AI versus Marshy 59 - bye bye edition

Hello and welcome to the last edition of AI versus Marshy!

It feels weird writing that sentence - but it also feels very right.

Let’s rewind to a couple of months and explain why.

Have you ever had a niggle that won’t go away?

Well a couple of months ago this niggle was in full flight.

Here’s the niggle:

This current wave of generative AI isn’t good for the planet

And once I started digging into it I couldn’t unsee it:

• ​Google renegging on their carbon emissions goals - their greenhouse gas emissions have gone UP 48% since 2019
• ​As generative AI gets more complex - it’s energy consumption increases - image (and now video) generation uses roughly an order of magnitude more energy than text
• ​In the US coal powered energy stations are “staying open” to meet demand​
• ​The next generation of AI breakthroughs will require even more power - they also consume inordinate amounts of water

This though lodged in, and then I felt bummed.

It’s a technology that I can see huge amounts of potential for - but not at the expense of our planet’s livelihood.

At first - I thought, okay, don’t publish this week and see how you feel?

It’s now 6 weeks later and I still feel the same way.

My goal with this newsletter was to chronicle the biggest technological breakthrough we’re going to see in our lives and chart its impact.

It’s impact right now is kind of shitty - and for all the good parts, I can’t ignore the shitty part.

Some other contributing reasons:

• The newsletter doesn’t ladder into my business - I coach startups on growth and consult - this newsletter has sat separately and been done for fun
• I want to refocus on serving the startup community more - with more education and a community I’m calling Early Growth School
• After that inconvenient thought lodged in - covering AI developments and how we can use it felt like work, rather than the fun it used to be - and couldn’t marshall my energy back into another direction

So what’s going to happen from here?

I’m going to start again - building the newsletter with a focus on early growth for startups.

I get a lot of questions from business owners in this space and will seek to serve and answer them continuously over time.

Next week - you’ll get an email with a link asking you if you want to subscribe to the new format - you’ll need to click that link to “move” over to the new list.

If you don’t, I won’t move you - I’m cognisant of the fact that a good majority of subscribers are here for AI news - not “how to grow my early business” news.

And that’s totally okay - it was good while it lasted!

If you’ve got any questions or feedback I’m all ears - feel free to reply to this message and I’ll do my best to pay attention to it.

Thanks to all of you for taking an interest in the space and my writing - I really appreciate it.

This wave feels Forrest Gump-esque and I’m not even mad

-Marshy