There is a correlation between the training time and energy consumption, but that doesn’t mean there is a correlation between training time and carbon emissions.
Thanks for your article. I am going to annoy you one more time, I hope that's ok :)
1. You seem to be focusing your articles on electricity consumption. That is only a tiny part of the carbone footprint of the digital industry. For instance, you mention that new HW is more efficient. That implies acquiring new HW, which implies their manufacture (and transport). Manufacture of IT HW is very greedy in term of minerals and energy, which is actually most of the carbon footprint. What kind of energy mix you use to power that has little influence on the total footprint.
2. As you point out, the fact that HW and algorithms are becoming more efficient has absolutely no impact on the amount of electricity Google uses to power his AI (and other services). You can reduce by 2 the power needed to run a service, if you multiply by 3 the amount of users or services, you end-up having larger carbon emissions in total (which is what we are concerned about).
3. Now, regarding the energy mix, you need to take into account that Google is not the only user of the power grid in periods of high wind and sunny days... When google schedule its heavy computations during periods of peak of decarbonized energy, it prevents other users from using this mix. This is because the amount of 'green' energy is finite. It is actually so finite that 100% produced is consumed at all times. So, assuming Google could use exclusively decarbonized energy, it would simply push other users towards carbonized sources, but the global picture would not change: the same amount of carbon is emitted at the scale of the country, while only Google's carbon footprint would appear "greener" as an artefact.
Influencing the carbon emissions of AI
Thanks for your article. I am going to annoy you one more time, I hope that's ok :)
1. You seem to be focusing your articles on electricity consumption. That is only a tiny part of the carbone footprint of the digital industry. For instance, you mention that new HW is more efficient. That implies acquiring new HW, which implies their manufacture (and transport). Manufacture of IT HW is very greedy in term of minerals and energy, which is actually most of the carbon footprint. What kind of energy mix you use to power that has little influence on the total footprint.
2. As you point out, the fact that HW and algorithms are becoming more efficient has absolutely no impact on the amount of electricity Google uses to power his AI (and other services). You can reduce by 2 the power needed to run a service, if you multiply by 3 the amount of users or services, you end-up having larger carbon emissions in total (which is what we are concerned about).
3. Now, regarding the energy mix, you need to take into account that Google is not the only user of the power grid in periods of high wind and sunny days... When google schedule its heavy computations during periods of peak of decarbonized energy, it prevents other users from using this mix. This is because the amount of 'green' energy is finite. It is actually so finite that 100% produced is consumed at all times. So, assuming Google could use exclusively decarbonized energy, it would simply push other users towards carbonized sources, but the global picture would not change: the same amount of carbon is emitted at the scale of the country, while only Google's carbon footprint would appear "greener" as an artefact.