[idoubtit]

The training of one LLM requires as much emissions as 17,000 people over a year. Which, according to the article, is 8 times more than last year, and may be underestimated by a factor 2.

That does not cover the whole usage: the hardware, the bots that collect learning data, the prompts, etc. And there are now many models of this size, and thousands and thousands at smaller sizes. And some of this parameters are increasing.

AI is estimated to emit more than 80e6 tons of CO2-equivalent this year. Much more than whole countries like Austria or Israel. Is that trivial?

[_aavaa_]

How much does that come out to per user or per request? And how does that compare to anything else those people do? Like drive 10 minutes. Or eat a burger.

These numbers keep being put up as large in absolute terms but that’s deceiving for the average person who doesn’t have a way to compare them to something relevant in their lives.