Comment by andymasley
2 months ago
I basically do think that at some threshold it's important to weigh your time against negative impacts. I personally avoid taking flights whenever I can because of the climate and think that's worth my time relative to the emissions saved, but I also never worry about optimizing the energy use of my digital clock because that would take too much time relative to the emissions I could save. ChatGPT exists somewhere between those two things, and my argument in the post is that it's much closer to the digital clock.
On a logarithmic scale, it’s closer to the flight.
Flying 1000 miles commercially only represents about 10 gallons of fuel.
10 gallons of fuel's worth of energy could be used to ask ChatGTP 100,000 questions (assuming 3 Wh per question) or power a digital clock (1-2 W) for 35 years. If you assume you ask ChatGPT 8 questions per day, it's using exactly as much energy as a digital clock. Personal use of ChatGPT is much closer to the clock.
The marginal difference of someone sitting or not sitting on a specific flight isn’t 10 gallons of fuel. It’s the capacity of the entire aircraft making that trip / number of passengers that gives 10 gallons on average because if more people make a trip eventually you need an extra aircraft.
So on an apples to apples comparison ChatGPT including training, hardware, etc uses a fuck of a lot more than just 3 Wh per question.
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