Energy consumption and CO2 emission it causes is a pretty big lose
back
3 comments
That CO2 will be emitted either way. We can choose though what % goes to funny cat videos and porn or useful open source code.
They build new data centers -> extra CO2
They build new power plants -> extra CO2
They built non-climate neutral power plants to power the data centers -> extra CO2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223845
It’s not like we had some already produced spare energy lying around. Consumption went up, production went up, often it’s conventional production with CO2
There is a reason Google and MS scrapped their CO2 goals
This argument, while totally valid, will never halt the build out of data centers nor hamper the development of AI.
Run it with a self-hosted model on a gaming PC running off a solar panel and UPS.