Although maybe Altman has some creative accounting to make the numbers come out extra low, and maybe you were deliberately being conservative to be on the safe side, so that might explain much of the difference.
Wired just released an article today called AI Is Eating Data Center Power Demand—and It’s Only Getting Worse, and they write: "AI’s energy use already represents as much as 20 percent of global data-center power demand, research published Thursday in the journal Joule shows. That demand from AI, the research states, could double by the end of this year, comprising nearly half of all total data-center electricity consumption worldwide, excluding the electricity used for bitcoin mining." I'm wondering how much this is due to language models. I'm guessing illustration and especially video creations consume much more.
I appreciate the bravery on taking on any subject in public, it involves putting your head above the parapet and taking criticism (some valid, some not, never pleasent) from people. I was a bit embarrassed for you with the "Courage to be Disliked" post, which ironically wasn't showing that courage because it came across thin-skinned. This post is stronger because you are back in the zone with the numbers and builds credibility for your POV.
That said, there's still more work for you to do if you want to be more persuasive on your whole argument that it's too small to matter. In text based prompts, as they build up into a conversation, the whole previous conversation is used in the prompt (for context), so each back and forth in the chat is a progressively larger prompt needing more processing. Generating an image is about ten times the impact, and generating a video likely ten times the impact of that, with both formats likely requiring multiple tries to get what you want. And writing off the pointlessness of most of it with "but what's the point of anything?" style argument is wholly unpersuasive.
You are onto a good topic here and I hope you continue to look into it.
Good point on the conversation building up energy use! Will look into that and add it.
I don’t think I’m making any kind of “What’s the point of anything” argument in the posts. I say over and over this is motivated by a worry the climate movement’s getting distracted. I’m not at all a nihilist on the environment, I want us to win. If you can point to anything I’m saying that implies otherwise I’d appreciate it.
The “The Courage to be Disliked” was just an off-handed joke about some very negative reactions to the piece. I don’t agree that it reflected a negative reaction to serious disagreement.
I wish more people were truth-seeking while opining on this topic. Anyway, I appreciate this post!
Epistemic humility is in 😎
According to Altman, your energy use and water use numbers were too high by a factor of about 10x and 50x for a ChatGPT query. https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity
Although maybe Altman has some creative accounting to make the numbers come out extra low, and maybe you were deliberately being conservative to be on the safe side, so that might explain much of the difference.
Yup I was deliberately being conservative!
Wired just released an article today called AI Is Eating Data Center Power Demand—and It’s Only Getting Worse, and they write: "AI’s energy use already represents as much as 20 percent of global data-center power demand, research published Thursday in the journal Joule shows. That demand from AI, the research states, could double by the end of this year, comprising nearly half of all total data-center electricity consumption worldwide, excluding the electricity used for bitcoin mining." I'm wondering how much this is due to language models. I'm guessing illustration and especially video creations consume much more.
Andy, Andy, Andy. This is NOT how the internet works. You have to DOUBLE DOWN on anything and everything you say!
What's next - reconsidering if the Earth really ISN'T flat?
</s> ;-)
I appreciate the bravery on taking on any subject in public, it involves putting your head above the parapet and taking criticism (some valid, some not, never pleasent) from people. I was a bit embarrassed for you with the "Courage to be Disliked" post, which ironically wasn't showing that courage because it came across thin-skinned. This post is stronger because you are back in the zone with the numbers and builds credibility for your POV.
That said, there's still more work for you to do if you want to be more persuasive on your whole argument that it's too small to matter. In text based prompts, as they build up into a conversation, the whole previous conversation is used in the prompt (for context), so each back and forth in the chat is a progressively larger prompt needing more processing. Generating an image is about ten times the impact, and generating a video likely ten times the impact of that, with both formats likely requiring multiple tries to get what you want. And writing off the pointlessness of most of it with "but what's the point of anything?" style argument is wholly unpersuasive.
You are onto a good topic here and I hope you continue to look into it.
Good point on the conversation building up energy use! Will look into that and add it.
I don’t think I’m making any kind of “What’s the point of anything” argument in the posts. I say over and over this is motivated by a worry the climate movement’s getting distracted. I’m not at all a nihilist on the environment, I want us to win. If you can point to anything I’m saying that implies otherwise I’d appreciate it.
The “The Courage to be Disliked” was just an off-handed joke about some very negative reactions to the piece. I don’t agree that it reflected a negative reaction to serious disagreement.