this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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hmm guess which one also doesn't suck the energy equivalent of a sizeable town
I'd like all ai service to publish the energy used in training the model and performing inference.
"Queries uses an average of X kWh of power. A model training run requires X MWh, and the development of this model over the years required X TWh of power."
Then we could judge companies by that metric. Off course, rich people would look for the most power-draining model for the sake of it.
That's already something that Meta is doing for their Llama models:
You can extrapolate openai models consumption from these I guess
ok, but
Is it still bad if they use renewables? in which case, it's not horrendous, is it?
what about the rest of their servers?
Fuck facebook
If we are abundant in renewable energy no but if we are still at a level where available renewable energy can be used to replace non-renewable, then AI tech needs to justify its use cases too.
and servers yes, social media related data center energy consumption should be put under heavy scrutiny too. Especially considering some energy hungry social media platforms like facebook are lately causing more harm than good (on other fronts such as political propaganda and racism). I doubt any of these are gonna happen soon though since many governments are heavily invested in using social media and LLM chatbots for propaganda and surveillance.
We already have a way for society to decide what is and isn't worth spending power and effort on and it's called money.
Increase carbon taxes to incentivize clean fuel sources and ban predatory advertising and data tracking behaviour because it's problematic.
We do not need to setup a separate shadow economy to gatekeep what is and isn't worth spending eoectricity on.
This part is kind of hard to measure. When do you start counting? From the first work that informed the research direction eventually leading to this model? From the point where the concept of this final model first came about? Do you split the energy usage between multiple models that came from the same work?
That's something of a red herring. The source of that energy matters more than how much is used (use renewables where possible) - your ire is directed at entirely the wrong place; and also how much is used in computers and datacentres doing other stuff? If I'm generating pictures I'm not playing games, which is using the same card and probably more constantly.
I gotta congratulate you though, that's an argument that to my knowledge was NOT levelled against photography when that was invented. I mean like all the other arguments it's bollocks but at least it's new! <pretty much every other argument against ai art was levelled at photography and many of therm at pre-mixed paints before that!>
by no means this is a new argument and it is not aimed at individual use cases so "If I dont ai I game" doesn't really apply and is severely shortsighted
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/04/can-the-climate-survive-the-insatiable-energy-demands-of-the-ai-arms-race
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/07/ai-climate-change-energy-disinformation-report
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2024/05/23/ai-is-pushing-the-world-towards-an-energy-crisis/
Perhaps do a bit of research to update your latest knowledge before writing cocky answers
Again, we need to shift towards renewables. AI is not the problem you're angry with here, stop railing against new technology and new artistic media and start railing against oil companies
And by new I meant "not over a hundred years old", not "over three months old"
you really like someone else doing your job for you:
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/hidden-costs-ai-impending-energy-and-resource-strain
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/power-mad-ais-massive-energy-demand-risks-causing-major-environmental-headaches-2023-12-04/
https://www.numenta.com/blog/2022/05/24/ai-is-harming-our-planet/
(discalaimer: this is just to argue that these arguments are almost as old chatgpt, I am not endorsing any of the articles above and have not read all)
In a world that is in an energy crisis and cant still produce enough renewable energy to replace most of its non renewables, I am not going to rail new tech but I will rail against billionaires who try to abuse ownership of a new tech to gain more money with questionable returns compared to damage its causing. I am going to note again that this is not railing/criticism against all use cases and development of AI. But for a minute fraction of compute requirements of AI platforms like chatgpt, academics can probably come up with AI/machine learning algorithms that can maybe optimise energy usage and distribution.