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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

#141

Post by XorNot »

wmf wrote: post #68
scottcha wrote: post #40

Yet we also see that hyperscale cloud emissions targets have been reversed due to AI investment, Datacenter growth is hitting grid capacity limits in many regions, and peaker plant and other non-renewable resources on the grid are being deployed more to handle this specific growth from AI. I think the author, by qualifying on "chatgpt" maybe can make the claims they are making but I don't believe the larger argument…

Voluntary conservation was only working by accident and guilt tripping never works. The grid needs to become clean so that we can have new industries.

Yep, this is the real answer. It's also the only answer. The big fiction was everyone getting hopped on the idea that "karma" was going to be real, and people's virtue would be correctly identified by overt environmentalism rather then action.

Fossil fuel companies won, and they won in about 1980s when BP paid an advertising firm to come up with "personal carbon footprint" as a meaningful metric. Basically destroyed environmentalism since...well I'll let you know when it stops.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#142

Post by smcin »

fastball wrote: post #47
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…

This assumes all emissions / externalities are created equal, which they are not.

Could you say more?

Are you talking about comparing CO2 to N2O to CH4 to fluorocarbons, for example?

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#143

Post by [deleted] »

Liquix wrote: post #17

~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…

[deleted]

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#144

Post by somenameforme »

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.

There was a profit motive in all of those except Santa. For instance until the main players in CFCs (which were the main cause of ozone depletion) were able to invent, patent, and market an alternative to CFCs they successfully lobbied against any change. Then they got a new patent, turned 180 degrees, claiming CFCs were the worst thing to ever exist - and made a ton of money after they were banned. Same thing with stuff like asthma inhalers.

When people want to do something, we're unstoppable. But unfortunately that means the good and the bad, and right now polluting actions are incredibly beneficial, and the alternatives are mediocre and not only unprofitable, but generally incur a substantial cost. There's a reason places like the US/Canada/Australia talk a mean game about climate change, yet remain some of the biggest polluters per capita, by far.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#145

Post by jazzyjackson »

simonw wrote: post #56
strogonoff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if many people said it is unethical to use LLMs like ChatGPT for environmental reasons, as opposed to ethical principles such as encouraging unfair use of IP and copyright violation. Still, LLM queries are not made equal. The environmental justification does not take into account for models querying other services, like the famous case where a single ChatGPT query resulted in thousands of HTTP re…

I see people complaining that ChatGPT usage is unethical for environmental reasons all the time. Here's just the first example I found from a Bluesky search (this one focuses on water usage): https://bsky.app/profile/theferocity.bsky.social/post/3lfckq... "the famous case where a single ChatGPT query resulted in thousands of HTTP requests" Can you provide more information about that? I don't remember gearing about th…

Bluesky is a special place, I am not surprised you will bump into the sort of activists who will critique every bucket of water that go into making a hamburger there. For those of us who avoid contact with the axe grinding hoards of short form media, meeting somebody who spends any portion of their day fretting about the water usage of language models is indeed a rarity.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#146

Post by XorNot »

ternnoburn wrote: post #94

"Other bad things exist" does not mean this thing isn't bad. Or absolutely could be that all these other things are huge energy wasters AND chat gpt is an energy waster. We have to stop thinking about problems so linearly -- it's not "solve only the worst one first", because we'll forever find reasons to not try and solve that one, and we'll throw up our hands. Like, we're well aware animal agriculture is a huge envi…

Except that's not the point of this: the point is that humans have absolutely finite time to think about problems, and so the way you distract from a problem is by inventing a new more exciting one.

LLMs are in the news cycle, so sending all the activists after LLMs sure does a good job ensuring they're not going after anything which would be more effective doesn't it? (setting aside my thoughts for the moment of the utility of the 'direct action' type activists who I think have been useless for a good long while now - there could not possibly be more 'awareness' of climate change).

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#147

Post by petesergeant »

mnsc wrote: post #88
petesergeant wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This massively lets the Philippines off the hook. China has a gazillion people, and so does India, and the rest of SE Asia is bad for pollution, but the Philippines — with 1.5% of the world’s population — is an incredible 36% of ocean plastic pollution. Also a call-out to Malaysia who are an upper-middle income country and contribute far too much per capita given their income situation, but again, they are a drop in…

What are they doing in the Philippines? Dumping household waste straight into the rivers?

Pretty much. Buying everything in sachets and then not having any real waste disposal; https://earth.org/philippines-plastic/

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#148

Post by saagarjha »

somenameforme wrote: post #144
RHSeeger wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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.

There was a profit motive in all of those except Santa. For instance until the main players in CFCs (which were the main cause of ozone depletion) were able to invent, patent, and market an alternative to CFCs they successfully lobbied against any change. Then they got a new patent, turned 180 degrees, claiming CFCs were the worst thing to ever exist - and made a ton of money after they were banned. Same thing with s…

Uh, Santa is the biggest advertising campaign for consumerism the world has ever known

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#149

Post by saagarjha »

eastbound wrote: post #135
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.

[flagged]

Most of the world isn’t white so even if you’re not being upset about white people being oppressed or whatever this just makes sense from an equity perspective.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#150

Post by ternnoburn »

XorNot wrote: post #146
ternnoburn wrote: post #94

"Other bad things exist" does not mean this thing isn't bad. Or absolutely could be that all these other things are huge energy wasters AND chat gpt is an energy waster. We have to stop thinking about problems so linearly -- it's not "solve only the worst one first", because we'll forever find reasons to not try and solve that one, and we'll throw up our hands. Like, we're well aware animal agriculture is a huge envi…

Except that's not the point of this: the point is that humans have absolutely finite time to think about problems, and so the way you distract from a problem is by inventing a new more exciting one. LLMs are in the news cycle, so sending all the activists after LLMs sure does a good job ensuring they're not going after anything which would be more effective doesn't it? (setting aside my thoughts for the moment of the…

Then again, if you can stall a nascent polluter before it becomes entrenched, maybe that's the right time to intervene. Getting people to not eat meat is hard, we've been eating meat forever. Getting people to not use LLMs? That's where most of us were up until very recently.
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