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People on Lemmy love to cry AI IS BURNING THE PLANNET but have they ever really looked at the numbers?
- 1 kg Beef = 60kg CO2 - source
- 1000km Return flight = 314kg CO2 - source
- 1 Bitcoin transaction = 645kg of CO2 - source
- 1000 AI prompts = 3kg of CO2 - source including training
I'm a strong advocate for privacy, and I myself am Anti generative AI in many ways, but can we please stop shouting that AI IS BRUNING THE PLANNET, it weakens our position to push back at actual issues with AI like privacy.
Here is a detailed breakdown debunking that AI is destroying the planet: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about
Hmm, after running an LLM locally I'm not too surprised about low energy use while querying (but even then, 3Wh is very low, I was getting like 5 Wh per query while running DeepSeek locally, that said datacenter GPUs will be more efficient for this). But also, this doesn't go into great depths about the impact of training.
It doesn't go into the impact of training, because that isn't what these AI-phobes complain about.
Even just using it will result in calling it "slop" and complaining about its energy usage.
If they complained about the training, they would have a point. But they don't. They complain about anything of AI. Even if it has revolutionized things like protein folding in medicine.
My sources account for the training.
Even if you add a zero to AI's CO2 emissions and water usage, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to eating beef or taking a flight for holiday
Check the sources, that does account for training.
Even if we went with 10wh, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to other lifestyle choices we make
The 3Wh figure is pretty much "pulled out of the ass". Looking at other sources listed, it does seem true that similar-sized models use ~2-3Wh per query, amortized training included. So yeah I concede the point.