4 ms·

I would bet most ppl drive around with very little awareness of how much it’s costing, either in money or environmental impact. Many people I’ve met seem to mea

I would bet most ppl drive around with very little awareness of how much it’s costing, either in money or environmental impact. Many people I’ve met seem to measure efficiency by how much it costs to fill up the tank.

bilbo0s 1y ago
Even more fundamentally, think about how much carbon running a cup of water from your faucet produces. No matter where you live, this is more carbon than an LLM prompt generates. Or, even worse God forbid, think about how much carbon is produced to create a single bottle or carton of water. Then consider how casually people down bottles of water.
- blululu 1y ago
  Can you source that? A lot of places have gravity fed reservoirs that are energy positive/neutral (LA, San Francisco and New York all rely on gravity fed reservoirs that were built before energy intensive pumping was practical). There are some costs but they are pretty small per gallon.
  - SilasX 1y ago
    I’m assuming that calculation is amortizing the cost of running the water system (including wastewater treatment) adding the cost pumping it to the point that gravity can push it through the pipes. It’s never free.
    - Piskvorrr 1y ago
      There seems to be a vast gap between "free" and "more expensive than running LLMs". Also, the water seems...more necessary. Going without LLMs for three days will not threaten your life.
      - cmcconomy 1y ago
        we should shut off clean water and shunt the energy toward more text generation
- 4ndrewl 1y ago
  The utility of having clean water is arguably higher than that of being able to create a steampunk-style of a cat in a suit.
- zdp7 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is false. Here's my reasoning. A google search claims water use uses 12.7% of US energy. Another search gave 11.7% US energy goes to powering AI (projected to increase to roughly 25% by 2030). Taking into account hydropower power provides 6.2% of US energy, I feel comfortable saying your statement isn't true. To further strengthen my statement, I would like to point out another statistic. NPR gives us an estimate of 300K gallons of water use/day to cool the average data center. That pretty much guarantees an LLM query produces more carbon than my filling a cup from a gravity fed water system filled by rain.

bilbo0s 1y ago

Even more fundamentally, think about how much carbon running a cup of water from your faucet produces. No matter where you live, this is more carbon than an LLM prompt generates. Or, even worse God forbid, think about how much carbon is produced to create a single bottle or carton of water. Then consider how casually people down bottles of water.

blululu 1y ago
Can you source that? A lot of places have gravity fed reservoirs that are energy positive/neutral (LA, San Francisco and New York all rely on gravity fed reservoirs that were built before energy intensive pumping was practical). There are some costs but they are pretty small per gallon.
- SilasX 1y ago
  I’m assuming that calculation is amortizing the cost of running the water system (including wastewater treatment) adding the cost pumping it to the point that gravity can push it through the pipes. It’s never free.
  - Piskvorrr 1y ago
    There seems to be a vast gap between "free" and "more expensive than running LLMs". Also, the water seems...more necessary. Going without LLMs for three days will not threaten your life.
    - cmcconomy 1y ago
      we should shut off clean water and shunt the energy toward more text generation
4ndrewl 1y ago
The utility of having clean water is arguably higher than that of being able to create a steampunk-style of a cat in a suit.
zdp7 1y ago
I'm pretty sure this is false. Here's my reasoning. A google search claims water use uses 12.7% of US energy. Another search gave 11.7% US energy goes to powering AI (projected to increase to roughly 25% by 2030). Taking into account hydropower power provides 6.2% of US energy, I feel comfortable saying your statement isn't true. To further strengthen my statement, I would like to point out another statistic. NPR gives us an estimate of 300K gallons of water use/day to cool the average data center. That pretty much guarantees an LLM query produces more carbon than my filling a cup from a gravity fed water system filled by rain.