And a plea to think seriously about climate change without getting distracted
  • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    40 minutes ago

    this is such a dumb take.

    “if you are talking to a chatbot you arent doing other things like driving!”

    • m_‮fOPMAEnglish
      1·
      3 minutes ago

      Are you talking about this bit?

      How concerned should you be about spending 0.8 Wh? 0.8 Wh is enough to: […] Drive a sedan at a consistent speed for 4 feet

      Or this bit?

      If your friend were about to drive their personal largest ever in history cruise ship solo for 60 miles, but decided to walk 1 mile to the dock instead of driving because they were “concerned about the climate impact of driving” how seriously would you take them?

      I don’t think it’s saying “if you are talking to a chatbot you arent doing other things like driving!”, I think the point is that you probably do lots of other things every day that dwarf the energy consumption you could use on LLMs, and you don’t avoid doing those because of their energy usage. For example, nobody* is complaining about the energy usage of Netflix or Youtube, but they dwarf chatgpt:

      *I’m sure it’s not actually nobody, but I’d bet it rounds to 0, and either way is far less than the number of people complaining about AI energy usage.

  • m_‮fOPMAEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    Thought this was an interesting look at an oft-repeated claim, that AI is bad for the environment. I think it’s assumed to be true, especially on Lemmy, but that might not actually be the case.