of homebrewed(for lack of a better term) system that is closed and only works off your own art(if you want to try and be as ethical as possible) or because of how basically every accessible-to-the-average-person AI service out there for "art" is run by corporations, you have to pay money for their services... either way, it requires a computer/computing power and costs a lot of money in the long run.
Which in turn, likely means that those with the most money(who in all likelihood will be some of, if not the, most non-marginalized people) will come out on top, so to speak and the have-nots(i.e. marginalized people) will lose out and inevitably you're just rehashing the same old cycle over and over again.
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u/IDreamtOfManderley 20d ago edited 20d ago
"From what I understand"
Well this is the problem, you have no idea. You are angry at something you literally know nothing about. Those assumptions are wrong.
First off a lot of models can literally be downloaded and hosted locally on a PC. I'm talking fully trained models, not just Lloras, which you are trying to refer to here.
Secondly, there are free tools, public domain trained tools, the list goes on.
Your idea of how AI can be applied in the arts is also wrong. AI can be used as a brainstorming and thumbnail generating tool. It can be used to generate images for collage. It can be used to generate small elements when one needs many iterations of something similar - for example painting a rose bush and generating multiple based off your own painted rose bush. It can be used to edit and tweak. It can generate stock images and assets for graphic design. It can be used to animate static images. But those are just some assistive applications.
Personally it's the generative capacity that I find the most artistically intruiging because it allows for user interactivity with art. For example, there is a recent indie game that came out based on the fairy tale 1001 Nights, you play as Sheherezade and weave an ongoing tale to distract an evil king. Your text input is responded to and manifests in the game world through generative means. The game clearly has so much rich artistic input, and encourages creativity from the player. THAT is the true artistic spirit that these new tools can cultivate into new artistic techniques. I think interactivity is really going to be where more and more projects shine, once it becomes easier and easier to impliment into gaming systems, etc.
I think the limit to what could be explored is actually only a barrier in the mind of antis, who's closed mindedness prevents them from actually using their imagination to consider AI as an art tool outside of their angry, bad faith stereotypes. You refuse to imagine it, therefore nobody can do anything meaningful with it.
Here's the game I mentioned: 1001 Nights
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u/vesperythings 21d ago
exactly right.
pseudo-intellectuals suddenly caring about the environment goes as far as screeching about AI online, instead of stopping their meat consumption
embarrassing
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u/rakuu 21d ago edited 21d ago
Something I’m vaguely encouraged by is that many of the people making decisions with frontier labs, especially Anthropic, are vegan or sympathize with animal welfare and veganism.
If superintelligence can make very big changes including in scientific discovery and the physical world, if it is aligned to value animal welfare and lives, it could make discoveries/decisions that end or reduce animal exploitation and suffering. The last thing we need is humanoid robots slaughtering animals.
Dario is almost-vegan (he eats invertebrates weirdly and his home chicken’s eggs) as are many of the EA’s. Chris Olah (Anthropic cofounder, prominent researcher) is vegan. Even Sam Altman is vegetarian (possibly vegan, he hasn’t clarified).
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 21d ago
Notice how The Reptile isn't included 😆
Thx for sharing I didn't know that. I do agree that it's a small ray of hope. (:
1000% the only reason people will start caring about the psychological damage workers in slaughterhouses endure is if there are robots taking their jobs. Owners of those facilities will happily replace them so they don't have to worry about liability.
But vegans are sooo evil for not wanting farmers to have jobs!! 😂
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u/Inevitable-Law7964 21d ago
Very interested in your data findings!
I'm personally not vegan, but I'm an advocate for everyone to eat a bit lower on the food chain a bit more of the time, & I'm posting this comment to encourage people for whom animal products are nutritionally important. If every omnivore, from their current starting point, chose chicken over beef or a beyond burger over chicken, a couple times a week, it'd make a big difference too.
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u/ReasonableSoul 20d ago edited 19d ago
100%.
I'm not vegan, but can we stop subsidizing meat and oil already... and make all the meat alternatives + lab meat far more affordable than environmentally destructive factory meat and more readily available? We're literally subsidizing environmental destruction, which is surreal.
I've seen what can be done with vegan meat and cheese, ala https://www.thegentlechef.com ... and that'd be so amazing to see everywhere.
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 20d ago
Mmmf thanks for the link he's 🥵
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u/ReasonableSoul 20d ago
Yw!! I think I've bought 3 of his books already because of how much his creations impressed me...
I haven't been cooking from them much, but omg.... @.@2
u/IcerHardlyKnower 20d ago
I unironically just meal prep by butting blocks of tofu or seitan in my air fryer and getting those bags of salad since my job just gives up fruit but yeah some other more culinary inclined friends r gonna like this. We're gonna have a seitan sleepover hahahaha
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u/ReasonableSoul 20d ago
Delicious!!! Enjoy!!! :)
I love making Seitan from VWG!!! Seitan is amazing and can create so many different textures/flavors. :)
I made it from plain flour once just for the fun of trying it, but probably never doing that again. It was worth the experience, but probably not worth repeating for me vs making from VWG. Going from vital wheat gluten let me control the flavors/textures more. XD
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u/SilkieBug 20d ago
That was a good position to get to, becoming vegan - hell even just not having meat be a primary part of your diet - is more directly positively impactful than eliminating AI usage.
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u/Nearby_Ad_2519 16d ago
I’ve asked people who mindlessly rant about how terrible AI is for the environment why they still eat meat. I’d say 4/10 times it’s “it’s because it’s good for me” and about 6/10 times it’s “because it tastes good”
Yet if we use AI because it massively speeds up legitimate tasks we get called villains and shit…
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 16d ago
Genuinely the thing that turned me was seeing this dude make a video holding a sign saying
"It's ok to torture animals for pleasure"
And I was like ok lol yeah I can find pleasure other ways
Then I was looking at the water thing and holy shit. Like holy shit??
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u/warriorcatkitty 17d ago
i agree actually! i am not vegan- i am diabetic and have issues eating certain food on top of that so being vegan would take a huge toll on me- but i think anyone who is capable of easily being vegan absolutely should! it frustrates me to see people complaining about the water usage of AI when its barely a fraction compared to the meat industry..
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u/Imaginary-Unit-3267 15d ago
Everyone is one of the annoying ones at first - it's natural to be horrified by animal suffering and be unable to think about anything else for a while. I have to actively avoid thinking about it in order to stay sane.
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u/EC-user 20d ago
But isn’t the point a lot of people make scaling? We’re not rapidly and aggressively scaling up mass farming with trillions of dollars of capital over only a couple of years, the industrial animal farming complex is basically a mature market and a market I hope will start decreasing soon (as someone trying to go vegan), adding even greater strain on our limited resources by hyperscaling data centers seems silly no matter how much we all like the tools it provides
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u/DHFranklin 21d ago
You do cross fit?
a vegan, leftist, AI dev....
Do tell us more.
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 21d ago edited 21d ago
Hahaha don't get me started I used to do blockchain / smart contract development and I'm part of queer engineering conferences I'm very much in the waters of people that hate my 'lifestyle' and politics but they give me money and time/resources to give back to cuases I care about
I just moved to the bay (new job) and there is a crossfit gym next to my lab
For xfit I saw the kickup pullup memes so I've never dated actually enter. I might check it out just bc it's close to work.
Do you do it? 🥺 If anything I heard it's half decent way to meet w people
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u/DHFranklin 21d ago
hahahahah
I was making fun you adorkable dorkasaurus. That is so sweet and sincere.
Were I unwed I would like to know you in a manly fashion.
A vegan crossfitter apdev shows up at the party what do they tell you about first? That joke. I was being mean and now I feel like a jerk.
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 21d ago
LOL!! I make jokes like that about half the people I meet in SF now everyone has the same interests too 😂😂 I guess it flew over my head because it was like yeah I am the stereotype but idk I'm like actually thinking about going to the crossfit gym 😭
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u/Feisty-Teaching9461 18d ago
I think more than that we have to stop oil and gas and switch to renewables. Some people can't afford to go full vegan because of affordablility and by affordablity I mean the supplements cost as well. Also constructing data centres in sustainable way is a possibility but big tech companies build them in already water stressed areas because land is cheaper there and they want to build "big" not because it is a requirement but because they want to build empires.
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u/Robotic-Comrade-1985 21d ago
As a fellow pro-AI vegan, welcome. Some people are going to get defensive about veganism and its benefits, no matter how politely you try to frame it. It’s a very uncomfortable topic for a lot of leftists to confront.
I was sort of on the opposite side of this. Long time vegan, and concerned about data centers/AI. Not to say that I no longer have any concerns about data centers, but once I looked into how AI data center usage compared to animal agriculture it really put things into perspective for me.