We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

Re:We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google by qsort on Saturday December 05, 2020 @09:29AM (#25314770)

This is exactly the problem I have with naive environmentalism. The most recent data I could find for the United States total carbon footprint was 5 billion (metric) tons in 2016.

Total energy consumption of all computers, mobile phones, datacenters, servers etc, combined, isn't even a percentage point of that.

Yes, CO2 emissions are a problem. You are not going to solve that problem by targeting sectors which entire footprint is not even a significant digit.

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Re:We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google by labawi on Saturday December 05, 2020 @12:14PM (#25316194)

I think the main was sidetracked. If we collectively emit as much CO₂ as 0.1 or 100 persons lifetime for a single model, every year .. who cares? I don't.

But, what if Amazon wants it's own model with its own curation? Maybe we need different languages, maybe countries would like to have their own model with a different world-view. Why shouldn't a researcher train their own model, maybe experiment with different versions? Why should consumers be relegated to pre-trained model with inscrutable preconceptions?

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