Post #2028457

2026-05-05 17:16 UTC

You already shouldn’t be using Chrome, and if this is what moves the needle, great. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. No. Just flatly, no. Local models spin your GPU like a video game. Unless you think Overwatch is a climate disaster, please learn to separate datacenter condemnation from people running their own computers a little harder.

Replies (3)

@crusa187@lemmy.ml 2026-05-05 17:31

Agreed. Hate the data centers and corporate obsession with extreme waste for total value capture. Not the tech, especially on a local scale. A 128GB amd strix halo runs at 120W and can host large LLMs at home. If you ran it full time for inference it would still be under $20/mo in electricity costs.

Open ##2029063
@OwOarchist@pawb.social 2026-05-05 17:46

Local models spin your GPU like a video game. Unless you think Overwatch is a climate disaster 90% of users aren’t playing Overwatch. And even if you are, that’s a significant increase in power draw if you’re spinning up a local LLM every time you start to type into your browser’s address bar to do a search or something. And, most importantly, you can choose when and if you want to play Overwatch. It didn’t get installed without your knowledge and consent, and it doesn’t run automatically.

Open ##2030011
@XLE@piefed.social 2026-05-05 17:57

I’d say you should read the article a little more closely, but it’s not written very well. But it brings up interesting things that have nothing to do with your local GPU usage. For example, it names an interesting point about simply delivering 4 gigabytes of data to that many people. If pushed out to ~15% of Chrome users without consent: That’d be 500 million people It would be 2 exabytes of data 120 GWh of energy, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of about 36,000 average UK households 30,000 tonnes CO2 emitted, roughly the annual emissions of 6,500 cars And that’s just for the initial data push. Models need ✨updates!✨

Open ##2031701