Some of your AI prompts could cause 50 times more CO2 emissions than others
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Yes, blame the consumers yet again when we all know corporations are the biggest climate offenders.
schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 14:26 zuletzt editiert vonNot really, this is more like an obvious statement like "certain activities like sports may cause you to burn twice the calories. Yeah, doh.
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Is it just me or is that stupid way to measure consuming computing power? The CPUs themselves doing computations do not produce any pollutants (unless you calculate how much of that is created during manufacturing ang logistics, which I doubt). It's the (without question stupidly large) energy consumption which might, but big players are at least greenwashing their actions by using renewable energy more and more.
Why not create comparison like "generating 1000 words of your fanfiction consumes as much energy as you do all day" or something more easily to compare.
schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 14:49 zuletzt editiert vonBecause it really doesn’t. For most tasks, it would require more human energy to do the work than an LLM, just because we are much slower at it than an AI. I mean, humans operate at around 80 W just by existing (basal metabolic rate).
If the AI is powered by renewables, it’s cleaner than humans. If it’s powered by fossil fuels, it’s likely much worse (though I haven’t run the calculations).
Now obviously, this presumes that the output of an AI is even valuable at all, which is often not the case.
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Why not create comparison like “generating 1000 words of your fanfiction consumes as much energy as you do all day” or something more easily to compare.
Because its still bullshit. The bulk of the utilization of these LLMs isn't going to your 1000 word Princess Leia/Dianna Troy lesbian romance. They're going to some call center in the Philippines blowing up your cell with automated voice-to-text phone calls and a bargain basement Netflix animation studio experimenting with AI generated children's cartoons.
Once again, we have a giant Business Factory spewing out enormous plums of waste to produce things nobody asked for. Then we're getting an Op-Ed from some know-nothing hack on the greenwashing beat to tell their readers "Um, aktuly, these skyrocketing emissions are because you asked Alexa to add kidney beans to your shopping list." And I will put even money odds on this Op-Ed, itself, being AI generated.
schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 15:13 zuletzt editiert vonBecause its still bullshit.
Obviously. But I have no context on how much my actions create co2 in the first place. I assume driving a car generates a majority of it, or maybe heating the house, but I still don't have any clue how many kilograms that might be. But what I do know is how many kilowatts my house consumes electricity and at least roughly how much our appliances use, so if you want to try and blame me for consuming precious resources by generating text or watching a video at least give me an measurement I can easily comprehend.
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 15:47 zuletzt editiert von
Always remember to say please and thank you
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Is it just me or is that stupid way to measure consuming computing power? The CPUs themselves doing computations do not produce any pollutants (unless you calculate how much of that is created during manufacturing ang logistics, which I doubt). It's the (without question stupidly large) energy consumption which might, but big players are at least greenwashing their actions by using renewable energy more and more.
Why not create comparison like "generating 1000 words of your fanfiction consumes as much energy as you do all day" or something more easily to compare.
schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 16:21 zuletzt editiert vonWhy not create comparison like "generating 1000 words of your fanfiction consumes as much energy as you do all day" or something more easily to compare.
Considering that you can generate 1000 words in a single prompt to ChatGPT, the energy to do that would be about 0.3Wh .
That's about as much energy as a typical desktop would use in about 8 seconds while browsing the fediverse (assuming a desktop consuming energy at a rate of ~150W).
Or, on the other end of the spectrum, if you're browsing the fediverse on Voyager with a smartphone consuming energy at a rate of 2W, then that would be about 9 minutes of browsing the fediverse (4.5 minutes if using a regular browser app in my case since it bumped up the energy usage to ~4W).
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Why not create comparison like “generating 1000 words of your fanfiction consumes as much energy as you do all day” or something more easily to compare.
Because its still bullshit. The bulk of the utilization of these LLMs isn't going to your 1000 word Princess Leia/Dianna Troy lesbian romance. They're going to some call center in the Philippines blowing up your cell with automated voice-to-text phone calls and a bargain basement Netflix animation studio experimenting with AI generated children's cartoons.
Once again, we have a giant Business Factory spewing out enormous plums of waste to produce things nobody asked for. Then we're getting an Op-Ed from some know-nothing hack on the greenwashing beat to tell their readers "Um, aktuly, these skyrocketing emissions are because you asked Alexa to add kidney beans to your shopping list." And I will put even money odds on this Op-Ed, itself, being AI generated.
schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 18:48 zuletzt editiert vonRecycling 2: Electric Bugaloo
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 19:21 zuletzt editiert von
Does this also apply to AI models I run locally on my computer?
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 19. Juni 2025, 23:55 zuletzt editiert von
That’s cool. Not my problem to solve.
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Because its still bullshit.
Obviously. But I have no context on how much my actions create co2 in the first place. I assume driving a car generates a majority of it, or maybe heating the house, but I still don't have any clue how many kilograms that might be. But what I do know is how many kilowatts my house consumes electricity and at least roughly how much our appliances use, so if you want to try and blame me for consuming precious resources by generating text or watching a video at least give me an measurement I can easily comprehend.
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 01:19 zuletzt editiert vonGenerally, heating and cooling are the main energy consumption for domestic purposes. next up is the car, and then electrical consumption. (from what i remember).
as long as you don't take a transatlantic trip your fine:
"For example, having DeepSeek R1 (70 billion parameters) answer 600,000 questions would create CO2 emissions equal to a round-trip flight from London to New York. Meanwhile, Qwen 2.5 (72 billion parameters) can answer more than three times as many questions (about 1.9 million) with similar accuracy rates while generating the same emissions."
i don't know y'all, but i can say it takes me a long-ass time to ask that many questions.
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 01:24 zuletzt editiert von
just to set the record straight:
"For example, having DeepSeek R1 (70 billion parameters) answer 600,000 questions would create CO2 emissions equal to a round-trip flight from London to New York. Meanwhile, Qwen 2.5 (72 billion parameters) can answer more than three times as many questions (about 1.9 million) with similar accuracy rates while generating the same emissions."
i'd say that makes the average usage for personal reasons an non-issue.
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Does this also apply to AI models I run locally on my computer?
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 02:10 zuletzt editiert vonThat's a good question no one else seems to be asking. When you run local prompts, you're using more battery on your laptop or power from your PSU, but both of those are limited by their relatively small power consumption (when compared to server farms). Therefore, it could be likened to encoding heavy video or exporting complex blender models. Are you using more electricity? Yes. Is it city-eroding amounts more? Not even close.
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Yes, blame the consumers yet again when we all know corporations are the biggest climate offenders.
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 02:58 zuletzt editiert vonAnd won't stop putting this slop in everything.
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 07:02 zuletzt editiert von
Sometimes i use ai to analyze spreadsheet data for me and spit out an excel sheet with the answers. It says "thinking" for like 10 mins, and i can just imagine some GPUs on fire in a datacenter somewhere...
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Generally, heating and cooling are the main energy consumption for domestic purposes. next up is the car, and then electrical consumption. (from what i remember).
as long as you don't take a transatlantic trip your fine:
"For example, having DeepSeek R1 (70 billion parameters) answer 600,000 questions would create CO2 emissions equal to a round-trip flight from London to New York. Meanwhile, Qwen 2.5 (72 billion parameters) can answer more than three times as many questions (about 1.9 million) with similar accuracy rates while generating the same emissions."
i don't know y'all, but i can say it takes me a long-ass time to ask that many questions.
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 07:07 zuletzt editiert vonGenerally, heating and cooling are the main energy consumption for domestic purposes. next up is the car, and then electrical consumption. (from what i remember).
I suppose it depends on where you live. Our house consumes something over 20 000kWh per year as our heating is also electric (and rest of the consumption is pretty neglible compared to heating) and we also have a fireplace which consumes around 15m³ of firewood, depending on how cold winter happens to be. Electric grid here has a ton of renewables and nuclear, so co2 footprint should be on the smaller side compared to global average.
Also, as google and microsoft (among others) shoehorns AI "answers" to everything that adds up, but private use seems to be quite insignificant anyways.
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Because its still bullshit.
Obviously. But I have no context on how much my actions create co2 in the first place. I assume driving a car generates a majority of it, or maybe heating the house, but I still don't have any clue how many kilograms that might be. But what I do know is how many kilowatts my house consumes electricity and at least roughly how much our appliances use, so if you want to try and blame me for consuming precious resources by generating text or watching a video at least give me an measurement I can easily comprehend.
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 07:23 zuletzt editiert von womble@lemmy.worldFWIW, a short query to a typical sized LLM takes about 1Wh of energy, there lots of variance on how big the model you are using and how long the input and outputs are but thats the correct order of magnitude. 1Wh is the amount of energy consumed by a 1kW electric kettle in 3.6 seconds or a 2kW hairdryer in 1.8 seconds.
if you assume that energy was produced in a coal power plant (the worst for co2 emissions) then it makes around 0.3g of co2 emissions , which is the equivalent of burning about one droplet of gasoline.
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 07:46 zuletzt editiert von
I think most people have decided they like using AI more than they care about climate change
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Does this also apply to AI models I run locally on my computer?
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 07:48 zuletzt editiert vonNo they are magically free.
/s
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This post did not contain any content.schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 07:51 zuletzt editiert von
Lemmy wants me to believe that AI is the danger for climate change. This is like drinking through paper straw while the pollution comes from mega-factories who dump their waste in the river.
So AI is the problem… huh… and not the thousands of missiles dropped in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and the Occupied Terrorist Zionazi Land.
Cool I guess, AI Bad!
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When you do 0 AI prompts, they all cause the same amount of emissions, which is 0.
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 08:03 zuletzt editiert vonAlso true: When you do 0 AI prompts, they all cause the same amount of emissions, which is 999999999 gigajoules.
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Lemmy wants me to believe that AI is the danger for climate change. This is like drinking through paper straw while the pollution comes from mega-factories who dump their waste in the river.
So AI is the problem… huh… and not the thousands of missiles dropped in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and the Occupied Terrorist Zionazi Land.
Cool I guess, AI Bad!
schrieb am 20. Juni 2025, 08:40 zuletzt editiert vonMeh, whataboutism.
