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by jodrellblank 1629 days ago
> All without any meaningful service costs

Only by outsourcing those. If BitCoin consumed the electricity equivalent of Argentina[1] recently with basically nothing to show for it, how much longer before your small group of researchers surpasses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. as the most harmful inventors of all time?

What other uses could 120TWh of electricity have been put to? Training GPT-3 took approx 200MWh of electricity[2], so enough power to train GPT-3 ~600x over.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/gpt3_carbon_footprint...