[jeffbee]

These conclusions are broadly compatible with "The Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training Will Plateau, Then Shrink" or, as I prefer, the PDF metadata title that they left in there, "Revamped Happy CO2e Paper".

Despite the incredible focus by the press on this topic, Mistral's lifecycle emissions in 18 months were less than the typical annual emissions of a single A320neo in commercial service.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.05149

[ACCount36]

The press focus is a mix of the usual "new thing BAD", and the much more insidious PR work by fossil fuel megacorps.

Fossil fuel companies are damn good at PR, and they know well that they simply can't make themselves look good. The next best thing? Make someone else look worse.

If an Average Joe hears "a company that hurts the environment" and thinks OpenAI and not British Petroleum, that's a PR win.

[jeffbee]

I suspect the press is also aligned against machine learning because they are still Big Mad® that the internet destroyed their revenue model (charging individuals $50 to advertise used cars, for example).