I tried to post this to Reddit but for some reason it keeps getting removed by filters. I normally just lurk on Lemmy but I decided to make an account because I’m so over that stupid platform.

ANYWAY

Last night on my flight home I noticed that the person in front of me was using ChatGPT. I got nosy so I looked closer and found out that they were actually using ChatGPT to write the content for a program of a sustainability and climate conference. They specifically included a section about “dirty” energy sources and the harm that results from energy producers supplying data centers. I was floored.

I am not sure if this was the final product or just a draft, but I find it pretty gross and ironic that the AI that is fueling the climate crisis and responsible for the rapid development of data centers that are doing irreparable damage to local communities and ecosystems is being employed to create the materials for a sustainability conference. Maybe start with looking in the mirror first?

I looked up the company, and turns out this program might be part of a Keynote Livestream that is featuring the Mayor of San Fransisco lol.

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[–] 109 points 2 months ago (1 child)

I've seen a ton of anti-AI articles that were written using AI.

They'll 'write' anything that gets clicks, regardless of the subject.

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  • [–] 62 points 2 months ago (28 children)
  • [–] 67 points 2 months ago (21 children)

    We still meet for climate change conferences. Like, no one figured out zoom conferences and work from home.

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  • [–] 55 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    I wonder what responses I get for saying this, but nowadays both (as in zoom conference vs in person conference) is possible and both has upsides and downsides.

    Online conferences are great to just listen to a specific talk, but other than that in person conferences are just a nicer experience. You can more freely just chat with other scientists, often there is a social evening where you randomly meet people you may not have thought about contacting before.

    Now, should you travel around the globe every year several times just for that? Probably not. But in some fields there is one big conference every other year and it hugely benefits you as a scientist to attend these. Sometimes that means travelling from Europe to Oceania.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I see some people already taking issue with it in the comments, but I have also been to conferences that helped create partnerships that would not have happened otherwise. I'm not trying to suggest it's worth the emissions or anything, but I agree that being physically present is more conducive to making those connections.

    I think a helpful thing would be if people stopped sending people that are just doing it to check it off a list and be done with it. The idea that attending a conference in and of itself is some kind of development is wrong, and people should only go if they're actually interested in participating in the exchange of ideas.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago*

    People doing presentations almost invariably have a façade on and what they're saying is either carefully vetted to avoid giving offense and/or is done with the purpose of projecting a very specific impression and/or generating a very specific response.

    When it comes to making up your mind about somebody and their ideas, watching a presentation at a conference it's just slightly better than watching a politican on TV, which is about the most staged, carefully managed image of a person you can get.

    IMHO, even as difficult as it is for introverts, the best way to discover good people with open minds and interesting ideas is when casually chatting with other equally anonymous attendees and that's not something possible via video-conference.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    this made me realize I've only ever been to conferences (in either supply chain or data) because a job made me and I've only ever seen it as a chore. Even attending talks is only to be able to take notes, type notes and send them to colleagues as part of work.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    I always see it as a chance to find a better position than what I’m currently in. When business people talk about networking, these conferences are where the initial contact happen.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    And we still have trains and boats

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Does the company you're employed at always happily give you how many extra days you need to take a boat or to ride a train instead of taking a plane? Lucky you, I can promise you that's not the case everywhere.

    Like sure, you could insist on taking the cleanest transportation method available but that's definitely putting yourself on the chopping block and while starving to death due to not having income definitely is very climate friendly overall (less humans = less negative impact on climate after all) I really hope you can see yourself why this isn't actually a proper solution. Unless you want to see humanity go extinct but in that case might as well also continue the way we have so far.

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  • [–] 58 points 2 months ago

    Welcome to the platform for real humans instead of clankers

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago

    You found a greenwasher. There's a lot of them.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago

    Reddit's LLM powered filter (I am guessing Gemini) is interesting. I jokingly said to constantly bump your car into some else's car just hard enough to leave a mark but not create serious damage. The trigger may have been my use of the phrase "love tap" as I was instantly dinged a 3 day "ban" for advocating physical violence against another human being.

    Meanwhile with another service I posted a quote from a 19th century historical figure I hadn't know was a socialist and mysteriously the quote disappeared after I clicked submit. I freely admit my grasp of "good" grammar and English may not be that secure, but I am confident the text was there, and then suddenly it was gone.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    The only way to control people's behavior is to change the real world cost. Want to decrease consumption of high resource and CO2 foods? Stop externalizing their cost. Want to decrease people's AI usage? Stop externalizing costs. Want to encourage people to switch to lower CO2 transport? Stop externalizing costs. Want to encourage upcycling and decrease waste? Stop externalizing costs. Want companies in any business to decrease their ecological impact? Stop externalizing costs. If we actually charged what things cost then any market would naturally correct itself. If we just globally charged what things actually cost then that would about solve the situation almost overnight.

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    [–] 14 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    dude, they were on a flight, you know they're not serious from the get go

    https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/life-after-oil/2016/02/11/how-far-can-we-get-without-flying

    Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I looked up the company, and turns out this program might be part of a Keynote Livestream that is featuring the Mayor of San Fransisco lol.

    What is the name of the company?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago (11 children)

    Oh that could be me... I work at a major organization that directly interacts at the highest levels of climate policymaking. You know what I recently learned from our comms team? Policymakers are asking AI about the options in front of them. So they advised us to feed as much data as we can into these AIs, so that when policymakers ask AI about their options, they will not only get the lobbyist answer. What a world to live in.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (10 children)

    So they advised us to feed as much data as we can into these AIs, so that when policymakers ask AI about their options, they will not only get the lobbyist answer.

    That's not how AI works though. You can't feed data into an AI in a way that affects the answers other people get. It's not learning anything in real-time like that.

    If you want to "feed data" into an AI system all you can really do is publish that data publicly and wait for it to be scraped up into their training data.

    Edit: I'll admit that I overlooked the fact they do add conversations to training data but a single user is going to be weighted VERY low. Especially if their data looks like an outlier.

    Seems pretty unlikely to me that you could really influence the model in a meaningful way like that.

    Better off focusing on public/authoritative data that will get weighted a lot heavier.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    That is how AI works.

    Most AI... Gosh, I'm not sure what to call it here, models, agents, tools? Whatever, most AI things nowadays don't just rely on their dataset, they can also make queries out to the web. So, yes, making sure AI tools can easily get answers from your website is a real thing companies need to be aware of. Because the reality we live in now is that most people's search engines have an AI Summary at the top, and that's all most people are going to look at. Most people were already stopping at the first search result prior to this.

    It has a term I think? AIO maybe? I don't remember. Basically like SEO but for AI.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Soon you can cripple the US by knocking chatgpt off of the internet.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago*

    It is gross that someone who believes in sustainability would use AI for a thing IRL specifically dedicated for sustainability. People really shouldn't be using AI at all, but this is the worst version of it.

    Cognitive dissonance, or grifters just grifting

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    The issue here is using a llm to write protentialy really important documentation that should really be backed by real science.

    The issue is not the obvious hypocrisy.

    This is a variation on the “you said, on an iphone line” ai is everywhere people will use it and can still meaningfully criticize wasting tremendous amount of energy.

    How many of y'all do not eat meat, do not shop online, only consume content from ethical non corporate sources?

    The problem here is the blind confidence people have in these shallow text machines.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago

    Except unlike smartphones that are so ubiquitous and essential for life today, using chatbots is entirely elective and unnecessary.

    Meat is an important source of essential nutrition and eschewing it is a luxury to many people in the world. Online shopping, in this day and age, is very frequently the only way to acquire certain goods we need. It is practically impossible to stay informed as to the state of the world without reading news from corporate sources.

    There is nothing essential or unavoidable about ChatGPT. On the contrary, they and their audience would be much better served by not using it.

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    [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Its a good reminder that capitalism and its infinite urgency and extraction ideology is fueling the climate crisis and AI is just the latest and worst iteration of it.

    Needing to fly because our lives are so squshed by that same capitallism that makes taking a bus or train impractical is yet another symptom

    Soon LLM tools will become a luxury for the more affluent like flying as prices adjust up to correct for the absurd costs

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    God forbid we build more high speed rail.

    I've talked about this a lot, but it pisses me off so much that so many small towns where I live in Georgia (and maybe most states in the US) have little decommissioned train stops. But the train lines are still used. My parents live in a town with one. I live in a town with one. They're both within walking distance. In a better world I'd be able to catch a train to go see them without driving.

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    [–] 4 points 2 months ago*

    Sounds like he's got a career in politics ahead of him!

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    On a plane.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    "It turns out that the only way we can save the earth and control climate change and add sustainability is a whole shitload of data centers! I guess it's true then." /s

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Can't wait for them to field a question to clarify a point. :)

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