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I finally looked up how much energy AI training actually uses
I was reading this article from MIT Tech Review yesterday and it said training one big model can use as much electricity as a small town in a year. My roofer brain just can't wrap around how that's sustainable long term. Has anyone here worked with models where they actually tracked the power bill?
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noahw5320d agoMost Upvoted
Good point @margaret_lane about the bitcoin thing, but the bigger issue nobody talks about is how these models get even more power hungry after training. A buddy of mine works at a small startup and told me their model uses about 30% more juice just running regular queries than it did during training, because they have to keep all that data spun up 24/7. The training bill is bad enough but the ongoing cost sneaks up on you like a bad habit.
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margaret_lane20d ago
Honestly, who cares about the power bill when you look at what these models can actually do. We waste way more electricity on stupid stuff like bitcoin mining or leaving lights on in empty offices. At least the AI is actually doing something useful instead of just burning power for no reason.
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