• Deestan@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Training the models is very resource intensive, but after that it’s basically fine. I can run Midjourney image generation on my modest gaming laptop. Takes maybe 30 seconds for a high-resolution image at a laptop’s “gaming mode” power consumption.

    AI image generation is comparable in electric use to e.g. playing Valheim or Elden Ring.

    It’s when it’s scaled up industrially that it becomes a huge waste of electricity. Me playing Valhelm for 5 minutes is nothing. My startup creating 20000 bots playing Valheim 24/7 is a problem for society.

    • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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      13 hours ago

      It’s the mining of diamonds that kills all the children. After the diamond is mined, I can use it with almost no child deaths. Diamonds are fine.

      • ayyy
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        5 hours ago

        No, using an already-trained model doesn’t “use up” the model in exactly the same way that pirating a movie doesn’t steal anything from Hollywood.

      • huginn@feddit.it
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        10 hours ago

        I mean yeah: if we went and killed every person who benefits from conflict diamonds and closed all blood diamond mines why wouldn’t you be cool with using the resources? Their evil origin has little to do with their practical utility and if the original sin is expiated there’s no reason not to?

        Like yeah conflict diamonds have basically no purpose because we can make diamonds cheaper and better in labs but in a situation where there are more practical uses (cobalt, LLMs) once we cleanse the land of the sinners why wouldn’t we use their ill gotten gains for good?

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          3 hours ago

          Do the concepts “reparations” or “compensation for loss and damage” mean anything to you?

          The people who were exploited should be the ones to benefit from those diamonds.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              1 hour ago

              Sounds like you think we should use the diamonds. I wouldn’t be cool with using those diamonds because they belong to the people who were forced to mine them, not me.

      • Deestan@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        I see your point and agree with it, but I believe you read more defense in my comment than I tried to put in.

        I’m not in favor of this waste.

    • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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      13 hours ago

      Is Midjourney available for use locally now? Or have you misunderstood Midjourney taking 30 seconds to generate from their server as happening locally?

      • Gutek8134@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        I know a guy that uses Stable Diffusion XL locally with a few LORAs, last time I’ve heard one 2k image took 2 minutes on RTX 30 or 40 something

        IDK how expensive is Midjourney in comparison, but running it locally doesn’t sound impossible