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Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

andymasley.substack.com

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Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#101

Post by ido »

bitwize wrote: post #62
throwaway314155 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right just a little bit of restraint. On an unprecedented scale of coordination by hundreds of millions to billions of people - a scale of cooperation that has probably never occurred in human history (and there's no reason to believe it will any time soon). But sure, if people "just" did a "little", it would go a long way. Just a _little_ restraint from the entire population all at once in perpetuity. No big deal.

You do this through the government. Implement meat rations. Everybody is only allowed so much meat per week. So you have to make it count.

There's less extreme government action possible: tax meat & dairy higher.

There are already precedents for that, for example here in Germany cigarettes are taxed to about 70% and hard-liquor (altho it's more complicated to calculate as it depends on exact alcohol content) to about 40%.

Meat is only taxed at 7% via VAT (similar to sales tax in the US).

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#102

Post by sitkack »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #75
wmf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was already done years ago and people are predicting that the grid will be maxed out soon.

Build new data centers near sources of power, and grid capacity isn’t going to be a problem. Heck, American industry used to follow that (building garment factories on fast moving rivers before electricity was much of a thing, Boeing grew up in the northwest due to cheap aluminum helped out by hydro). Why is AI somehow different from an airplane?

You are massively conflating what is possible with what is done.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#103

Post by scottcha »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #97
scottcha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a large number of reasons the AI datacenters are geographically distributed--just to list a few off the top of my head which come up as top drivers: latency, data sovereignty, resilience, grid capacity, renewable energy availability.

Why does latency matter for a model that responds in 10s of seconds? Latency to a datacenter is measured in 10s or 100s of milliseconds, which is 3-4 orders of magnitude less.

Two reasons that I understand 1. not all these AIs are LLMs and many have much lower latency SLAs than chat and 2. These are just one part of a service architecture and when you have multiple latencies across the stack they tend to have multiplicative effects.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#104

Post by VSerge »

jchw wrote: post #64
bitwize wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do this through the government. Implement meat rations. Everybody is only allowed so much meat per week. So you have to make it count.

I think this might be the first idea I've ever heard that I truly feel will backfire far worse than alcohol prohibition. I almost want to see it happen.

All families can't afford meat daily, let alone any type of meat they want. So, some families might favor chicken and certain processed meats here and there, but most cuts of beef and lamb for example might be out of the question, and so will daily meat consumption. The same applies for dairy, they might afford big blocks of tasteless cheese, but won't touch often cheese with taste, French or otherwise. There is no enforced rationing, but choice is reduced if not removed for a good fraction of the population, purely for economic reasons.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#105

Post by titanomachy »

The major players in AI are collectively burning 1-2 gigawatts, day and night, on research and development of the next generation of LLMs. This is as much as my city of a million people. The impact is real, and focusing on inference cost per query kind of misses the point. Every person who uses these tools contributes to the demand and bears some of the responsibility. Similar to how I have responsibility for the carbon emissions of a flight, even if the plane would have flown without me.

I'm saying this as someone who finds LLMs helpful, and uses them without feeling particularly guilty about it. But we should be honest about the costs.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#106

Post by ido »

RHSeeger wrote: post #93
throwaway314155 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right just a little bit of restraint. On an unprecedented scale of coordination by hundreds of millions to billions of people - a scale of cooperation that has probably never occurred in human history (and there's no reason to believe it will any time soon). But sure, if people "just" did a "little", it would go a long way. Just a _little_ restraint from the entire population all at once in perpetuity. No big deal.

- Ozone - Efficient Lighting (LEDs now, but others before) - Santa Claus There are certainly examples of a large portion of the population of the planet working together towards common goals. A lot of people putting in a little bit of effort _does_ happen, and it _does_ produce results.

Smoking, drinking - both on the decline for the last decades.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#107

Post by [deleted] »

yapyap wrote: post #11

Such a stupid post, I know people on HN don’t like absolute descriptors like that and sorry for that. Obviously the LLMs and ChatGPT don’t use the most energy when answering your question, they churn through insane amounts of water and energy when training them, so much so that big tech companies do not disclose and try to obscure those amounts as much as possible. You aren’t destroying the environment by using it RI…

[deleted]

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#108

Post by dijit »

idle_zealot wrote: post #66
saagarjha wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Americans are about 15% of the world's emissions, of which 25% or so is transportation, of which well over half is cars. So you not driving to work is making direct impact on 2-3% of the world's overall emissions. Likewise, your decisions on all the other things, if taken in aggregate, will have a significant impact on overall…

"Driving to work" is hardly a "vote with your wallet" style consumer choice. Our housing, building, and transportation policies have been geared towards encouraging car-dependence for nearly a century. In places with better public transit and bike lanes, people spontaneously choose to use those modes of transport. Just like with companies dumping as much plastic waste/CO2 as they can get away with, this is a policy p…

I would agree with you, but Americans intentionally reinforce car dependence whenever it's discussed.

It's bad enough that even non-US people regurgitate those talking points despite them being significantly less true for them; because they see it so much online.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#110

Post by saagarjha »

idle_zealot wrote: post #66
saagarjha wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Americans are about 15% of the world's emissions, of which 25% or so is transportation, of which well over half is cars. So you not driving to work is making direct impact on 2-3% of the world's overall emissions. Likewise, your decisions on all the other things, if taken in aggregate, will have a significant impact on overall…

"Driving to work" is hardly a "vote with your wallet" style consumer choice. Our housing, building, and transportation policies have been geared towards encouraging car-dependence for nearly a century. In places with better public transit and bike lanes, people spontaneously choose to use those modes of transport. Just like with companies dumping as much plastic waste/CO2 as they can get away with, this is a policy p…

See, my point is that everyone first goes “it’s not me”, then they understand it is them and go “but it’s not my policies” and then they vote in the policies which are the problem. It’s totally fine to go “we need collective action to fix this”. But you have to actually join the collective action. You think billionaires are getting rich by committing environmental arbitrage? Then don’t oppose attempts to make the costs appropriate, even if you must now pay your fair share too.
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