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tl;dr I think the tech industry doesn't like to be criticized. That's a good point about renewable energy sources. I'd still argue it's reasonable to assume t

tl;dr I think the tech industry doesn't like to be criticized. That's a good point about renewable energy sources. I'd still argue it's reasonable to assume that ML will consume more power as use-cases for it grow (i.e. more and more models are trained), and, therefore, I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the energy usage. Honestly - I think what you may have heard is "ML is bad/evil." And yeah some folks probably feel/vibe that. That's different from "Like any other technology the full context of ML deserves to be considered, and since it's so hyped by billion-dollar companies right now, maybe a bit of pushback on all the hype isn't a terrible idea." And yeah we should definitely look at the airline industry; pretty sure Mother Jones does, and there's no reason we can't look at the energy impact of multiple industries.

ALittleLight 6y ago
If you were against lung cancer, and writing about the issues caused by scented candles emitting smoke and that smoke corrupting lungs - it would be hard to take you seriously or accept your criticism as valid. It's probably true that scented candles are infinitesimal contributors to lung cancer, but it's just silly to think of them that way. Likewise, yes, language models use energy, but objectively, it's not that much energy and the sources for the energy are sometimes green and always efficient (i.e. Coming from the grid and not by burning jet fuel). You can't really solve the problem of lung cancer by addressing scented candles. Reducing energy used by language models likewise won't have an effect.