In a quarterly earnings call that was overwhelmingly about AI and Meta’s plans for it, Zuckerberg said that new, AI-generated feeds are likely to come to Facebook and other Meta platforms. Zuckerberg said he is excited for the “opportunity for AI to help people create content that just makes people’s feed experiences better.” Zuckerberg’s comments were first reported by Fortune.
“I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated or AI summarized content or kind of existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” he said. “And I think that that’s going to be just very exciting for the—for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads or other kind of Feed experiences over time.”
I learned today that every AI prompt uses about 16 ounces of clean water. It was really depressing.
If you think that’s depressing, wait until you find out that it’s basically nothing in the grand scheme of things.
spoiler
Most sources agree that we use about 4 trillion cubic meters of water every year worldwide (Although, this stat is from 2015 most likely, and so it will be bigger now). In 2022, using the stats here Microsoft used 1.7 billion gallons per year, and Google 5.56 billion gallons per year. In cubic meters that’s only 23.69 million cubic meters. That’s only 0.00059% of the worldwide water usage. Meanwhile agriculture uses on average 70% of a country’s daily fresh water.
Even if we just look at the US, since that’s where Google and Microsoft are based, they use 322 billion gallons of water every day, resulting in about 445 billion cubic meters per year, that’s still 0.00532%. So you can have 187 more Googles and Microsofts before you even top a single percentage.
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And as others have pointed out the water isn’t gone, there’s some cyclicality in how the water is used.
It doesn’t use water in the sense that it is consuming it. It “uses” water in the sense that it is temporarily in a datacenter, gets a little hot, and then leaves the datacenter. I don’t even think a lot of datacenters use actual drinking water, instead taking water directly from a river, warming it slightly, and putting it back in said river.
Not to say I like AI, or think it’s a good thing. But this phrase that’s been going around just bugs me, because it’s really misleading. We should be focused on the ridiculous amount of energy it consumes, not the water it temporarily uses.
From what I learned the problem is they don’t put it back in the river, it’s just in the coolant systems and stays there. And they won’t disclose how much they are actually using.
Funny, the first thing I do when I recognize that something is AI-generated media, I make an effort never to visit that site/channel/feed/whatever ever again.
The metaverse a resounding failure, Facebook has latched on to the AI hype train in hopes of making the company relevant. They’re basically put of ideas on how to feed the beast of “forever growth” the markets demand.
They have a slim chance if they keep subsidizing VR headsets to hold a and luceative chunk of the VR market when that actually takes off. VR is genuinely cool enough that enough people will get hooked once they experience a headset on their face with a VR experience that jives with them
I’ve played VR before. But I don’t see it as a necessity just to play video games. It’s also incredibly disorienting after playing for a while, and it’s expensive to get the VR headsets, usually, also requiring you to already have a console, or PC to hook up to, so why wouldn’t we just play regular games then?
All of the things you listed are either being worked on, or are mischaracterizations of the state of VR.
1: VR motion sickness is an issue some people get, unfortunately. It happens if you have a mind that refuses to acknowledge and accept conflicting information from your inner ears and your eyes… which people with motion sickness often have. When you try to “push” yourself to accept VR movement when you are already feeling sick from it, it gets worse. You’re supposed to only do a few minutes of movement in VR at a time, and stop when you start feeling sick. Getting over this is referred to as “getting your VR legs”. Once you do, you will be able to do hours without it showing up, and motion sickness irl might get less problematic.
2: Standalone VR, which runs a special version of Android, as much as I’m not a fan, is already here and usable with the (absurdly affordable) Meta Quest series, the (Chinese alternative) Pico, the (Apple tax’ed expensive) Apple Vision, and possibly Valve’s new Index.
3: Not every game is meant to be played in VR, but vehicle games and a lot of other unique experiences that require you to have your head on a swivel or interact with lots of in-world objects in a 3D space? Amazing. Playing Flight Simulator without a VR headset just isn’t the same.
I have to disagree. When I tried out a VR headset at a con I spent 2 hours with the headset on in Space Pirate Training Simulator thinking it had only been 20 minutes. This was the $250 Meta Quest 2 while I had a heavy backpack on my back because I didn’t have anyone with me to leave my bag with. I was trying to be conscious with not taking too much time with the headset so others could have a chance and figured about 15-20 minutes would be appropriate but apparently I was completely in the zone!
I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had that much of a time traveling game experience, so I’d say VR is a pretty dang cool experience and once hardware costs come down (or headsets become more ubiquitous) it’ll probably be a pretty big market for gamers, much like how consoles are now
fac##ok thrash fediverse better /hj
What is Mark has been a sentient AI for some time?
