@evan We need to take seriously the moment we are in, when we can resist the proliferation of this system. On environmental grounds alone we can refuse to support this massively destructive technology.
- driving a gas powered car about 10km generates about 2kg CO2 equivalent.
- eating a single beef meal is about 9kg CO2 equivalent.
- Using an LLM for half an hour is about 0.005kg CO2 with a dirty coal electrical grid, much less with renewables.
Maybe we have other things we should be working on first.
Using an LLM for half an hour is about 0.005kg CO2 with a dirty coal electrical grid
And if use of the LLM were the biggest part of its electric cost, this would almost be a fair point (only almost, because there are things that go into that electricity use that are likely not being factored in, but that's not really the main point).
But regular use is not the biggest problem. Training models consumes massive amounts of electricity. And AI companies are constantly training new models to improve their performance.
And the only reason they need to keep training new models is because people keep using them.
"Using AI barely uses any electricity" isn't a reasonable argument, because it obscures the fact that AI companies are using massive amounts of electricity.
@danjones000 @Matt_Noyes read the rest of the thread. Adding in training gets us to about 0.0065kg CO2eq, although it's not clear if they count that in the original estimate.
@evan The article that @Matt_Noyes posted in the thread pretty clearly laid out the massive amount of electricity that AI data centers are using. That article isn't the only one saying the same thing. AI is using massive amounts of power.
Traditional server racks consume 5-15 kW, while AI-optimized racks with high-performance GPUs require 40-60+ kW. Some cutting-edge AI training facilities are pushing individual racks to 100+ kW, fundamentally changing data center design and cooling requirements. (ref)
It doesn't really matter if the power is coming from requests to the API, running the models, training the models, or making ritual sacrifices to Baphomet in hopes of making the models sentient.
If someone is using AI, they are indirectly contributing to that power usage. If you can acknowledge that and make peace with it, fine. But, saying that the energy cost is minimal in light of this is ignoring reality.
@danjones000 @Matt_Noyes electricity is only about 1/3 of global emissions. All data centers, including AI datacenters, are only 1% of electricity usage. That makes 0.3% of total emissions.
Much more emissions are due to cars, meat, cement production and rice cultivation.
I recognize that AI has a lot of electricity use; it is nothing compared to the other things you do with your time.
@danjones000 @Matt_Noyes It does not hurt to try to reduce those emissions; reducing any emissions is good.
But claiming that AI is solely responsible for climate change is intellectually dishonest.
There are plenty of other problems with AI; "burning up the planet" is not a convincing one.
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@evan @danjones000 This does sound like denialism, though, doesn't it? Cow farts, and all.
@evan @danjones000 Respectfully, the "shaming people" line is not serious, right? "solely responsible for climate change" - had anyone ever made that claim?
@Matt_Noyes @danjones000 I don't think climate change is a fair last resort when questioning someone's use of LLMs. There are plenty of other reasons not to use them.
@evan I don't think anyone in this thread used it as a "last resort" to question the use of LLMs. @Matt_Noyes brought it up as a legitimate problem. Nobody has said that it's the only problem. Nobody said that LLMs are there worst cause of climate change.
But when it was brought up as a problem, you dismissed it very casually because an individual's use of LLMs doesn't contribute much to the problem. When I brought up that an individual's use is not the actual problem because it takes a bunch of individuals to drive the demand that causes the problem (evidenced by the exponentially increasing demand for electricity-hungry data centers), you knocked down a bunch of strawmen.
That was intellectually dishonest.
Denying anthropogenic climate change? No. I worked for four years in a climate change non-profit. In this thread, I gave a few examples of human activities that cause greenhouse gas emissions.
My sole point is that it's sad when people don't understand the relative importance of different activities for causing climate change.