Google-led paper pushes back against claims of AI inefficiency

Google this week pushed back against claims by earlier research that large AI models can contribute significantly to carbon emissions. In a paper coauthored by Google AI chief scientist Jeff Dean, researchers at the company say that the choice of model, datacenter, and processor can reduce carbon footprint by up to 100 times and that "misunderstandings" about the model lifecycle contributed to "miscalculations" in impact estimates. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide levels are at the highest they've been in the last 800,000 years. Together with other drivers, greenhouse gases likely catalyzed the global warming that's been observed since the mid-20th century. It's widely believed that machine learning models, too, have contributed to the adverse environmental trend.