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What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrenc

by Scea91 3y ago

What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.

steve_adams_86 3y ago
As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust. Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).
corethree 3y ago
This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all guilty. Even when we contribute negligible amounts.
- rcpt 3y ago
  > Every industry contributes a negligible amount. What? No.
  - corethree 3y ago
    Practically yes. You have to look at it more granularly. Likely you're looking at it by economic sector. You need to look at it by sub industries in industries. That's more closer to the logical perspective people are acting on.
    - Scea91 3y ago
      What stumbles me is information like the following [1] > Indeed, making the much bigger model, the GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters, emitted over 550 tons of CO2e while consuming 1,287 MW hours of electricity, per computer scientist Kate Saenko. It’s the same amount of emissions as a single person taking 550 roundtrip flights between New York and San Francisco. Specifically, I struggle with the interpretation where this is presented as significant amount. To me, training GPT-3 at the cost of about a SINGLE New York-San Francisco return flight is practically negligible. I wonder whether for example at a conference like NeurIPS the carbon cost of all the experiments is exceeded by the carbon cost of participant travel to the conference. My guess is that probably yes. [1] https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai-models-chatgpts-emissions/ https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai...

by Scea91 3y ago

What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.

steve_adams_86 3y ago

As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust. Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).

corethree 3y ago

This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all guilty. Even when we contribute negligible amounts.

rcpt 3y ago
> Every industry contributes a negligible amount. What? No.
- corethree 3y ago
  Practically yes. You have to look at it more granularly. Likely you're looking at it by economic sector. You need to look at it by sub industries in industries. That's more closer to the logical perspective people are acting on.
  - Scea91 3y ago
    What stumbles me is information like the following [1] > Indeed, making the much bigger model, the GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters, emitted over 550 tons of CO2e while consuming 1,287 MW hours of electricity, per computer scientist Kate Saenko. It’s the same amount of emissions as a single person taking 550 roundtrip flights between New York and San Francisco. Specifically, I struggle with the interpretation where this is presented as significant amount. To me, training GPT-3 at the cost of about a SINGLE New York-San Francisco return flight is practically negligible. I wonder whether for example at a conference like NeurIPS the carbon cost of all the experiments is exceeded by the carbon cost of participant travel to the conference. My guess is that probably yes. [1] https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai-models-chatgpts-emissions/ https://carboncredits.com/how-big-is-the-co2-footprint-of-ai...