Ran into a wild stat about AI training energy use, can't wrap my head around it

So I was reading this article from MIT Tech Review yesterday (just killing time on my lunch break), and it said training one single large AI model can emit as much carbon as 5 cars over their whole lifetimes. FIVE CARS. I had to read that three times because I figured it would be like... maybe one car for a year or something. Has anyone else stumbled on a crazy AI fact that just broke your brain a little?

3 comments

3 Comments

terry_jones20d ago

Is my brain broken from too much browsing or just the carbon emissions?

finleyh8919d ago

Figure it's your brain, but not from the browsing itself (though that's a factor). Too much skimming makes your attention span shorter, sure, but the real culprit is the constant switching between tabs and apps. That trains your brain to never settle on one thing long enough to actually think about it. Carbon emissions are an environmental problem, not a neurological one (unless we're talking about heat making you sluggish). Honestly, I felt way more scattered until I started setting a timer to stay on one page for 15 minutes at a time. Might be worth a try before worrying about the atmosphere.

bettywood1d ago

Right, that five cars stat hit me HARD too when I first saw it. I remember standing in my kitchen staring at my phone like it was gonna give me the answer or something. It really is a crazy number to stare at when you think about all the models being trained right this second.