3 ms·

It’s not like the workers that got their jobs replaced by an LLM cease to exist. Unless LLMs caused people to work more from home, or have fewer kids, I can’t s

by sshine 2y ago

It’s not like the workers that got their jobs replaced by an LLM cease to exist. Unless LLMs caused people to work more from home, or have fewer kids, I can’t see how they affected the environment positively. Small countries: Blockchains were at the level of The Netherlands at some point. So we’re not talking city state, but real, industrialised country.

Ukv 2y ago
> It’s not like the workers that got their jobs replaced by an LLM cease to exist. Unless LLMs caused people to work more from home, or have fewer kids, I can’t see how they affected the environment positively. Say you're improving computer vision detection of material defects. If you replace an old inefficient CPU-based algorithm running on a server drawing 500 watts with a detector network on an NVIDIA Jetson drawing 5 watts - in isolation you have drastically improved energy efficiency. But what if, instead of being decommissioned, that server's CPU cycles are reallocated to some other task that still needs them? Was what you did still an improvement? I don't have a definite answer for how we should think about it, but my gut feeling is yes. You've taken the energy requirements of a task from 500W to 5W, and thus decreased energy required per abstract unit of overall productivity. It happened to be realized as an increase in productivity (old job + new job now take roughly same energy as old job alone) rather than a decrease in energy usage, but even if only considering the environmental impact I think that's now a better position to be making progress towards green solutions.
- sshine 2y ago
  Yes, but replacing a CPU with a Jetson is not the same as replacing a human worker with a GPU. A CPU can be decommissioned and turned off, or get repurposed, while a human still generates CO2 at an equivalent rate as before being let go. My intuition tells me that most “… and AI!” initiatives just add more energy use where there was none. Which is the point this article makes, too. Maybe we’re happier and more prosperous for it. Maybe it does not justify contributing to global warming any more than derpcoins.
  - Ukv 2y ago
    > A CPU can be decommissioned and turned off My analogy starts with the case where this is true and the energy efficiency gain is clear, but only as a comparison point from which to consider the case where "instead of being decommissioned" the server's CPU cycles are used for something else (corresponding to humans choosing different jobs, or even just recreation). I argue that even in this case it's an environmentally positive change.

by sshine 2y ago

Ukv 2y ago

> It’s not like the workers that got their jobs replaced by an LLM cease to exist. Unless LLMs caused people to work more from home, or have fewer kids, I can’t see how they affected the environment positively. Say you're improving computer vision detection of material defects. If you replace an old inefficient CPU-based algorithm running on a server drawing 500 watts with a detector network on an NVIDIA Jetson drawing 5 watts - in isolation you have drastically improved energy efficiency. But what if, instead of being decommissioned, that server's CPU cycles are reallocated to some other task that still needs them? Was what you did still an improvement? I don't have a definite answer for how we should think about it, but my gut feeling is yes. You've taken the energy requirements of a task from 500W to 5W, and thus decreased energy required per abstract unit of overall productivity. It happened to be realized as an increase in productivity (old job + new job now take roughly same energy as old job alone) rather than a decrease in energy usage, but even if only considering the environmental impact I think that's now a better position to be making progress towards green solutions.

sshine 2y ago
Yes, but replacing a CPU with a Jetson is not the same as replacing a human worker with a GPU. A CPU can be decommissioned and turned off, or get repurposed, while a human still generates CO2 at an equivalent rate as before being let go. My intuition tells me that most “… and AI!” initiatives just add more energy use where there was none. Which is the point this article makes, too. Maybe we’re happier and more prosperous for it. Maybe it does not justify contributing to global warming any more than derpcoins.
- Ukv 2y ago
  > A CPU can be decommissioned and turned off My analogy starts with the case where this is true and the energy efficiency gain is clear, but only as a comparison point from which to consider the case where "instead of being decommissioned" the server's CPU cycles are used for something else (corresponding to humans choosing different jobs, or even just recreation). I argue that even in this case it's an environmentally positive change.