I find LLMs extremely useful, but I mainly use them for tasks that are likely to save me a good amount of time.
I'm also unsure about the environmental impact claims that are frequently cited as the estimates I saw were for data centers not exclusive to AI (e.g. for cloud storage).
...
I'm also unsure about the environmental impact claims that are frequently cited as the estimates I saw were for data centers not exclusive to AI (e.g. for cloud storage).
...
Comments
I also haven't seen much consideration of the marginal environmental impacts of a task.
This study attempts a more holistic assessment and finds LLMs have a lower environmental impact for some tasks:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76682-6
Aka "AI bad for the environment" is too simplistic a take.
(from: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/46288/AI-Environmental-Impact-Issues-Note.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y)
a regular internet search..."
So, 10 searches are as energy intensive as 1 LLM call.