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by tomp 1174 days ago
Those are 100% not comparable metrics.

What you breathe out is mostly what you eat, and most of the carbon there is part of a continuous carbon cycle. A part of it comes from fossil fuels, mainly transport and energy to power the Haber Bosch (the source of most of (organic) hydrogen in your body).

LLM training process consumes practically only energy. As such, it could very easily be replaced by carbon-neutral sources (nuclear, solar).

All of the CO2 of a airplane flight comes from fossil fuels, and there is not viable technology to replace that yet.

1 comments

not comparable from a climate change perspective, but helps put perspective into just how much CO2 that is. I disagree with you that it's unhelpful, context is always helpful.