A local LLM probably costs about as much as the online LLM, but that usage is so widely distributed it’s not as impactful to any specific locations.
sorry. there were two conversations and Im getting confused. Are you talking local where I don't have the overhead? Or using them online where I am worried about the energy usage?
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 days ago
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
that’s online, what is used in the data centers per request. local is probably not so different, depending on device - different devices have different architectures which might be more or less optimal, but the cooling is passive.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 days ago
Yeah the thing is its not comparing each request to an airline flight its comparing each one to a web search. Its utility is not that much greater its just a convenience. Its like with bitcoin where its about energy per transaction compared to a credit card transactions. I mean I search the web everyday a whole bunch and way more when im working.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Whether its useful or not is another discussion, but if you used a LLM to write an email in 2 minutes that you would use 10 minutes for (including searches and whatever), you actually generate LESS CO2 than the manual process:
equals ~40W
compared to:
equals ~17W.
And that is excluding many other factors like general energy costs for infrastructure, which tilt the calculation further in chatgpts favor.
EVERYTHING we do creates emissions one way or another, we create emissions by simply existing too; it’s important to set things into perspective. Both upper examples compare to running a 1000W microwave for either 2:20 min or 1:05 min. You wouldn’t be shocked by those values.
HubertManne@piefed.social 2 days ago
This would not save anything as you would not use your monitor and pc 8 minutes less in that scenario. Or at least I would not. Its sorta moot as generating an email is definitely not something I would use ai for. Granted I really doubt I would spend 10 minutes on an email unless it was complicated and I was doing something else with it and keeping it open while doing something else as I put it together. Any savings would assume the ai generated email did not result in more activity than one you answered yourself. To have savings you would genuinely have to use the resource less that day or week or such.