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

Drs. Emma Strubell and Sasha Luccioni 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" 

"The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans" 

The growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence
- New York Times coverage: "AI Could Soon Need as Much Electricity as an Entire Country"

"Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP."
"The 'invisible' materiality of information technology."
"Counting Carbon: A Survey of Factors Influencing the Emissions of Machine Learning"
"AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think." 

Fresh AI Hell:

Not the software to blame for deadly Tesla autopilot crash, but the company selling the software.

4chan Uses Bing to Flood the Internet With Racist Images
Followup from Vice: Generative AI Is a Disaster, and Companies Don’t Seem to Really Care

Is this evidence for LLMs having an internal "world model"?

“Approaching a universal Turing machine”

Americans Are Asking AI: ‘Should I Get Back With My Ex?’

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.