Let's talk about Artificial Intelligence

[nomadpete]

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but....

The very first task that AI should complete successfully is to redesign itself to use far less electricity and no water. If it can't solve that problem, why should we trust it to do anything else?

 

[old man emu]

A big AI company wants to create data centres in Australia that will require more electricity than we are capable of generating. Data centres' demand for energy will increase more than sixfold from

2024–25 to 2040, surging from 2 to 13 per cent of the country's total energy use.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-27/ai-data-centres-pressuring-energy-transition-greenpeace-says/106722390

[willedoo]

I'm trying not to fall into the habit with Google of just reading the top section only which is the AI response to the question. The reason being it can be quite misleading. Like Wikiedia, it's not gospel and is all about the source reference. I Googled a question yesterday and the two answers AI came up with were just posts harvested from a Facebook group. What AI was saying was just what some bloke on a FB group said about the subject. It might well have been true, but not a reliable reference source in my opinion.

 

Wikipedia can have the same issues. Sometimes the reference, if the reader bothers to check it, can be just a newspaper article and a journalists opinion only and not established fact.

[willedoo]

The other issue I wonder about with Google AI is the revenue effect it will have on website operators. Most websites are funded by click per view payments from the advertising (sponsers) on their website. Google AI is harvesting information from their sites to use as a response to Google search questions. But if people don't go past the top of the page where the AI answer is, all those websites are missing out on site traffic which equals income. I wonder if Google pays them a royalty for using their information.

Edited Tuesday at 07:25 AM by willedoo

[Marty_d]

The difference is that Wikipedia can be corrected by anyone. AI can't.

If you don't want to get the AI guff, just put -AI after your search. For example:

 

Antonov AN2 -AI 

[willedoo]

 

5 hours ago, Marty_d said:

If you don't want to get the AI guff, just put -AI after your search. For example:

I tried it Marty but unfortunately it doesn't work. Maybe that trick only works with certain browsers.

[willedoo]

That's odd, it's working now. Good trick. I use Floorp which is Firefox based.

Edited Tuesday at 01:25 PM by willedoo

[onetrack]

It only works selectively. I use Google Chrome. I tried variations of the search, such as "-AI: What is Antonov AN2", or "no AI: What is Antonov AN2", and AI generated answers still appeared - but they were clips of text taken from websites (to which, they did add the link, I must say). 

 

I have to agree with Willie, that Google's use of short lengths of text from websites is a bit "iffy". However, they would no doubt quote "educational use rights", whereby you can copy parts of text of authors/websites, and it is regarded as "fair use" under copyright terms. And they do send you to the site quoted. However, Google generates income from doing so, so that negates the "fair use" angle, IMO.

 

Edited Tuesday at 01:31 PM by onetrack

[willedoo]

On the other side of the coin, if it's a simple straightforward question you want answered, the Google AI overview is a quick handy way to do it. I'm referring there to questions of the type that could probably only have a correct answer.

[red750]

Bizarre Trump order sees Aussies cut off from vital AI model

 

https://www.news.com.au/national/bizarre-trump-order-sees-aussies-cut-off-from-vital-ai-model/news-story/b09489d7f18f2fd7a537366de68669fc?utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_content=SocialBakers

[Jerry_Atrick]

On 07/06/2026 at 1:39 PM, nomadpete said:

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but....

The very first task that AI should complete successfully is to redesign itself to use far less electricity and no water. If it can't solve that problem, why should we trust it to do anything else?

 

 

 

On 09/06/2026 at 8:15 AM, willedoo said:

The other issue I wonder about with Google AI is the revenue effect it will have on website operators. Most websites are funded by click per view payments from the advertising (sponsers) on their website. Google AI is harvesting information from their sites to use as a response to Google search questions. But if people don't go past the top of the page where the AI answer is, all those websites are missing out on site traffic which equals income. I wonder if Google pays them a royalty for using their information.

https://anotherconcept.co.uk/insights/ai-overviews-are-affecting-paid-search

 

Indeed - it is worrying.. As AI just does harvest info, with less website content that will inevitably flow, bias is likely to creep into the answers it gives. 

 

On 09/06/2026 at 2:24 PM, willedoo said:

That's odd, it's working now. Good trick. I use Floorp which is Firefox based.

Hmm... That is odd. The browser should pass everything in the address bar to the server in the URL and provide a valid server response. If you are adding -AI in the google search and not the address bar, the browser should pass it as well formed in the context of a POST or GET request parameter (I don't know off the top of my head which Google uses). 

 

 

26 minutes ago, red750 said:

Bizarre Trump order sees Aussies cut off from vital AI model

 

https://www.news.com.au/national/bizarre-trump-order-sees-aussies-cut-off-from-vital-ai-model/news-story/b09489d7f18f2fd7a537366de68669fc?utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_content=SocialBakers

It's not just Australia - it is all foreign countries.. And i have a feeling it is to try and strangle Anthropic as they have come into conflict with Chump. 

 

On the question of data centre and power usage, AI wil just going to get bigger. But, I have a feeling that while the AI consumption will surge and there will be an overall surge in consumption, as AI displaces workers, the total level of consumption will normalise lower. Firstly, you won't require as many commercial buildings to be lit up, or the IT servers to just maintain the desktop infrastructure, nor all the PCs, etc. Ironially, in the information age, most of the information workers will be put out of work, and that will alleviate the electricity demand heavily (well, maybe except for summer months, when a/c is  switched on in the houses). It is not just the building and the desktop infrastructure - we will probably not need as many trams and trains running unless people replace their cars with public transport. Having said that, of course, EV takeup is higher so that may change things, but then again, solar and other localised renewables will take up some of the load. 

 

Secondly, enterprise server power consumption will be lower, too. This is because although companies will all need accounting systems, etc, everyone is moving this to the same data centres as AI (i.e. "the cloud"), and therefore, these servers will also house such systems, rather than separate servers, and their marginal use of electricity compared to stand alone use of electricity will be a lot lower. 

 

I have heard (not researched - so pls take this with a grain of salt) that SpaceX is looking to develop satellite based data centres - solar power is supposedly easily harnessed and using their satellites for networking, will be offering this as an alternative. However, I can't help but think of nefarious state actors tracking them and right at their most opportune moment, destroying them - something I am sure SpaceX engineers are thinking about. 

 

On 09/06/2026 at 5:17 AM, willedoo said:

I Googled a question yesterday and the two answers AI came up with were just posts harvested from a Facebook group. What AI was saying was just what some bloke on a FB group said about the subject. It might well have been true, but not a reliable reference source in my opinion.

All AI models rely on being "trained" and machine learning. This is basically reading data - and lots of it - the more it consumes, the more statistically (not necessarily in reality) accurate it becomes. For example, if AI was around in 300 BC and it was trained in earth science data at the time, it would statistically deduce that the earth is flat and everything revolved around the earth. That would have been statistically valid, though inaccurate. Also, AI won't have been trained on everything and there just simply may not be the data available to be accurate. AI generally uses machine learning, which is an advanced probability calculation described by Bayes theorem (usually) across a lot of data.  So, if the data is wrong, so is AI. But, that is the same for real intelligence, too. 

 

What the AI model does if it doesn't have much data on something, is go to the web. I would imagine it can't possibly eek out every tidbit of information, so it probably has some weighting algorithm to determine the most likely accurate sites to rely on. Whilst it doesn't get it right, it at least, in these cases, quotes its sources for you to check, which is a good thing. 

 

 

[red750]

16 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

SpaceX is looking to develop satellite based data centres

Does that mean the cloud will be in the sky?

[nomadpete]

58 minutes ago, red750 said:

Does that mean the cloud will be in the sky?

Speaking as A glider pilot, thay's the best place to put clouds