I don't agree with many of the arguments against LLMs I see on the Fediverse.
LLM usage is not a GHG-intensive activity, especially compared to other everyday activities.
It disturbs me when people imply that LLMs are primarily responsible for climate change. This is not remotely true, and it ignores our real responsibility for working on the climate emergency.
It hurts my heart that smart people I know and respect don't know the main sources of GHGs.
CoSocial
Evan Prodromou (@[email protected])@[email protected] - driving a gas powered car about 10km generates about 2kg CO2 equivalent. - eating a single beef meal is about 9kg CO2 equivalent. - Using an LLM for half an hour is about 0.005kg CO2 with a dirty coal electrical grid, much less with renewables. Maybe we have other things we should be working on first.
@Anibyl@social.coop
Data doesn't support your belief.
“global electricity consumption for data centres is projected to double ... by 2030 ... representing just under 3% of total global electricity consumption”
“mainly driven by AI adoption”
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai
I'm sure you can find more online. Or even ask you agent of preference 
Your example simply ignores the big picture, and narrows down the problem to someone's personal choice.
IEA
Energy demand from AI – Energy and AI – Analysis - IEAEnergy and AI - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.
my previous job was building greenhouse gas inventories at the national, state and city levels.
Electricity generation is about 1/3 of global emissions; 3% of that would be less than 1% of global emissions for all data centres.
Even given the numbers you're sharing, and even if AI were responsible for all data centre energy use, AI is not a major source of GHG emissions compared to transportation (15%), cattle (7%), cement production (8%), deforestation (15%) or rice cultivation (3%).
there are a lot of great sites that give a good accounting of global emissions. EDGAR has a pretty accessible site:
edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu
EDGAR - The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric ResearchI appreciate that hearing that electricity use in data centres is going to double by 2030 sounds troubling. But doubling a small percentage of total greenhouse gas emissions gives a larger but still small percentage. Electricity production is also one of the GHG sources that's easiest to decarbonize.
And what AI does? It makes us to reopen coal plants. We are not decarbonizing, we're just slapping more and more energy consumption on top of what we already use. Beautiful.
