> Do you believe that “skip meat for a day use LLMs for a year” will have a climate impact?

If "use LLMs for a year" is enough to count as having a climate impact (negatively), then yes I believe "skip meat for a day use LLMs for a year" is enough to count (positively).

I'd be tempted to write off both of those, but the whole point of your argument is to consider LLM resource use important, so I'm completely accepting that for the sake of the above argument.

There are no theoretical vegans involved.

And the suggestion doesn't even involve vegans, unless there's a massive contingent of americans that only eat meat one day per year that I wasn't aware of.

And to get at what I think is your core objection: The fact that people can do this isn't being used to let companies off the hook. If only 2% of LLM users set up a meat skipping day, then LLM companies are only 2% let off the hook.

But at the same time let's keep a proportional sense of how big the hook is.

> They exist in the real world, right now. It is a real phenomenon

The strawman is you accusing people of supporting those generators.

> your position that using LLMs is categorically fine

I didn't say that.

>If "use LLMs for a year" is enough to count as having a climate impact (negatively), then yes I believe "skip meat for a day use LLMs for a year" is enough to count (positively).

Sorry, I should have clarified. In this case I meant “argument” as a thing that leads real people to either understand or agree with your position, not the construction of an idea in your mind.

With that in mind, do you think that “skip meat for a day use LLMs for a year” will convince enough real people, in real life, to not eat meat, that it offsets the emissions from LLM use?

Like imagine the future.

Since LLM use is a new category of energy use, you would have to convince people that haven’t already been convinced to skip meat by animal cruelty, health, philosophy, or existing climate concerns. People that were vegan before LLMs became popular obviously don’t count. The group of people that resisted decades of all that messaging will now make a meaningful adjustment to their consumption to cancel that out — and there will be enough of these new part time/full time vegans that it offsets the entire chat bot industry’s energy usage.

Do you imagine that being what happens?

If not it’s just somebody advocating for increased consumption in real life by invoking imaginary vegans.

As somebody that’s spent years as a vegan I am incredibly wary of “vegans can recruit” as a pitch. I’ve only ever heard that from people that have never tried to recruit in earnest or charlatans. Like I’ve mostly heard that from people that are not, never have been, and have no interest in being vegan.

Edit:

>The strawman is you accusing people of supporting those generators.

That’s not what a strawman is and it’s not an accusation, it’s an observation. If you say “I want subscription based online batched mega-high-compute language models” you are advocating for that industry, and those generators are part of it. Saying you feel that they’re somehow special and different because they’re icky does not make them any different from the thing that you say is necessarily the future. That you want!

I think anyone that does get convinced and skip meat should be able to use LLMs without shame or guilt, while we continue to pressure everyone else to save resources and we continue to pressure LLM companies to save resources.

LLM companies only get let off the hook if a very large fraction of their users do the meat skip thing, which is not very likely but could theoretically happen.

LLMs being a new category of energy use should get them some extra scrutiny, but only some. Maybe 3x scrutiny per wasted kilowatt hour compared to entrenched uses? If our real motivation is resource use, and not overreacting to change, LLMs should get some pressure but most of the pressure should go toward preexisting wasteful uses.

Nobody is advocating to ignore LLMs. But we shouldn't overstate them too much either.

And the giving up meat defense is not a defense for the companies, it's a defense for individual users that actually do it.

It was a yes or no question

Like not an if or maybe thing, what do you see when you picture the future?

Do you think “Skip meat for a day use LLMs for a year” will produce enough new vegans to offset the energy usage and co2 produced by the LLM architecture of your choice?

Not asking if you want it to happen or if it’s something you can imagine could happen, I’m asking if you think it will

[_] yes

[_] no

Because if no, then the idea is just advocating for increased real consumption by invoking imaginary vegans!

Edit:

>LLM companies only get let off the hook if a very large fraction of their users do the meat skip thing, which is not very likely but could theoretically happen.

The person I was initially talking to took the position that LLM companies have negligible impact because people can be vegan. J-bp was saying that LLM companies shouldn’t be on anybody’s radars because uh, meat is 100,000 times worse.

The person you hopped in to defend was saying that LLM companies do not and should not have a “hook” because meat eaters exist

> It was a yes or no question [...] I’m asking if you think it will

[x] no

> Because if no, then the idea is just advocating for increased real consumption by invoking imaginary vegans!

Wrong.

> The person I was initially talking to took the position that LLM companies have negligible impact because people can be vegan.

He said "LLMs are not the problem here", which is true.

And he was arguing for individual use being offset when he said "maybe use ChatGPT to ask for vegan recipes".

The top level comment was also about individual use. "I would really like it if an LLM tool would show me the power consumption and environmental impact of each request I’ve submitted."

The comments right before you replied were also about individual use. "lifestyle choice".

> J-bp was saying that LLM companies shouldn’t be on anybody’s radars because uh, meat is 100,000 times worse.

The 100,000 number was a throwaway hypothetical to make a point. Not a number he was applying to LLMs in particular. Two lines later he threw in a 2,000x too.

And what he said is that LLM companies are not "somewhat equally important". Which is true. He didn't say you should ignore them entirely, just to have a sense of proportion.

-

Edit: Here is an important distinction that I think isn't getting through. There are multiple separate points being made by j-bp:

Point A, about not eating meat for a day, is only excusing anyone that actually does it. It's not a hypothetical that excuses the entire company.

Point B, about the size of the impact, suggests caring less about LLMs based on raw resource use. Point B does not care about the relatively small group of people that take up the offer in Point A. Point B is just looking at the big picture.

>[x] no

Then it is not a “very serious suggestion”. It is a thought experiment which should be taken with commensurate weight.

>Wrong

Explain what “skip a day of meat do a year of LLMs” is then. If it’s not just an ad for feeling good about using LLMs, what is it?

>The 100,000 number was a throwaway hypothetical to make a point

>Two lines later he threw in a 2,000x too.

Alright he said that meat is 2,000 times worse than language models as well as 100,000 times worse than language models. He might have meant 100k but could also mean 2k.

Do you have a real problem in real life where if somebody called you and said “it’s gotten two thousand times worse” versus “it’s gotten a hundred thousand times worse?” the former would be fine and the latter alarming?

If yes, what is the problem? Why was it a problem at 1x? 2000x? 100,000x? Why was it a problem at at 1x and 100,000x but not 2000x?

> Explain what “skip a day of meat do a year of LLMs” is then. If it’s not just an ad for feeling good about using LLMs, what is it?

You can stop being part of the problem if you do it. The problem still exists, but you are no longer part of it. You reduced it by more than your fair share. While the problem would stop existing if everyone made the same choice, there's no pretense that that's actually going to happen. LLM companies are not being excused by such an unlikely hypothetical.

j-lb also made an argument to not care much about LLMs at all, but it was separate from the "skip a day of meat" argument. That's where the big multiplier comes in. But again, separate argument.

I don't want to argue about the example ratio he used. The real ratio is very big if the numbers cited earlier are correct. So if you're going to sit here and say 2000x might as well be arbitrarily large then I think you just joined the "LLM resource use doesn't matter" team, because going by the above citation 2000x is in the ballpark of the correct number, so LLM use is 1 divided by arbitrarily large, making it negligible. Congrats.

Just wanted to chime in and say you represented my case perfectly and got all my points (and their separation) 100%!

You're right, I never said we should not care about LLMs because we also "rightfully don't care about meat".

To me the whole AI resource discussion is just a distraction for people who want to rally against a new scary thing, but not look at the real scary thing that they just gotten used to over the years.

In a sense it's the `banality of evil`, or maybe `banality of self destruction`:

  The “banality of evil” is the idea that evil does not have the Satan-like, villainous appearance we might typically associate it with. Rather, evil is perpetuated when immoral principles become normalized over time by people who do not think about things from the standpoint of others.

We've gotten so used to using huge amounts of resources in our day to day lives, that we are completely unwilling to stop and reflect about what we could readily change. Instead we fight against the new and shiny, because it tells a better story, distracting us from what really matters.

In a sense we are procrastinating on changing.

It's not the Skynet like AI that is going to be the doom of humankind, but the hot-dogs, taking your car for the commute, and shitty insulation.