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Although I do see the waste as some may say it is, I don’t think comparing a models emissions to that of the lifetime emissions of five average cars is fair and
by c4wrd 5y ago
Although I do see the waste as some may say it is, I don’t think comparing a models emissions to that of the lifetime emissions of five average cars is fair and ultimately is hyperbolic, but please let me explain. Let’s say the average car lasts 20 years. Actually let’s say it lasts 50 years. Back of the hand math means shows that that’s equivalent to about 50*5=250 U.S. car emissions per year. Yes, that is a large number, but if you look at the value provided to society by things like voice translation, picture recognition, etc., that the set of all Google users enjoy, you have to consider that those models provide value to tens of millions of people, and the cost is equivalent to only 250 of those people driving cars for a year, i.e. the efficiency is pretty great in my opinion.
These news articles are hyperbolic and not addressing the true waste we have in society. Once again I’m not arguing that there isn’t inefficiency and waste, but we’re ignoring the fact that every one of the those Google users (or at least a substantial amount) has a higher carbon footprint in totality that FAR surpasses that of a single model. I do support further research in this area, but we must consider the harm us engineers cause when we write papers that can be manipulated so well by media to create click bait articles that only enable the mindset of “big tech is the actual problem” while individuals shift responsibility of their own carbon emissions onto others.
- goatcode 5y ago"It uses too much electricity" has become the new curmudgeon punt. I've begun ignoring it outright. Thank you for spelling out the bigger picture for those who are pondering the silly abuse of environmental concern signaling bandwagon. Maybe someday we can combat actual threats to our environment, probably using AI.
- hobs 5y agoIf complaining about waste, compare it to what you could achieve with the same resources. Ignoring something outright is not a good approach, you basically have created an opposite tribe with the same illogical basis. If we can do the same work in 1/10000th the effort, then we should decry the waste.
- goatcode 5y agoTotally agreed!
- Jabbles 5y agoIndeed - the graphic that compares the CO2e of 1 passenger's portion of a flight instead of the whole flight is particularly bad, given that the model is something that will be used by multiple people: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-...
- theptip 5y agoCars are a terrible measuring stick here, the article should know better. A car is for one household, or maybe one person. These models can potentially serve billions of people once trained. You can’t meaningfully evaluate their efficiency without the denominator. Per capita per year is the right unit to be using here.
- jhgb 5y agoRight. How much CO2 does it take to train a single human from birth to do something? And, once trained, that human will still be way slower at many tasks than a trained machine.