Comparing magnitudes does not prove the headline, poor analysis.
Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
121–130 of 337 posts
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#122Earlier 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.
Not by rationing, if you meant the US government: US per-capita consumption of meat is 328 lbs/year [UN FAO]. You'd try to reduce the subsidies and incentives for meat/ corn/ soybean production which are baked into the USDA budget ($200bn in 2024), since the 1930s (Great Depression), and more since the 1950s (and related stuff like the marketing tool of the "Food Pyramid"). These will be as politically hard to cancel as defense production or military bases or prisons.
Here's even a 2023 editorial from the Kansas City Star pointing the blame at Big Ag "Corn drives US food policy. But big business, not Midwestern farmers, reaps the reward" [0]:
> No, corn is not an evil crop, nor are farmers in the Corn Belt shady criminals. However, the devastating effect of corn owes to the industrialization of the plant by a small group of global agribusiness and food conglomerates, which acts as a kind of de facto corn cabal. These massive corporations — seed companies, crop and meat processors, commodity traders and household food and beverage brands — all survive on cheap commodity corn, which currently costs about 10 cents a pound. Corn’s versatility makes it the perfect crop to “scale” (commoditize, industrialize and financialize).
A libertarian take is the Cato Institute "Farm Bill Sows Dysfunction for American Agriculture" [1]:
> The Sprawling Farm Bill:... has its roots in the century-old New Deal and is revised by Congress every five years... "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was added to the Farm Bill in 1973 to ensure support from rural and urban lawmakers, accounts for about three-quarters of the omnibus package. Some lawmakers and pundits have proposed splitting SNAP from the Farm Bill to stop the logrolling and facilitate a clearer debate on farm subsidy programs, which make up the rest of the bill." ...aslo criticizes crop insurance subsidies (which mainly go on the four big crops), Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) ("Welfare for Wealthier Farmers"), Crop insurance subsidies (" originally envisioned as a more stable and cost-efficient alternative to ad hoc disaster payments, but they have acted more as a supplement than a replacement—and may have actually increased risks along the way.")
[0]: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-com...
[1]: https://www.cato.org/policy-investigation/farm-bill-sows-dys...
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#123~90% of the plastic debris in the ocean comes from ten rivers [0]. eight are in china/SEA. millions and billions of single-use items are sitting in warehouses and on store shelves wrapped in plastic. even before the plastic is discarded, the factories these items are produced in dump metric tons of waste into the oceans/soil with little repercussion. point is, none of our "personal lifestyle decisions" - not eating m…
This is nothing but head-in-the-sand, arms-in-the-air, feel-good baloney to convince oneself to sleep well at night.
Guess what happens when you buy a used laptop instead of a new one?
That's right: less "standard practice overseas manufacturing".
Lifestyle change right there.
Buying less, using the same for longer, buying used goods instead of new are lifestyle changes that anyone can make and have an undeniable very clear impact by reducing the amount of stuff that needs to get made. Using my smartphone for 6 years instead of changing every 3 years doesn't mean the one I didn't buy gets sold elsewhere. It means one less sale.
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However articles like this must link to references. There are links to sources for every piece of data in the article.
Where? One of the most crucial points "Training an AI model emits as much as 200 plane flights from New York to San Francisco" This seems to come from this blog https://icecat.com/blog/is-ai-truly-a-sustainable-choice/#:~... . which refers to this article https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-... which is talking about models like *GPT-2, BERT, and ELMo* -- _5+ year old models_ at this point. Th…
I assume this comes from the 60GWh figure, which does translate to about 200 flights (assuming energy density of gasoline; in actual CO2 emissions it was probably less since likely cleaner energy was used than for running planes).
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#125~90% of the plastic debris in the ocean comes from ten rivers [0]. eight are in china/SEA. millions and billions of single-use items are sitting in warehouses and on store shelves wrapped in plastic. even before the plastic is discarded, the factories these items are produced in dump metric tons of waste into the oceans/soil with little repercussion. point is, none of our "personal lifestyle decisions" - not eating m…
I have always felt this way too. Our personal choices do not move the needle on fossil fuel and plastics. One could embrace aversion to these out of a sense of sustainability to signal virtue, but lets not pretend it will save the planet. It won't. Restricting aviation flights, stopping wars and minimizing the dirty fuel used in maritime freight does much more. But the world will not do it.
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#126Earlier 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.
People, especially men, get irrationally angry by even the slightest thought of their precious meat being touched (including here on HN; there are more than a few crackpots over here who promote a meat only or even red meat only diet). If there would be a reason to violently overthrow the gov, this would probably be it; not for the things that actually matter to better or save humanity, but to save their daily meat platter.
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vegetarian here. People who eat meat tend to reduce their consumption if you 1. charge them appropriately for it and 2. give them good alternatives. Telling them to not do something usually makes them angry unfortunately.
> Telling them to not do something usually makes them angry unfortunately Then it's up to you to get even angrier.
Angry people are spiteful. I generally find it a lot more productive to get them to understand why their choices have consequences, how the can (progressively!) fix the problems, and watch things improve from there.
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#128The title does not match the content. A more appropriate title is "Emissions caused by chatgpt use are not significant in comparison to everything else." But, given that title, it becomes somewhat obvious that the article itself doesn't need to exist.
Learning a new model (like GPT-4) is way more costly than running it.
Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#129The absolute best thing I've read on this subject is this article here: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-generative-ai-the-powe... It talks at great length about data center trends relating to generative AI, from the perspective of someone who has been deeply involved in researching power usage and sustainability for two decades. I made my own notes on that piece here (for if you don't have a half hour to spend…
I find the following to be a great point regarding what we ought to consider when adapting our lifestyle to reduce negative environmental impact: > In deciding what to cut, we need to factor in both how much an activity is emitting and how useful and beneficial the activity is to our lives. The further example with a hospital emitting more than a cruise ship is a good illustration of the issue. Continuing this line o…
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Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
#130The section on training feels weak, and that's what the discussion is mainly about. Many companies are now trying to train models as big as GPT-4. OpenAI is training models that may well be even much larger than GPT-4 (o1 and o3). Framing it as a one-time cost doesn't seem accurate - it doesn't look like the big companies will stop training new ones any time soon, they'll keep doing it. So one model might only be use…
It briefly touches on training, but uses a seemingly misleading statistic that comes from (in reference to GPT-4) extremely smaller models. This article [1] says that 300 [round-trip] flights are similar to training one AI model. Its reference of an AI model is a study done on 5-year-old models like BERT (110M parameters), Transformer (213M parameters), and GPT-2. Considering that models today may be more than a thou…
737-800 burns about 3t of fuel per hour. NYC-SFO is about 6h, so 18t of fuel. Jet fuel energy density is 43MJ/kg, so 774000 MJ per flight, which is 215 MWh. Assuming the 60 GWh figure is true (seems widely cited on the internets), it comes down to 279 one-way flights.