Comment on Whether you use AI, think it's a "fun stupid thing for memes", or even ignore it, you should know it's already polluting worse than global air travel.

blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Artisian@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Well, most of the carbon footprint for models is in training, which you probably don’t need to do at home.

  That said, even with training they are not nearly our leading cause of pollution.

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  • REDACTED@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Article says that training o4 required equalivent amount of energy compared to powering san francisco for 3 days

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• Flagstaff@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Basically every tech company is using it… It’s millions of people, not just us…

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  • very_well_lost@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Billions. Practically every Google search runs through Gemini now, and Google handles more search queries per day than there are humans on Earth.

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    • Flagstaff@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Ew, who still uses Google Search?

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• FatCrab@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Most of these figures are guesses along a spectrum of “educated” since many models, like ChatGPT, are effectively opaque to everyone and we have no idea what the current iteration architecture actually looks like. But MIT did do a very solid study not too long ago that looked at the energy cost for various queries for various architectures. Text queries for very large GPT models actually had a higher energy cost than image gen using a normal number of iterations for Stable Diffusion models actually, which is pretty crazy. Anyhow, you’re looking at per-query energy usage of like 15 seconds microwaving at full power to riding a bike a few blocks. When tallied over the immense number of queries being serviced, it does add up.

  That all said, I think energy consumption is a silly thing to attack AI over. Modernize, modularize, and decentralize the grids and convert to non-GHG sources and it doesn’t matter–there are other concerns with AI that are far more pressing (like deskilling effects and inability to control mis- and disinformation).

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