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What really grinds my gears is the CO2 emissions and power-grid load that's being used for this stupid arms race. I realize that there's no magic solution to p
by CoastalCoder 2y ago
What really grinds my gears is the CO2 emissions and power-grid load that's being used for this stupid arms race.
I realize that there's no magic solution to perverse systems like this, but it really bothers me nonetheless.
- jnwatson 2y agoInference uses hardly any compute. You should be complaining about computer games for real compute use.
- ranger_danger 2y agoI'm pretty sure they meant emissions/load from inference and/or training TIMES all the current LLM users on the Earth...
- ethbr1 2y agoYes, but you've got to balance that against the equivalent human processing time. Meatbags are notoriously carbon-intensive to feed.
- tsimionescu 2y agoHumans use tiny amounts of energy compared to even a smartphone. And they consume the vast majority of that energy regardless of whether they're lounging in bed or pouring over medical records.
- jlebar 2y agoA human burns say 2000 kcal / day. That's about 2.3kW hours / day. An iPhone 16 pro battery appears to have about 18 watt hours. So approximately 100x less then a human uses.
- tsimionescu 2y agoOops, you're right, I misremembered some basic facts here...
- ethbr1 2y agoI remembered there was some analogy about a person doing some work walking, with an average diet, versus using an internal combustion engine. In terms of carbon emissions. The engine came up more favorably. Turns out, eating any meat and industrial agriculture transportation are really heavy.
- ranger_danger 2y agoThis sounds like a false equivalency to me... why are you comparing humans and their support networks... but the engine doesn't also get the same comparison? What about the factories that make them for example? All the gas station infrastructure etc.?
- ethbr1 2y agoHere's one of the studies from the period: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66170-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66170-y
- jlebar 2y agoI think you may be thinking of the question, "how much greenhouse gas does it take to move a human X miles if they are self-powered versus using an ICE?" For example this study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66170-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66170-y. > our estimates suggest that the net emissions associated with the ‘fuel’ required for driving, walking, and cycling may be comparable in some settings With the caveat that they're looking at *per-mile* emissions, and nobody in the developed world is walking 60 miles to and from work every day. However there's an important clarification to your recollection. - You're correct that eating meat (and dairy) is very carbon-intensive. - You're not correct that agricultural transportation is significant. It doesn't even make it into the paper above, as far as I could find. Agricultural transportation, even things like flying blueberries to California from Chile, is negligible compared to the carbon cost of food. You can see that in the following graph. Red is transport. You have to look closely even to see it. https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
- squarefoot 2y agoWhat about crypto?