Episode 19: The Murky Climate and Environmental Impact of Large Language Models, November 6 2023

Drs. Emma Strubell (strubell.github.io/#:~:text=Emma%20Strubell%20….) and Sasha Luccioni (sashaluccioni.com) join Emily and Alex for an environment-focused hour of AI hype. How much carbon does a single use of ChatGPT emit? What about the water or energy consumption of manufacturing the graphics processing units that train various large language models? Why even catastrophic estimates from well-meaning researchers may not tell the full story.
This episode was recorded on November 6, 2023.
References:
"The Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training Will Plateau, Then Shrink" (arxiv.org/abs/2204.05149)
"The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans" (arxiv.org/abs/2303.06219)
The growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence (cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00365-3)
- New York Times coverage: "AI Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country" (nytimes.com/2023/10/10/climate/ai-could-soon-n…)
"Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP." (aclanthology.org/P19-1355)
"The 'invisible' materiality of information technology." (dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360647)
"Counting Carbon: A Survey of Factors Influencing the Emissions of Machine Learning" (arxiv.org/abs/2302.08476)
"AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think." (ted.com/talks/sasha_luccioni_ai_is_dangerous_b…)
Fresh AI Hell:
Not the software to blame for deadly Tesla autopilot crash, but the company selling the software. (washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023…)
4chan Uses Bing to Flood the Internet With Racist Images (404media.co/4chan-uses-bing-to-flood-the-inter…)
Followup from Vice: Generative AI Is a Disaster, and Companies Don’t Seem to Really Care (vice.com/en/article/88xdez/generative-ai-is-a-…)
Is this evidence for LLMs having an internal "world model"? (x.com/wesg52/status/1709551516577902782?s=20)
“Approaching a universal Turing machine” (ft.com/content/5c41202b-6034-4cac-81a8-7968e9f…)
Americans Are Asking AI: ‘Should I Get Back With My Ex?’ (wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/asking-ai-relations…)
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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park (naomipleasurepark.com).
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.