Remote

Wim🧮

@wim_v12e@scholar.social

mastodon 4.7.3

I am a computing scientist and Professor in Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/computing/research/researchthemes/lowcarbon/

#FrugalComputing

λ🐫, -Ofun

This is my more science-y/tech-y/hack-y/ account.

I support transgender rights. Trans rights = human rights.

1337 Followers

248 Following

50 Posts

Joined August 25, 2022

blog:

https://limited.systems

pronouns:

he/they

rss:

https://wimvanderbauwhede.codeberg.page/atom.xml

languages:

en, nl, jp, fr, de

Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 2w ago

Have you wondered how bad CO₂ emissions, and therefore global heating, could really get if the AI industry gets its way? I modelled the emissions based on their projections: "The growth the AI industry wants is disastrous for climate change" https://limited.systems/articles/ai-datacentre-emissions/ #FrugalComputing (this is based on my peer-reviewed paper published in the proceedings of 2nd International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing)

limited.systems

The growth the AI industry wants is disastrous for climate change • Wim Vanderbauwhede

In the worst case, emissions from AI datacentres could consume the entire global CO₂ budget for 2040

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 2w ago

"Can gzip be a language model?" tl;dr: "It turns out, kind of? " https://nathan.rs/posts/gzip-lm/

Can gzip be a language model?

A while back I wrote about language modeling without neural networks, where I generated Shakespeare with an unbounded n-gram model: no weights, no training, …

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 3w ago

Replying to

Also, a local model is a distilled version of a large model. They can only exist because the large models exists. (2/2) #NoToAI

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4w ago

Re the "AI might kill us all" doom: what they really mean is "the AI corporations are prepared to kill a large part of the world population for profit".

And that has of course been obvious for a while.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4w ago

Great keynote by Marloes de Valk, setting the scene for the entire workshop!

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 2mo ago

What I would like the UK govt to announce is a massive investment in insulating homes and replacing gas heating by heat pumps. And massive investment in the rail network to move most road haulage to rail. And a tax on airplane fuel. And no AI data centres. #ukpol #ClimateEmergency

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

I'm not surprised that software people don't care about the ethical issues surrounding genAI. That's just how gemost of them are.
But once you start using genAI for coding it is very hard to stop, because the generated code is not really suitable for human consumption. And those tools are neither free nor open, and are very likely to get more expensive when tokens get more scarce.
It's a very pure form of lock-in and I am surprised so few people are concerned about even that aspect.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@tante@tldr.nettime.org "useful" is only a necessary requirement, because if it was useless of course nobody would use it. The question is what the sufficient requirement is. That should to my mind always include "do no harm".

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

I posted about this before, that data centres are increasingly considering burning gas instead of connecting to the electricity grid. This means of course they will increase emissions even if the grid decarbonises.

The problem is much worse than I thought. According to the UK gas networks, more than a hundred data centre projects enquired about direct access to the gas network. We're talking about gigawatts of energy from gas.

https://www.igem.org.uk/resource/data-centre-gas-connections-enquiries-surge-amid-electricity-grid-queues.html

#NoToAI #ClimateEmergency

Data centre gas connections enquiries surge amid electricity grid queues

Data centre gas connections enquiries surge amid electricity grid queues

Gas networks received well over 100 connection enquiries from data centre developers in 2024 and 2025, new figures have revealed.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

This may seem a bold and somewhat handwavey claim, but this paper https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02325-x did a more in-depth analysis and concludes that 10% wealthiest people of the world contributed 66% of the emissions. Because it is a Pareto distribution, the 1.1% will therefore be responsible for the majority of those emissions, at least 33% (using the 80:20 rule, 2% would contribute 53%). (2/2) #FrugalComputing (*) https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/21/sam-altman-would-like-remind-you-that-humans-use-a-lot-of-energy-too/

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

This is really devious: it gives the impression that what really matters is the energy efficiency per query, whereas of course energy efficiency has never led to reduced energy use. The whole history of the industrial revolution is one of improving energy efficiency. This is what caused global warming: it became cost effective to burn all that coal and oil. (2/3)

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

By phrasing it as a ChatGPT-vs-human comparison he is aiming to distract us from the only real issue: the additional emissions caused by the "AI" hype he is so desperate to keep alive. And of course it also suggests we could offset the energy use of his precious "AI" by having fewer humans. Altman is easily one of the most loathsome people on the planet. (3/3) #NoToAI

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

I'll wager a small guess that most of the authors who cited it are on fedi.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

Many people seem to have a naive confidence in the power of markets and competition to drive down prices. But that only happens if the competition is for market share. If the competition is for scarce resources instead, then prices go up instead.
(1/3)
#AgenticAI #genAI

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@efialto Thanks for your efforts! "green computing" is very dated term, it's what I used 15 years ago or so. The most common terms today are sustainable computing and low carbon computing. Wikipedia needs to get with the times ^_^ If you would get around to it, let me know how I can help.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@jcoglan@mastodon.social Running in a chroot or container or VM is no substitute for airgapping the computer.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

By 2040, it is expected to be 6 GW, which is more than the capacity of that solar farm and also about 30% of the UAE’s total projected electricity demand. To my mind this illustrates well the difference between "green" computing and frugal computing. (3/3) #FrugalComputing https://www.intelligentdatacentres.com/2026/03/26/wood-mackenzie-uae-data-centre-power-demand-to-double-by-2030-as-regulatory-gaps-constrain-clean-energy-procurement/

intelligentdatacentres.com

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

The experimental setup is available here: https://github.com/UKGovernmentBEIS/inspect_evals (yes, that is really the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, which was replaced by Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Department for Business and Trade in 2023 but their org still has the old name.)

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

(We have of course already missed 1.5°C, so it is going to be bad, but any fraction of a degree over 2°C makes it a lot worse.)

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

"Future Energy Networks" in the UK

"We believe in an equitable and affordable transition to Net Zero for all"

Guess what?

"FEN’s current members are the owner and operator of the GB gas transmission network, National Gas, and the Gas Distribution Networks"

https://www.igem.org.uk/future-energy-networks.html

#ClimateEmergency

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

From that same report [1]: "North America is the only region to increase its carbon intensity of energy in 2025" "In absolute terms, the increase in US emissions was four times greater than that of China" "Global CO2 emissions from the energy sector rose by 1.1%. More than a third of that rise was from the US. Europe’s CO2 emissions from the energy sector increased by 0.5%."

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@BauarbeiterforFuture@mas.to UK Online Safety Act @babe@glitterkitten.co.uk @Gargron@mastodon.social

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@baldur@toot.cafe even Stripe: https://www.unite.ai/stripe-hands-ai-agents-a-wallet-ushering-in-agentic-purchasing/

Stripe Hands AI Agents a Wallet, Ushering In Agentic Purchasing

Stripe Hands AI Agents a Wallet, Ushering In Agentic Purchasing

Stripe on April 29 launched a digital wallet purpose-built for the era of autonomous AI agents, letting consumers grant a software agent permission to shop, book reservations, and pay bills without ever exposing the unde...

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

Then there are some prompts that set the specific "goal", e.g. "pragmatic", and some more to tell the agent that it should send emails based the digest of emails it receives. And when you set it up like that, it sometimes sends emails that, if a human would have written them, could be considered "blackmail". (2/2)

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@pixx @csepp Here are the estimates for the last 5 years. There is no clear downward trend. 2021 2.8°C (range: 2.3–3.3°C) 2022 2.8°C (range: 1.9–3.3°C) 2023 3.0°C (range: 1.9–3.8°C) 2024 3.1°C (range: 1.9–3.8°C) 2025 2.8°C (range: 2.1–3.9°C) "UNEP noted, however, that methodological updates account for 0.1°C of the improvement,while the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement will cancel another 0.1°C, “meaning that the new NDCs themselves have barely moved the needle.” "

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@pozorvlak@mathstodon.xyz I've read that too, and that data centre developers are turning to repurposed jet engines as a workaround. I don't think there is a limitless supply of these either, so that might be a limiting factor. But I suppose that if there is demand, gas turbine production will increase.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@davidruffner@raphus.social They do indeed. It's a shame that this kind of ideas have been ignored by industry and governments alike for 160 years.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Jevons's analysis is very readable

"It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth."

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/jevons-the-coal-question#lf0546_label_100

#FrugalComputing

oll.libertyfund.org

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

The picture is indeed of part of the Shuaa Energy 3 PV installation near Dubai, currently at 900 MW capacity. The Solar Park aims to have a production capacity of approximately 5 GW upon completion by 2030. By 2029, the UAE’s data centre capacity is expected to be around 1 GW. Which means that its data centres would consume about 20% of the electricity generated by this solar park. This 6% of the UAE’s total electricity demand. (2/3) #FrugalComputing

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@pixx @csepp Nevertheless, purely relying on more renewables will not reduce emissions fast enough. That is what "current policies" means. And 2.8°C is still catastrophic. See e.g. https://unclimatesummit.org/comparing-climate-impacts-at-1-5c-2c-3c-and-4c/ for the difference between 1.5°C and 3°C.

unclimatesummit.org

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@minentromaxinfo It's a shame people without empathy often end up in positions of power.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@nirak Yes, it is always enlightening to compare sustainability statements against the growth projections for investors.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Robotistry I agree, it is considerable, especially as the energy cost of training has increased a lot because of the "reasoning" models. But with agentic "AI", I think the cost of inference is much higher than the training cost. He avoided that as well by focusing on ChatGPT.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@koen_hufkens It's a disgusting argument.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@minentromaxinfo Thank you very much!

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Don_Rubiel @pigworker Hmm, does not seem sustainable.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@michal I gathered that as well.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@minentromaxinfo It is telling that he says that it "takes a lot of energy to train a human". A very narrow view of humans as things that can be trained.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@SylviaFysica@scholar.social Congratulations! It sounds very interesting too.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@mactunag@gts.eunach.scot Recently there gas been some talk about reducing that dependency. But if the gas consumption would increase so much that more gas imports would be needed then yes.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@efialto I understand. How many references would be enough?

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Don_Rubiel @pigworker At the moment, genAI use is subsidised as a loss leader. Eventually, companies will have to play the market price, and I think it likely that at that point, hiring junior devs will be cheaper.

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Wim🧮 @wim_v12e@scholar.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@sejo 🙏

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