I thought businesses liked cost-benefit analyses

Kaushal Trivedi comments on the ridiculous cost of LLMs.

The Jaw-dropping environmental impact of Large-Language-Models (LLMs)

Assuming static usage of 100 million weekly active users (ex. OpenAI chatGPT) and just 5 queries per user per week, the total energy consumption for operating an LLM like GPT-3.5 is staggering—around 44,200 MWh per year.

To put this in perspective: With an emission intensity of 0.4 kg of CO2 per kWh, this level of energy consumption emits the same amount of CO2 as making 15,000 round trips in your petrol-powered car from Kashmir to Kanyakumari (a road distance of 3,600 km one-way).

That’s massive!

As we continue to innovate, it’s crucial to consider the environmental impact and strive for more sustainable solutions.

Because at the end, there’s no PLANet B.

First let me say I would love to make that trip once. Not 15,000 times, but once would be awesome. I’d see a lot, learn a lot.

What do I get from ChatGPT for that massive investment? A lot of companies get to slap “AI” on their products, and as near as I can tell, it only makes them worse. Is Google improved by adding AI to their front end? No. What would improve Google is stripping off the layers of cruft they’ve accumulated and monetized over the years, simplifying the algorithms, and making internet search simple and streamlined again. Who thinks a phone book benefits from a half-assed chat function?

I guess if you’re selling car rentals in Kanyakumari, it’s profitable to get people to make repetitive road trips.

Hey, can I make a detour to Bengal? Maybe make some scenic stops?