Yet another reason LLM/AI is a terrible thing:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/28/genai_dirty_secret/
"GenAI is set to create nearly 1,000 times more e-waste (in data centres) than exists currently by 2030, unless the tech industry employs mitigating strategies."
"The study, which looks at the rate AI servers are being introduced to datacenters, claims that a realistic scenario indicates potential for rapid growth of e-waste from 2.6 kilotons each year in 2023 to between 400 kilotons and 2.5 million tons each year in 2030, when no waste reduction measures are considered."
"...equivalent to discarding 13.3 billion units of the iPhone 15 Pro"
GenAI's dirty secret: It's set to create a mountainous increase in e-waste
New modelling shows tech could massively increase current volumes of electronic landfill by 2030Lindsay Clark (The Register)
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That's significant too though, either way there would be trouble. So many businesses are being built on the assumption that AI will expand for the next five years.
Hopefully they crash and burn as soon as possible, but the longer the bubble goes on the more trouble there will be.
Also, even if only a tiny fraction of projects carried on that would still mean e-waste increasing by several times instead of 1000 times. It's such a wasteful technology.