What are the Carbon Costs of Asking an AI a Question? (msn.com) 38
"The carbon cost of asking an artificial intelligence model a single text question can be measured in grams of CO2..." writes the Washington Post. And while an individual's impact may be low, what about the collective impact of all users?
"A Google search takes about 10 times less energy than a ChatGPT query, according to a 2024 analysis from Goldman Sachs — although that may change as Google makes AI responses a bigger part of search." For now, a determined user can avoid prompting Google's default AI-generated summaries by switching over to the "web" search tab, which is one of the options alongside images and news. Adding "-ai" to the end of a search query also seems to work. Other search engines, including DuckDuckGo, give you the option to turn off AI summaries....
Using AI doesn't just mean going to a chatbot and typing in a question. You're also using AI every time an algorithm organizes your social media feed, recommends a song or filters your spam email... [T]here's not much you can do about it other than using the internet less. It's up to the companies that are integrating AI into every aspect of our digital lives to find ways to do it with less energy and damage to the planet.
More points from the article:
"A Google search takes about 10 times less energy than a ChatGPT query, according to a 2024 analysis from Goldman Sachs — although that may change as Google makes AI responses a bigger part of search." For now, a determined user can avoid prompting Google's default AI-generated summaries by switching over to the "web" search tab, which is one of the options alongside images and news. Adding "-ai" to the end of a search query also seems to work. Other search engines, including DuckDuckGo, give you the option to turn off AI summaries....
Using AI doesn't just mean going to a chatbot and typing in a question. You're also using AI every time an algorithm organizes your social media feed, recommends a song or filters your spam email... [T]here's not much you can do about it other than using the internet less. It's up to the companies that are integrating AI into every aspect of our digital lives to find ways to do it with less energy and damage to the planet.
More points from the article:
- Two researchers tested the performance of 14 AI language models, and found larger models gave more accurate answers, "but used several times more energy than smaller models."
- The data centers hosting AI models "can devour more electricity than entire cities."
- "Keeping those computers cool uses freshwater — about one bottle's worth for every 100 words of text ChatGPT generates."
Children. (Score:2)
Re: Children. (Score:3)
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You're welcome. (Score:2)
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Say please, but don't say thank you.
Reason: Questions with please have more often a helpful answer in the training data. So saying please can indeed improve the answer. Saying thanks afterward only generates a "You're welcome" message.
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Interestingly, I read somewhere that the human habit of being polite to these things has an energy impact too: They have to process the "please"s and "thank you"s of course!
We should all rid ourselves of this habit, at least as far as AIs go, and save some tiny fucking pissant crumb [arstechnica.com] of energy.
If, like me, you prefer to save your cursing for when it has most impact you can try this [udm14.com] tweak to your search string. Frankly I don't know for certain that it really stops the AI stuff in the back-end rather than simply omitting it from the results page but at this point I really don't care. Enjoy it before Google "fixes" it.
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Re: Who gives a damn? (Score:2)
Because for some things it makes sense to do it but most it doesn't. It's over the top, needless and annoying.
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Are you feeling shame for the environmental impact that your use of LLMs is having?
Well, maybe you should.
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You are just another rain drop that doesn't think it's their fault the flood happened.
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Are you ashamed of the environmental impact of social media usage or pointless picture taking? A lot of energy is wasted on useless bullshit nowadays. It seems silly to focus on one useless waste of energy and not another.
Energy Cost of Slashdot (Score:2)
Are you feeling shame for the environmental impact that your use of LLMs is having?
I doubt anyone here does otherwise we would not be burning power on a laptop or mobile phone to post our opinions to Slashdot for others to burn more power reading. It may be less power than an LLM query but it's not none and it's not really necessary.
Re:Who gives a damn? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real concern, if it isn't environmental, is all the costs of increased capacity and infrastructure to get that power to that data center is being pushed on to residential customers. You should give a damn, even if it doesn't effect your wealthy butt.
Re: Who gives a damn? (Score:1)
Shower heads that diffuse water to save it are an illusion. It's basic chemistry. If you need X liters of water to wash away Y amount of soap but suddenly your shower head dishes out half water, half air, you'll simply end up running the tap for twice as long.
Let me guess you're old (Score:2)
Thing is human beings have a bad habit of living longer than they intended to. I don't drink and smoke and that's usually what kills people in my family so God only knows how long I'll live.
Meanwhile we have fucked up the water cycle. Go look it up. Basically we are in perpetual drought because the increased temperature messes with the water cycle preventing rain fro
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Considering that we still have to survive in this environment, no.
disagree (Score:2)
Better question: Cost in energy (Score:2)
Cost in energy != cost in carbon.
Some energy, such as solar, wind, and hydro, has a very low marginal cost beyond the cost of transmission. Sure, there's the cost of building the plant. Mining the earth to make solar panels, building those solar panels, getting them to the solar farm, and building a functional solar array and hooking it to the grid isn't energy-free.
Now, what's the equivalent cost of carbon? That depends on where the energy comes from. If, hypothetically, you use existing solar power to
Eviromental concern or fear of societal change? (Score:2)
I would say
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Forget the cost (Score:2)
I can't afford to have incorrect or hallucinated answers masquerading as truth. Why use the damn thing if you have to verify everything it spits out at you? That's a truly costly waste of time right there.
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I can't afford to have incorrect or hallucinated answers masquerading as truth. Why use the damn thing if you have to verify everything it spits out at you? That's a truly costly waste of time right there.
If the time it takes to generate the content and verify that content is shorter than the time it would take to create the content yourself.
I take your point - It might be a waste of time in cases where the above is not true, but in my experience it has often been time saving.
No need to be worried (Score:3)
People read absolute numbers and are shocked. If they put the number about the energy use of their last Netflix evening next to it, they would be surprised. You'll probably saved more CO2 today by using an ad blocker than you can waste with (useful) ChatGPT queries in a day.
But read about it yourself: https://andymasley.substack.co... [substack.com]
More links:
https://old.reddit.com/r/aiwar... [reddit.com]
TL;DR:
Water (ChatGPT): https://preview.redd.it/ld506s... [preview.redd.it]
Energy (Image generation): https://preview.redd.it/bi31bq... [preview.redd.it]
Efficiency (LLM): https://d1lamhf6l6yk6d.cloudfr... [cloudfront.net]
Not sure I care (Score:1)
I don't use cloud based LLMs. Instead, I run a local LLM that serves most of my needs just fine. I haven't measured my actual overall usage, but I do know this: My server idles at 140w and despite running dual 3090 gpus for LLM inference, only peaks at around 500w while generating tokens. Power limiting the cards has a negligible effect on token generation.
Overall, my electricity usage hasn't gone up compared to before I self hosted an LLM.
Forget nice things, we can't even have any thing. (Score:2)
There's always some self-righteous moron to condemn it. If we can't use AI we stay dumb and ignorant like the morons who write articles like that. Even worse, using the web and causing multiple web servers to deliver content definitely uses more electricity. These are the same fools that block solar panels and any sort of technology solutions to provide clean energy. How can we have technology without being able to use any learning tools?
but vs a human? (Score:1)
What about ads? (Score:2)
"A Google search takes about 10 times less energy than a ChatGPT query."
How much energy does the ad management, selection, and presentation require? I imagine the AI quiet still takes more energy, but maybe it's not quite 10x if ads are considered. Of course, this is all before the companies figure out how to inject ads in the AI queries.
water (Score:1)
One liter per one hundred words? (Score:2)
One liter per one hundred words? Color me skeptical. It takes a great deal of energy to evaporate a liter of water, and that kind of energy requirement to keep the servers cool (not to mention the cost of electricity to power them) would quickly render generative AI uneconomical. I mean would you spend ten or fifteen minutes boiling a quart of water on your stove just to get one hundred words of text? Even if you could press a button and flash evaporate it that would be ridiculous.