5 ms·

The "cheat sheet" seems to address the environmental impact of using ChatGPT, not the environmental impact of training the model.

Remnant44 1y ago
By the same token, even if you accept that AI usage will incentivize additonal model trainings, that cost is diffused across hundreds of millions of users, and is not a marginal cost, so it gets further reduced on a per-chat basis the more you use AI. I don't know what the per-user environmental cost of training a model is, but that's a pretty big factor to divide energy usage by.
- spencerflem 1y ago
  But irrelevant if the point is to not contribute to something that you'd rather see banned.
  - Remnant44 1y ago
    I don't really follow this objection. Determining the actual energy usage of AI training+inference is something that is an objective reality. Whether you hate it or love it doesn't change these facts.
    - spencerflem 1y ago
      I think LLM training is objectively bad for the environment (uses countries worth of power). I am aware than my marginal usage wouldn't change things much either way, but I don't want to encourage them regardless.
      - simonw 1y ago
        Uses countries worth of power? Training a single LLM takes a few dozen fully loaded transatlantic passenger aircraft trips worth of power. For "counties worth of power" I think you might be talking ALL data center use as a whole.
TobTobXX 1y ago
Wrong. In the article: > Training GPT-4 used 50 GWh of energy. Like the 20,000 households point, this number looks ridiculously large if you don’t consider how many people are using ChatGPT. > Since GPT-4 was trained, it has answered (at minimum) about 200,000,000 prompts per day for about 700 days. Dividing 50GWh by the total prompts, this gives us 0.3Wh per prompt. This means that, at most, including the cost of training raises the energy cost per prompt by 10%, from 10 Google searches to 11. Training doesn’t add much to ChatGPT’s energy cost. https://andymasley.substack.com/i/162196004/training-an-ai-model-uses-too-much-energy https://andymasley.substack.com/i/162196004/training-an-ai-m...
- JohnKemeny 1y ago
  Just because you divide a number by a lot to get a small number doesn't make the original number smaller. Those are 200M/d prompts that wouldn't happen without the training.
  - warkdarrior 1y ago
    Those 200M/d prompts would be replaced with some other activities to solve the same problems. So if training did not happen, maybe instead of 200M/d prompts, you'd have 200M/d trips to the local library, using 200M cars to each drive three miles.
  - TobTobXX 1y ago
    > Just because you divide a number by a lot to get a small number doesn't make the original number smaller. A bus emits more CO2 than a car. Yet it is more friendly to the environment because it transports more people. > Those are 200M/d prompts that wouldn't happen without the training. Sure, but at least a few millions are deriving value from it. We know this because they pay. So this value wouldn't have been generated without the investment. That's how economics work.

Remnant44 1y ago

By the same token, even if you accept that AI usage will incentivize additonal model trainings, that cost is diffused across hundreds of millions of users, and is not a marginal cost, so it gets further reduced on a per-chat basis the more you use AI. I don't know what the per-user environmental cost of training a model is, but that's a pretty big factor to divide energy usage by.

spencerflem 1y ago
But irrelevant if the point is to not contribute to something that you'd rather see banned.
- Remnant44 1y ago
  I don't really follow this objection. Determining the actual energy usage of AI training+inference is something that is an objective reality. Whether you hate it or love it doesn't change these facts.
  - spencerflem 1y ago
    I think LLM training is objectively bad for the environment (uses countries worth of power). I am aware than my marginal usage wouldn't change things much either way, but I don't want to encourage them regardless.
    - simonw 1y ago
      Uses countries worth of power? Training a single LLM takes a few dozen fully loaded transatlantic passenger aircraft trips worth of power. For "counties worth of power" I think you might be talking ALL data center use as a whole.

TobTobXX 1y ago

Wrong. In the article: > Training GPT-4 used 50 GWh of energy. Like the 20,000 households point, this number looks ridiculously large if you don’t consider how many people are using ChatGPT. > Since GPT-4 was trained, it has answered (at minimum) about 200,000,000 prompts per day for about 700 days. Dividing 50GWh by the total prompts, this gives us 0.3Wh per prompt. This means that, at most, including the cost of training raises the energy cost per prompt by 10%, from 10 Google searches to 11. Training doesn’t add much to ChatGPT’s energy cost. https://andymasley.substack.com/i/162196004/training-an-ai-model-uses-too-much-energy https://andymasley.substack.com/i/162196004/training-an-ai-m...

JohnKemeny 1y ago
Just because you divide a number by a lot to get a small number doesn't make the original number smaller. Those are 200M/d prompts that wouldn't happen without the training.
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  Those 200M/d prompts would be replaced with some other activities to solve the same problems. So if training did not happen, maybe instead of 200M/d prompts, you'd have 200M/d trips to the local library, using 200M cars to each drive three miles.
- TobTobXX 1y ago
  > Just because you divide a number by a lot to get a small number doesn't make the original number smaller. A bus emits more CO2 than a car. Yet it is more friendly to the environment because it transports more people. > Those are 200M/d prompts that wouldn't happen without the training. Sure, but at least a few millions are deriving value from it. We know this because they pay. So this value wouldn't have been generated without the investment. That's how economics work.