AI, but at What Cost? Breakdown of AI's Carbon Footprint

Re:AI, but at What Cost? Breakdown of AI's Carbon Footprint by Ukv on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @11:51AM (#42854561)

An individual user's model usage is negligible, in that you should not feel bad about querying an LLM unless you feel approximately 1000 times worse about drinking a cup of coffee. But Google/Microsoft provide services for hundreds of millions, or even billions, of users.

In the same way, if your service was hairdryers (owing to progress in hot-air-over-IP) and you had 300 million users, you'd need 300 million * 2000W * 10 minutes = 100000MWh daily, or about 5 copies of the nuclear power plant the Microsoft are opening. You could look at it as those hairdryer power plants already effectively existing, just distributed as a small portion of many plants.

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Re:AI, but at What Cost? Breakdown of AI's Carbon Footprint by GTP on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @07:22AM (#42864079)

Yes, I get that it is an issue of scale, but that's the issue in the end. A commenter rightfully pointed out that there's no point in giving examples of other things that consume the same or more if at the end of the day we don't take action on those anyway. Another commenter, equally rightly, answered that the utility of these things are subjective, and this changes what we feel we should take action on. I still have to find a clear position on this.

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