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by CoastalCoder 524 days ago
What really grinds my gears is the CO2 emissions and power-grid load that's being used for this stupid arms race.

I realize that there's no magic solution to perverse systems like this, but it really bothers me nonetheless.

1 comments

Inference uses hardly any compute. You should be complaining about computer games for real compute use.
I'm pretty sure they meant emissions/load from inference and/or training TIMES all the current LLM users on the Earth...
Yes, but you've got to balance that against the equivalent human processing time. Meatbags are notoriously carbon-intensive to feed.
Humans use tiny amounts of energy compared to even a smartphone. And they consume the vast majority of that energy regardless of whether they're lounging in bed or pouring over medical records.
A human burns say 2000 kcal / day. That's about 2.3kW hours / day.

An iPhone 16 pro battery appears to have about 18 watt hours. So approximately 100x less then a human uses.

Oops, you're right, I misremembered some basic facts here...
What about crypto?