• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    29 days ago

    are there any studies or data on the actual consumption of electricity that AI uses? I know that training consumes a lot, but if the usage of it doesn’t consume much, it doesn’t really matter since it’s a one time cost.

    • Lemmilicious@feddit.nu
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      29 days ago

      I don’t know of any studies unfortunately, but I did want to point out that training is not quite a one time cost in practice, because training has already been done loads times and is still being done! I’m theory, if we stopped training all AI and just kept the ones we have, then indeed the training cost would be bounded just like you say, I’m just afraid we’re quite far from that.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        28 days ago

        this is true, but this is always going to lead to a different AI and a different product eventually, it’s not like it’s going to be sustained entirely by the whims of chatgpt 3.5 for example.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      29 days ago

      FWIW I’ve generated ai images using a solar panel the size of an iPhone as the power source.

      The training was the cost.

      The data was connected by wire but powered externally, which I argued was cheating but I guess not idk I just work here

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        29 days ago

        anything outside of the device doing the work is an externality, so we can write that off anyway.

        Consuming memes on le internets would be consuming whatever that consumes, and people are fine with that, just not AI, so it’s irrelevant anyway.