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Why is energy use of these models in particular of interest to you, vs everything else a tech company does? How do you even define it? If you start with a pre
by 2024throwaway 3y ago
Why is energy use of these models in particular of interest to you, vs everything else a tech company does?
How do you even define it? If you start with a pre trained model, must you include the energy that went into the initial training, even though that didn’t occur at your company?
- Retric 3y agoEnergy use for AI is interesting due to exponential growth. Most energy spent by these companies falls under existing categories like office HVAC which isn’t going to change much globally. However AI as an emerging technology could quickly go from irrelevance to significant in a fairly short period and some lead time before the actual impact is useful.
- 2024throwaway 3y agoWould knowing the energy use of an ai product influence you to use it less than if you didn’t know? Or is it simply a curiosity? If the latter, this regulation seems useless and performative.
- Retric 3y agoMy point is not about users but the electric grid. You need to start planning capacity long before the actual demand shows up.
- blackbear_ 3y agoEnergy use is obviously related to carbon emissions, which as you may have heard we would like to reduce.
- jl6 3y agoIt's related, but consider that tech companies are close to the forefront of sourcing renewable energy compared to other industries, and AI has the potential to supplant higher-emissions activity, so it may be a false economy if regulation has the effect of constraining AI development in the name of saving energy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spacebanana7 3y agoAlso - should the energy used to create the training data be taken into account? Presumably if a drone is flown over a terrain to collect data that activity should count; but what about the energy used to create make up for models etc?