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0 pointsj-pb8mo ago0 comments

people downvote your sarcasm, but if you do the calculations you're kinda right.

1Kg of Beef costs:

  - The energy equivalent of 60.000 ChatGPT queries.
  - The water equivalent of 50.000.000 ChatGPT queries.

Applied to their metric Mistral Large 2 used:

  - The water equivalent of 18.8 Tons of Beef.
  - The CO2 equivalent of 204 Tons of Beef.

France produces 3836 Tons of Beef per day,

and one large LLM per 6 months.

So yeah, maybe use ChatGPT to ask for vegan recipes.

People will try to blame everything else they can get a hold on before changing the stuff that really has an impact, if it means touching their lifestyle.

The LLMs are not the problem here.

0 comments

plants8mo ago

Those are incredible stats. As a vegan who uses LLMs at work frequently, I would love to have the source as well :)

j-pbOP8mo ago

  - https://mistral.ai/news/our-contribution-to-a-global-environmental-standard-for-ai
  - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201677/greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-major-food-products/
  - https://www.statista.com/chart/9483/how-thirsty-is-our-food/
  - https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity
  - https://x.com/sama/status/1890820962993533232

You got to do the calculations yourself though.

plants8mo ago

Wow, thanks. I’m even coming up with 500K chatGPT queries for the amount of energy consumed as a KG of beef, though I might have moved a decimal place somewhere - feel free to check my math :)

“average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours of energy” - or 0.00034MWH

Using this calculator: https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calc... - in my zip, 0.0002KG of CO2 per MWH. (Though, I suppose it depends more on the zip where they’re doing inference, however this translation didn’t seem to vary much when I tried other zips)

Then, 99.48KG/0.0002KG= 497,400 chatGPT queries worth of CO2 per KG of beef?

Thanks for sharing!

1 more reply

JimDabell8mo ago

This is a good article on the subject:

> Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

— https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b...

He’s done some good followup articles as well:

https://andymasley.substack.com/s/ai-and-the-environment

bluefirebrand8mo ago

The difference is that food is important and live-giving and LLMs are a very fancy magic 8-ball

j-pbOP8mo ago

You don't need beef, beef is a lifestyle choice.

I use LLMs to do all of my coding these days, it's certainly more essential for feeding me than beef.

leksak8mo ago

Also a lifestyle choice

1 more reply

mlnj8mo ago

Nothing stopping us to live the hermit life in the mountains. But here we are trying to get bits and bytes to write that JIRA ticket instead of us.

motoxpro8mo ago

You could eat a few bites less of beef in one meal and that would be your equivalent AI use for a lifetime.

tptacek8mo ago

Where does a Youtube LetsPlay video fall into that calculation? My understanding is that a single watch of a video is orders of magnitude more than a day's active use of ChatGPT.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsj-pb8mo ago0 comments

people downvote your sarcasm, but if you do the calculations you're kinda right.

1Kg of Beef costs:

  - The energy equivalent of 60.000 ChatGPT queries.
  - The water equivalent of 50.000.000 ChatGPT queries.

Applied to their metric Mistral Large 2 used:

  - The water equivalent of 18.8 Tons of Beef.
  - The CO2 equivalent of 204 Tons of Beef.

France produces 3836 Tons of Beef per day,

and one large LLM per 6 months.

So yeah, maybe use ChatGPT to ask for vegan recipes.

People will try to blame everything else they can get a hold on before changing the stuff that really has an impact, if it means touching their lifestyle.

The LLMs are not the problem here.

0 comments

plants8mo ago

Those are incredible stats. As a vegan who uses LLMs at work frequently, I would love to have the source as well :)

j-pbOP8mo ago

  - https://mistral.ai/news/our-contribution-to-a-global-environmental-standard-for-ai
  - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201677/greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-major-food-products/
  - https://www.statista.com/chart/9483/how-thirsty-is-our-food/
  - https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity
  - https://x.com/sama/status/1890820962993533232

You got to do the calculations yourself though.

plants8mo ago

Wow, thanks. I’m even coming up with 500K chatGPT queries for the amount of energy consumed as a KG of beef, though I might have moved a decimal place somewhere - feel free to check my math :)

“average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours of energy” - or 0.00034MWH

Then, 99.48KG/0.0002KG= 497,400 chatGPT queries worth of CO2 per KG of beef?

Thanks for sharing!

1 more reply

JimDabell8mo ago

This is a good article on the subject:

> Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

— https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b...

He’s done some good followup articles as well:

https://andymasley.substack.com/s/ai-and-the-environment

bluefirebrand8mo ago

The difference is that food is important and live-giving and LLMs are a very fancy magic 8-ball

j-pbOP8mo ago

You don't need beef, beef is a lifestyle choice.

I use LLMs to do all of my coding these days, it's certainly more essential for feeding me than beef.

leksak8mo ago

Also a lifestyle choice

1 more reply

mlnj8mo ago

Nothing stopping us to live the hermit life in the mountains. But here we are trying to get bits and bytes to write that JIRA ticket instead of us.

motoxpro8mo ago

You could eat a few bites less of beef in one meal and that would be your equivalent AI use for a lifetime.

tptacek8mo ago

Where does a Youtube LetsPlay video fall into that calculation? My understanding is that a single watch of a video is orders of magnitude more than a day's active use of ChatGPT.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse