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AI's energy impact is still small–but how we handle it is huge

technologyreview.com

1 points by Capstanlqc 9 months ago · 2 comments

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oulipo 9 months ago

It's absolutely not "still small", it's huge vs the benefits it "provides"... (mostly a glorified autocomplete to a few coders so far)

the problem is the rebound effect, even though we might improve its efficiency, then people will start using it in many more places, leading to a global energy usage increase, not decrease.

For instance, now websites are routinely implementing "assistant" features on regular pages, which let you hover on/select text, to immediately do an assistant query... which creates 10 new "useless" queries, where none would have existed before

hello_computer 9 months ago

Although huge/small is subjective, I wouldn’t consider 22% of new demand “small”—especially for LLMs, which seem to present more problems than solutions. Sounds like a public relations piece to me. Many interested corporations launder the money through various think-tanks and institutes, and people are none the wiser.

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