3 ms·
Everyone hates on crypto because of all the electricity use for mining. But how much electricity is the training of all the giant LLMs costing us?
by esaym 3y ago
Everyone hates on crypto because of all the electricity use for mining. But how much electricity is the training of all the giant LLMs costing us?
- flangola7 3y agoLLMs actually have tangible use (granted far from bespoke yet). Crypto mining has no tangible benefit.
- dorkwood 3y agoTo be fair, it’s still early for crypto. The best use cases of the technology are yet to emerge.
- drak0n1c 3y agoNot tangible, but there will always be a theoretical and idealistic appeal for decentralized app/game/protocol hosting and governance. Corporate bodies like OpenAI, Twitter, YouTube, Blizzard Entertainment have made unpopular changes to popular services they own in a centralized fashion. What if LLMs, social media, and MMOs were both open source and hosted and controlled by their users, not just the whims of a single IP owner? It seems that much like running a co-op or commune the barrier is whether enough people care to take up the fraction of effort and cost it takes to join such an arrangement.
- flangola7 3y agoDecentralization is a noble goal and one I admire but we've been told it is coming for over a decade and centralized cloud and financial services are more entrenched than ever. Even if the social winds did miraculously change, LLMs will never be decentralized for the sole reason that once they're good enough to operate a gun and servo motors every government on the planet is going to lock that shit up fast (assuming massive relentless cyber campaigns somehow don't trigger that response first).
- esaym 3y agoI agree there is benefit. But my complaint is at the apparent overlap in work. I mean you've got several giant tech companies all training models that do mostly the same thing. Sure one might come out on top, but it just seems crazy to train takes millions of cpu hours.