this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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The environmental cost of training is a bit of a meme. The details are spread around, but basically, Alibaba trained a GPT-4 level-ish model on a relatively small number of GPUs... probably on par with a steel mill running for a long time, a comparative drop in the bucket compared to industrial processes. OpenAI is extremely inefficient, probably because they don't have much pressure to optimize GPU usage.
Inference cost is more of a concern with crazy stuff like o3, but this could dramatically change if (hopefully when) bitnet models come to frutition.
Still, I 100% agree with this. Closed LLM weights should be public domain, as many good models already are.
With current kWh/token it's 100x of a regular google search query. That's where the environmental meme came from. Also, Nvidia plans to manufacture enough chips to require global electricity production to increase by 20-30%.