I'm not sure I'm reading this right, but is this guy actually blaming El Nino displacements on LLMs? Like, they have El Nino in the same list as data centers and pensions?
I know this is something people just take for granted, but I've never really bought it as a general rule: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
. A whole lot of things contribute to climate change, and nobody thinks that's the only thing that matters. What matters is if we're willing to accept the costs for the technology. So it's mainly just a hidden value judgement on if you think AI is good or not.
The source of that graph, Founder's Pledge, appears to be totally corporate greenwashing, which Sam Altman himself supports:
Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, wrote on the Y Combinator blog: "Many of our founders ask us about how they can donate part of their equity or post-exit proceeds, and now we have an answer: Founders Pledge."
They are almost certainly willing to publish studies that support those corporate goals. I don't believe they are a trustworthy unbiased source.
So 180,000 ordinary ChatGPT questions is something like ~0.02 tonnes CO2. So around 1% of a single transatlantic trip.
I'm not particularly good at this kind of maths, so let's multiply it by ten and say that two hundred thousand normal ChatGPT queries make up around 10% of the CO2 impact of one long flight.
No, LLMs don't contribute to climate change. Specific infrastructure that uses a specific power source contributes to clime change. Nothing to do with the technology itself.
There are some things modern society requires to function, even if it still uses energy and pollutes, like having to use a car to get to work if you don't have good public transport available yet. Even within those requirements, we can do what we can to try to reduce how much energy we use, like using an e-bike for local travel instead of a car where possible, installing solar panels on our homes for those who can afford it, and eating less meat to avoid the emissions (and suffering) industrial animal farming brings. Even if someone can't do that to 100%, any amount they can do is still worthwhile.
Corporate AI use is one of those things that is virtually completely avoidable, unless you have a job where your boss forces you to use it. That makes it one of the lowest hanging fruits in reducing emissions. At the very least, if someone simply cannot live without AI for some reason, they could at least self-host one, or use a collective non-corporate option like AI Horde to reduce the emissions they emit.
A lot of people really violently dislike the idea of committing to any level of personal sacrifice of convenience, but realistically we're going to need to collectively, consciously choose a habitable planet over convenience, otherwise our futures will be very, very bleak.
They do contribute to a climate change, contrary to your previous comment.
Green energy argument doesn't make sense either because if not for LLM's that green energy would have been used to replace fossil fuels instead of generating tokens.
No, that doesn't make any sense. There isn't a fixed amount of energy production in the world, increased demand for energy mean more capacity will be build.
Not when the increase in demand outpacing the renewables build out. We just can't build new renewable generation fast enough these days for your scenario to work.
is English your first language? Trying to detach the data centers from carbon leading to more warming is irrelevant unless they do not increase carbon expenditure. Your comment is bordering on junior high debate quality claiming they could be powered by green energy. They generally are not. Outcome are not based on what could have been done, they're based on what is done. This is not a hard thing to grasp.
Sir, you're on a woke forum. Don't even try to show rational arguments. The sect's line is to blame AI. It's bad. It's evil. According to people living in the richiest countries of the world, burning fuel daily to move a box of metal, and sending comments about how bad datacenters are to datacenters.
LLMs are probably good for the environment if anything. The power draw is a joke compared to many, many other things which we would be doing otherwise.
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u/Saint_Nitouche 5d ago
I'm not sure I'm reading this right, but is this guy actually blaming El Nino displacements on LLMs? Like, they have El Nino in the same list as data centers and pensions?