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Measuring the environmental impact of AI inference | Google Cloud Blogcloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measuring-the-environmental-impact-of-ai-inference
340 sats \ 6 comments \ @Scoresby 21 Aug AI
Using this methodology, we estimate the median Gemini Apps text prompt uses 0.24 watt-hours (Wh) of energy, emits 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (gCO2e), and consumes 0.26 milliliters (or about five drops) of water1 — figures that are substantially lower than many public estimates. The per-prompt energy impact is equivalent to watching TV for less than nine seconds.
There's also an MIT Technology Review article about the Google paper.
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207 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 21 Aug
I'm tired of people having to defend how energy is used. If you're paying for the energy you can use it how you want.
Focus on abundant clean energy if you're worried about climate change. Stop telling people what they can and can't do with the energy
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132 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 17h
Focus on abundant clean energy if you're worried about climate change
Thank you.
But, to play devils advocate: kind of boring if there's no one besides a couple of energy companies to cancel.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 17h
oh i'm sure there's plenty of other stuff to get outraged over
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 17h
true lol
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35 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 21 Aug
Fair point. It is still kinda cool to have a sense of how much energy it uses.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 21 Aug
It just feels defensive when it shouldn't have to be. You can tell because they chose the median instead of the average. Median is useful when you're interested in the experience of a typical user, but it's fairly obvious that when it comes to energy usage, people are primarily worried about totals, which is better captured by the average. It's obvious Google is trying to shade these metrics downwards to appease environmentalist judgment.
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