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"Is code autocompletion and generating random images really worth so much electricity?" Yes. Very much so. Some back of enveloping. The worldwide labor market

"Is code autocompletion and generating random images really worth so much electricity?" Yes. Very much so. Some back of enveloping. The worldwide labor market is USD$70trillion. If you save 1% of the time of the worldwide labor market (that's quite reasonable for autocomplete etc right?) that's USD$700billion. A quick Google says the global electricity revenues are USD$255billion. So if you have a way to save %1 of human labor it's economically worth tripling power generation to make use of it.

dieortin 3y ago
ChatGPT cannot autocomplete a house, or the extraction of minerals from a mine.
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  The jaquard loom and steam engine can't do those things either. A revolution occurs when a technology saves even a fraction of worldwide labor costs. That's all it needs to do to be literally revolutionary.
  - krainboltgreene 3y ago
    Steam engines were literally created specifically to help with mining, this is so hilariously telling of people into this hype.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      And have you studied anything into modern mining yourself? Mines are starting to convert fleets into self driving trucks. Capabilities like image/video recognition that LLMs can do improve their identification and alert systems. Modern AI is a whole lot more than just shitting out spam on the internet.
      - peteradio 3y ago
        > Mines are starting to convert fleets into self driving trucks. What mines?
        pixl97 3y ago
        Canadian mine has a partial fleet https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/cote-gold-mine-automation-1.7092319 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/cote-gold-mine-automa... Canadian oil sands operation using Autonomous haul trucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z9w-mUoUsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z9w-mUoUsY This mine in Arizona is in progress at this time. https://im-mining.com/2023/09/15/freeport-says-bagdad-to-have-first-fully-autonomous-mining-truck-fleet-in-us/ https://im-mining.com/2023/09/15/freeport-says-bagdad-to-hav... Rio Tinto says they have 130 autonomous units. https://www.riotinto.com/en/mn/about/innovation/automation https://www.riotinto.com/en/mn/about/innovation/automation
        krainboltgreene 3y ago
        To be clear we're talking about less than 200 trucks by my count, most of which were built in 2013-2016, the Baghdad Arizona mine still hasn't deployed anything yet as far as I know (I asked people in that area). None of this has anything to do with code completion or image generation and LLMs don't even do anything semi-related to vision. That's entirely beyond the scope of how they're designed. It is not surprising to me anymore the threads that get pulled to justify this insane hype, but what does shock me is that it's going on 8 months of the same very tired and thin arguments that get smaller and smaller in their claims the more questions you ask.
gmm1990 3y ago
Not sure that llm autocomplete is so much better than autocomplete using more energy efficient algorithms to make a noticeable difference in productivity.
- pants2 3y ago
  Great, then you won't buy the $20/mo copilot package and save energy!
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    The world doesn’t work this way, you have to use it to stay competitive. Even if you don’t like it.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      Hmm... so it's so bad that you might as well just use old-school autocorrect, and so good that you have to use it to remain competitive, at the same time?
      - bamboozled 3y ago
        You're making that claim. Our company buys it for us to "stay ahead", whether we use it or not, we're paying for it.
        Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > You're making that claim. No, that is literally your claim combined with the claim of the original poster. In your first post you claimed you "had" to use it. Now you say it's optional?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
spenczar5 3y ago
Where did that $70T come from? The most obvious objection is that most labor is not desk jobs, so 1% from autocomplete seems very unreasonable to me, but I don’t know how it breaks out in dollars. Maybe your source says that?
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  It's admittedly super rough. I googled worldwide labor market and got 3.5billion workers. I then Googled average global earnings, $20k. However i'll admit to a mistake. The second number appears incorrect and it seems it should have been ~$10k based on the following: https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/#:~:text=The%20average%20global%20personal%20income,you%20in%20the%20top%201%25 https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/#:~:t.... Still i think the point should stand no matter how precise we get here. The cost of labor absolutely dwarfs the cost of electricity. That was what i wanted to hit on while completely acknowledging the numbers are rough.
gmueckl 3y ago
But that is exactly what GP is criticizing: just looking at the $$$. All of us here know that the environmental impact of electric energy generation is externalized and global. If we were to price that in fairly, the labor might well be cheaper!
xxpor 3y ago
Global electricity generation revenues are only $255 billion? Amazon/Google/Apple have greater revenue than the worldwide electricity generation sector?
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  I just Googled these numbers quickly but yes it seems correct. "In 2021, the global electricity transmission and distribution market generated some 255.6 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, up from 248.5 billion U.S. dollars in the previous year" https://www.statista.com/statistics/1350454/forecast-electricity-transmission-and-distribution-global-market-revenue/#:~:text=Global%20revenue%20of%20the%20electricity%20transmission%20and%20distribution%20market%202019%2D2030&text=In%202021%2C%20the%20global%20electricity,dollars%20in%20the%20previous%20year https://www.statista.com/statistics/1350454/forecast-electri....
  - xxpor 3y ago
    That's just delivery AFAICT, not generation.
colechristensen 3y ago
You’re off by about a factor of ten. Global electricity production is about 30 PWh per year and wholesale electricity costs are about $100 / MWh around the world. That’s about $3T. (Numbers are rough, don’t get pedantic)

dieortin 3y ago

ChatGPT cannot autocomplete a house, or the extraction of minerals from a mine.

AnotherGoodName 3y ago
The jaquard loom and steam engine can't do those things either. A revolution occurs when a technology saves even a fraction of worldwide labor costs. That's all it needs to do to be literally revolutionary.
- krainboltgreene 3y ago
  Steam engines were literally created specifically to help with mining, this is so hilariously telling of people into this hype.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    And have you studied anything into modern mining yourself? Mines are starting to convert fleets into self driving trucks. Capabilities like image/video recognition that LLMs can do improve their identification and alert systems. Modern AI is a whole lot more than just shitting out spam on the internet.
    - peteradio 3y ago
      > Mines are starting to convert fleets into self driving trucks. What mines?
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Canadian mine has a partial fleet https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/cote-gold-mine-automation-1.7092319 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/cote-gold-mine-automa... Canadian oil sands operation using Autonomous haul trucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z9w-mUoUsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z9w-mUoUsY This mine in Arizona is in progress at this time. https://im-mining.com/2023/09/15/freeport-says-bagdad-to-have-first-fully-autonomous-mining-truck-fleet-in-us/ https://im-mining.com/2023/09/15/freeport-says-bagdad-to-hav... Rio Tinto says they have 130 autonomous units. https://www.riotinto.com/en/mn/about/innovation/automation https://www.riotinto.com/en/mn/about/innovation/automation
        krainboltgreene 3y ago
        To be clear we're talking about less than 200 trucks by my count, most of which were built in 2013-2016, the Baghdad Arizona mine still hasn't deployed anything yet as far as I know (I asked people in that area). None of this has anything to do with code completion or image generation and LLMs don't even do anything semi-related to vision. That's entirely beyond the scope of how they're designed. It is not surprising to me anymore the threads that get pulled to justify this insane hype, but what does shock me is that it's going on 8 months of the same very tired and thin arguments that get smaller and smaller in their claims the more questions you ask.

gmm1990 3y ago

Not sure that llm autocomplete is so much better than autocomplete using more energy efficient algorithms to make a noticeable difference in productivity.

pants2 3y ago
Great, then you won't buy the $20/mo copilot package and save energy!
- bamboozled 3y ago
  The world doesn’t work this way, you have to use it to stay competitive. Even if you don’t like it.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Hmm... so it's so bad that you might as well just use old-school autocorrect, and so good that you have to use it to remain competitive, at the same time?
    - bamboozled 3y ago
      You're making that claim. Our company buys it for us to "stay ahead", whether we use it or not, we're paying for it.
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > You're making that claim. No, that is literally your claim combined with the claim of the original poster. In your first post you claimed you "had" to use it. Now you say it's optional?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

spenczar5 3y ago

Where did that $70T come from? The most obvious objection is that most labor is not desk jobs, so 1% from autocomplete seems very unreasonable to me, but I don’t know how it breaks out in dollars. Maybe your source says that?

AnotherGoodName 3y ago
It's admittedly super rough. I googled worldwide labor market and got 3.5billion workers. I then Googled average global earnings, $20k. However i'll admit to a mistake. The second number appears incorrect and it seems it should have been ~$10k based on the following: https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/#:~:text=The%20average%20global%20personal%20income,you%20in%20the%20top%201%25 https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/#:~:t.... Still i think the point should stand no matter how precise we get here. The cost of labor absolutely dwarfs the cost of electricity. That was what i wanted to hit on while completely acknowledging the numbers are rough.

gmueckl 3y ago

But that is exactly what GP is criticizing: just looking at the $$$. All of us here know that the environmental impact of electric energy generation is externalized and global. If we were to price that in fairly, the labor might well be cheaper!

xxpor 3y ago

Global electricity generation revenues are only $255 billion? Amazon/Google/Apple have greater revenue than the worldwide electricity generation sector?

AnotherGoodName 3y ago
I just Googled these numbers quickly but yes it seems correct. "In 2021, the global electricity transmission and distribution market generated some 255.6 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, up from 248.5 billion U.S. dollars in the previous year" https://www.statista.com/statistics/1350454/forecast-electricity-transmission-and-distribution-global-market-revenue/#:~:text=Global%20revenue%20of%20the%20electricity%20transmission%20and%20distribution%20market%202019%2D2030&text=In%202021%2C%20the%20global%20electricity,dollars%20in%20the%20previous%20year https://www.statista.com/statistics/1350454/forecast-electri....
- xxpor 3y ago
  That's just delivery AFAICT, not generation.

colechristensen 3y ago

You’re off by about a factor of ten. Global electricity production is about 30 PWh per year and wholesale electricity costs are about $100 / MWh around the world. That’s about $3T. (Numbers are rough, don’t get pedantic)