Man, this brand of commentary is so tedious. LLMs are obviously an extremely useful technology. Pretending like they’re not, or that there’s some kind of unique shame in using them, is just silly.
More broadly, moralistic environmental critiques that emphasize austerity are tired and ineffective.
More broadly, moralistic environmental critiques that emphasize austerity are tired and ineffective.
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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).
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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.