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Re:Watermark Anything by TeMPOraL on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @03:41PM (#42129754)
> 1. Different energy sources produce varyings of co2

Yes.

> 2. This likely does not include co2 to make the GPUs or machines

Definitely not, nobody does that.

Wish they did, in general I feel like a lot of beliefs around sustainability and environmentalism are wrong or backwards precisely because embodied energy is discounted; see e.g. stats on western nations getting cleaner, where a large - if not primary - driver of improved stats is just outsourcing manufacturing, so emissions are attributed to someone else.

Anyway, embodied energy isn't particularly useful here. Energy embodied in GPUs and machines amortizes over their lifetimes and should be counted against all the things those GPUs did, do and will do, of which the training in question is just a small part. Not including it isolates the analysis to contributions from the specific task per se, and makes the results applicable to different hardware/scenarios.

> 3. Humans involved are not added to this at all, and all of the impact they have on the environment

This metric is so ill-defined as to be arbitrary. Even more so with conjunction with 2, as you could plausibly include a million people into it.

> 4. No ability to predict future co2 from using this work.

Total, no. Contribution of compute alone given similar GPU-hours per ton of CO2eq, yes.

Re:Watermark Anything by _Algernon_ on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @03:53PM (#42129891)
>Definitely not, nobody does that.

Except every proper Life-cycle assessment on carbon emissions ever.

Re:Watermark Anything by Jerrrrrrry on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @04:23PM (#42130141)

  >proper
doing Scotsman-like lifting when the point was that these things are not considered, or are "externalities"
Re:Watermark Anything by albumen on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @05:44PM (#42131038)
not sure how that invalidates Algernon's point. These things should be considered, and are in a lot of LCAs.
Re:Watermark Anything by Jerrrrrrry on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @05:47PM (#42131067)

  >should be considered, and are
Not as much as they should be, was his point. Saying something is not proper is the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Re:Watermark Anything by gmueckl on Thursday November 14, 2024 @02:59AM (#42134013)
Just define "proper" to mean "it is an analysis that considers the whole supply chain and would pass academic peer review".
Re:Watermark Anything by alwa on Thursday November 14, 2024 @01:36AM (#42133640)
Those would count toward “Scope 3” emissions, right?

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explaine...