""Already in 2023, air pollution related to powering U.S. data centers led to 360 premature deaths and total health costs of $5.6 billion across the nation, the researchers estimated. But those figures factored in just the average power-plant pollutant emissions.""
@mempko@fosstodon.org I'm watching this play out as researchers I'm in the halo of are actively banking on LLMs to eliminate the cost of hiring data labellers. Their reasoning is motivated by the fantasy of cost savings, not better results.
Watching them bend over backwards to excuse the LLM's middling success rate and to handwave away how it misses almost everything of actual interest to their research is embarrassing.
T