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> Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facil
by joshstrange 2y ago
> Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities.
> Suggests
So it’s a complete guess, cool.
> Trained
I… don’t care? That’s a one-time cost, talk about how much inference costs and also make me understand why that matters. The water wasn’t destroyed in the process.
I’m having a hard time taking this article seriously, so data centers had more emissions than commercial flights (I’d like to see the numbers instead of this person’s word given other questionable things they say, like above), data centers provide a lot more value IMHO so that’s not surprising to me.
The answer to high emissions from energy production used to run something is not to shut down the thing using power (if it’s useful, crypto is a different beast), it’s to change the source of the energy. What would this author have us do? Shut down data centers than run the internet because they use power that comes from less desirable sources? Absurd.
- throwup238 2y ago700,000 liters sounds like a lot of water but it wouldn’t even half way fill a standard olympic size swimming pool. It’s a tiny amount of water.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoYeah, the article is just seemingly throwing out some random numbers without context or what the exact implication of those numbers would mean. But it's labelled as "ugly".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mns 2y ago> I… don’t care? We're shaming most of the population for way less. Somehow when it comes to corporations, it's all good when they maximise shareholder pro... wait, when they advance technology for all mankind.
- serf 2y ago>We're shaming most of the population for way less. none of us benefit from my neighbors' scrap wood fire, except for him. that alone drives a distinction between the two.
- 20after4 2y agoWood eventually rots and releases CO2 in the process. Burn it or let it rot, either way scrap wood returns carbon to the atmosphere.
- Ukv 2y agoFor its energy usage claim, this article links to another article[0] which gives "about 500 metric tonnes of CO2" as the figure for the training of "ChatGPT-3". Unless I'm making a mistake, that's about 6% of Taylor Swift's annual private jet usage[1]. ChatGPT has 180 million users, and the underlying model is used through API access for a huge range of genuinely useful tasks. I think we absolutely should give more leeway to energy uses that advance technology and benefit many (ideally by being open-source) than to those that just serve the exorbitance of a few. Obviously we should still aim to reduce both. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/08/artificial-intelligence-industry-boom-environment-toll https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/08/artificia... [1]: https://i.imgur.com/EP0Gbtk.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/EP0Gbtk.jpeg
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]