this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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241
Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret (www.nature.com)
submitted 8 months ago by flango@lemmy.eco.br to c/news@lemmy.world
94 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 70 points 8 months ago (5 children)

And nobody seems to give a shit. Even people who would normally give a shit about this sort of thing. Even people who do things like denounce Bitcoin mining's waste of energy (and I agree) are not talking about the energy- and water- waste from AI systems.

That article says that OpenAI uses 6% of Des Moines' water.

Meanwhile-

According to Colorado State University research, nearly half of the 204 freshwater basins they studied in the United States may not be able to meet the monthly water demand by 2071.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/parts-america-water-crisis/story?id=98484121

And nobody seems to give a shit.

[–] Nudding@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago (29 children)

Lots of people give a shit, they're just not in any sort of position to do anything about it.

We won't treat climate change seriously until we get a significant climate related mass casualty event in North America.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (4 children)

As soon as the gulf streams collapse I think a few more of us may start giving a shit.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Giving a shit about the horse barn after someone's already let out all the horses doesn't really make a difference.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Have you met humanity??

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Yep. We suck. I'm reminded of it every day.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

gulf streams collapse

Nah, there were some people worried about it, but it won't happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

The possibility of a Gulf Stream collapse has been covered by some news publications.[vague] The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report addressed this issue specifically, and found that based on model projections and theoretical understanding, the Gulf Stream will not shut down in a warming climate. While the Gulf Stream is expected to slow down as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakens, it will not collapse, even if the AMOC were to collapse. Nevertheless, this slowing down will have significant effects, including a rise in sea level along the North American coast, reduced precipitation in the midlatitudes, changing patterns of strong precipitation around Europe and the tropics, and stronger storms in the North Atlantic.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

So what you're saying is that it's fine?

1000008187

[–] Theprogressivist@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

At the point it's too late.

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

*The AMOC. The Gulf Stream can't really collapse.

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[–] bleistift2@feddit.de 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I guess it depends on how you use chatbots. If you’re just too lazy to click on the first google result you get, it’s wasteful to bother ChatGPT with your question. On the other hand, for complex topics, a single answer may save you quite a lot of googling and following links.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago (13 children)

Oh, well as long as it save you from Googling it's okay that it's a massive ecological disaster. My mistake.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

I mean an argument could be made here, right? Just thinking theoretically.

Maxim: we want to be as eco-friendly as possible.

Per a given task, understand the least environmentally-taxing way to accomplish the goal.

Task requires one, two, or three/four DuckDuckGo searches? DDG away.

Task requires five DDG searches, OR one LLM query? Language model it is.

(LLM may well rarely be the answer there, of course, just laying out the theory!)

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[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Bitcoin was wasteful with little benefit, but AI has the potential to benefit humanity at large. Maybe ChatGPT itself isn't a great example of that, but their research has gone on to spur lots of advancements in AI, advancement that have allowed AI to make all sorts of breakthroughs in areas like medicine

[–] MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Yeah, but LLMs like ChatGPT and the like aren't where that advancement is being made. LLMs are driving investment in the technology, but it's just a mostly useless investor target that just happens to run on the same hardware that can be used for useful AI-powered research. Sure, it's pushing the hardware advancement forward maybe 10-15 years faster than it might have otherwise happened, but it's coming with a lot of wasteful baggage as well because LLMs are the golden boy investors want to to throw money at.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

True the benefit actually exists here (how much is open for debate)

On the other hand, we should be doing full alarm bells and running around in a panic ramping down every use of energy possible before we leave our 100 surviving progeny a lifeless rock to live on. But humans don't work that way. By the time we are all on board it will be 100 years too late, unfortunately.

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[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 2 points 8 months ago

Why the heck does it use so much water? It sounds like a very inefficient and stupid design to not have a closed loop.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (18 children)

Honest question, why is AI bad but TVs aren't? What's the environmental cost of millions of people watching Netflix? Using Instagram? Playing video games? Using search engines?

If you wanna get mad at people using computers for their environmental costs why are you starting with AI?

Bitcoin had legitimate reason to be environmentally concerned about, the algorithm was literally based on proof of wasting energy, and that would scale up overtime, AI is not like that.

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[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago

It's not secret, people just don't care. Manufacturers publish power and cooling data on spec sheets, but because people are easily wowed by pure garbage masquerading as breakthroughs and "future", they simply ignore the costs and push ahead. Add in the fact that most "AI" startups are actual scams, and you've got a corporate incentive to pretend this isn't doing permanent damage too.

[–] sativacat@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They're scared of skynet but not global warming

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

That doesn't sound like they're taking future hardware optimizations into account, we won't be using GPUs for this purpose forever (as much as Nvidia would like that to be true lol)

[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Anything power saved by hardware design improvements will be consumed by adding more transistors. You will not be seeing a power consumption decrease. Manufacturers of this hardware have been giving talks for the past two years calling for literal power plants to be build co-resident with datacenters.

[–] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

I'm not sure if future optimization wouldn't bring more demand. At least, that's what my hardware and apps shown in a couple of decades. If another start up would have an ability to train with additional billion or trillion of parameters, I'm sure they would. It also leads to a wider window for poor optimization.

[–] itsJoelle@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That was my thought too. I heard a take about how we may see us shift away from GPUs to purpose built PUs as a way to continue process progress now we’re getting pretty small on the silicon scale. Neural nets may be one of these special “PU”s we see.

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How much power does the brain consume? In bagels. How many bagels does ChatGPT consume?

[–] JoseALerma@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How much power does the brain consume? In bagels. How many bagels does ChatGPT consume?

The great thing about math is that it's interchangeable.

https://rpsc.energy.gov/energy-data-facts#collapse-accordion-25-3

The average U.S. household used about 77 million British thermal units (Btu) in 2015

https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/british-thermal-unit-to-kilocalorie/

The energy in kilocalories is equal to the energy in british thermal units multiplied by 0.252164.

33,000 households x 77,000,000 Btu/household x 0.252164 kcal/Btu = 640,748,724,000 kcal

https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-bagels

One plain medium-sized bagel –  about 100 grams – has about 264 calories

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/kcal-vs-calories

Instead, the terms calories — capitalized or not — and kcal are used interchangeably and refer to the same amount of energy

640,748,724,000 kcal / 264 kcal/bagel = 2,427,078,500 bagels

Your homework is finding out how much energy the brain consumes in bagels

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I appreciate your answer, but I already asked that question. I'll try to answer it myself, but let's just say that you did the easy part.

Also, your answer doesn't have a unit of time. Is that what ChatGPT consumes per hour, per minute, per week?

[–] JoseALerma@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The original article doesn't specify a unit of time:

Most experts agree that nuclear fusion won’t contribute significantly to the crucial goal of decarbonizing by mid-century to combat the climate crisis. Helion’s most optimistic estimate is that by 2029 it will produce enough energy to power 40,000 average US households; one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes.

Based on context clues, it's probably consumption per year

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Ok, I'll do it my way (though yours was interesting!):

This article says that an average U.S. house consumes about 30 KWh per day. Let's round it down to 24 KWh, so we can say that 1 household consumes 1 KW per hour.

According to this article, 1 Joule = 0.238902957619 kcal. And 1 Watt = 1 Joule (per second.) So, 1 KW = 1,000 Joules per second, or about 239 kcals per second. You said that 1 bagel is about 264 kcals, so to simplify things, let's round it down to 239 kcals (and yes, food calories are really kcals - go figure), so 1 KW = 1 bagel.

So, 1 household consumes 1 bagel per second, or 3,600 bagels per hour. In my opinion, that sounds excessive, so maybe my math is not the best. But let's assume I did everything correctly.

So, ChatGPT consumes the equivalent of the energy consumed by 33,000 homes. So, ChatGPT consumes 3,600 bagels times 33,000 = 118,800,000 bagels per hour. That's almost 119 million bagels per hour!

You came up with 2.4 billion bagels, but we don't know if that's per hour, per day or what. Let's divide both numbers and see if that gives us a clue: 2.4 billion divided by 119 million is roughly 20, which is close-ish to 24. So chances are, your calculations are bagels per day.

Again, that's a lot of bagels!!!

Edit: As for the brain, this site says that the brain consumes 20 watts, or 0.0056 KW per hour. We established that 1 KW = 1 bagel, so 0.0056 KW is, well, 0.0056 bagels. If we multiply that by 3,600, we get 20.16. So the brain consumes 20 bagels per hour. That can't be right. I wish I could eat as many as 20 bagels per hour just to power my brain - I'd be a happy man!

But anyway, 20 bagels per hour is definitely a lot less than 119 million bagels per hour.

Oh well, I did my best.

[–] JoseALerma@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's some good diligence!

It looks like the ecoflow values are lower:

https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-to-btu-per-hour/

Since one kilowatt is equal to 3,412.14245 btu per hour

30 KWh/day x 365 days x 3,412 Btu/KWh = 37,361,400 Btu

Which is half the value I found for 2015. Does ecoflow have more current data and houses are twice as efficient? Maybe. They're also trying to sell something, so maybe it's based on data from their products. They don't mention where they got it from.

The welovecycling conversion is off by 1000 (maybe the kilocalorie threw them off?)

https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/joule-to-kilocalorie/

Since one kilocalorie is equal to 4,184 joules

1 kcal = 4,184 J so 1 J = 1/4,184 kcal = 0.00023900573613 kcal

Otherwise, your math was right, just off by 3 zeros, so a household is more like 3.6 bagels per hour.

The nist site also doesn't specify a unit of time, but if it is 20 watts/hour (Wh) we'd only need to move it 3 places for KWh, or 0.020 KWh.

Too many conversions can introduce errors, so we can go from KWh to kcal directly:

https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/kilowatt-to-kilocalorie-per-hour/

Since one kilowatt is equal to 860.420815 kilocalories per hour

0.020 KWh x 860 kcalh/KWh = 17.2 kcalh

Which, yeah, is not much of a bagel per hour. Keep in mind that the daily recommended calories for an average adult is 2000 kcal.

All in all, this was a fun thought experiment, so thanks for looking into it further!

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Nice! I knew my math was off by three zeros somewhere, but it was late at night, and the exercise per se was fun enough so I wrapped it up.

Your corrections make everything make more sense, at least on the brain side. Considering the 2000 calories per day recommendation for the whole body, which is 83 cals per hour, the brain consuming 17.2 cals, or 20% of it sounds about right - though from another point of view, 20% consumption of the whole energy intake sounds like a lot! The brain weighs about 3 lbs, so in an adult male weighing 190 lbs, that's roughly 1.5%.

1.5% of the "cell population" consumes 20% of the total energy. That's some Occupy Wall Street stuff right there!

And bringing it back to bagels, 17.2 cals represents less than 10% of a bagel. So, a bagel bite. The brain consumes a bagel bite per hour. Which is wild given how complex it is (at least, complex to us.)

Finally, I said "at least on the brain side" because a household requiring just 3.6 bagels per hour sounds quite low. You mean to tell me that if I burn 4 bagels, I can power my TV, my fridge and my AC for a full hour? Now I know what to do with expired bagels!!!

Anyway. Thanks for humoring me! Awesome exercise and awesome discussion. It was fun!

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[–] geissi@feddit.de 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tbf, talking about the environmental costs of generative AI is just framing.
The issue is the environmental cost of electricity, no matter what it is used for.
If we want this to be considered in consumption then it needs to be part of the electricity price. And of course all other power sources, like combustion motors, need to also price in external costs.

[–] HurlingDurling@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It should be considered, an ultra-light laptop, or a raspberry pi consume WAY less power than a full on gaming rig, and the same can be said between a data server that is used for e-commerce and a server running AI, the AI server has higher power requirements (it may not be as wide of a margin from my first comparison, but there is one), now multiply that AI server and add hundreds more and you start seeing a considerable uptick in power usage.

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[–] dhork@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Just wait until the AI finds out about Bitcoin....

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