[hdkrgr]

I had the chance to talk to a staffer of one of the MEPs leading the political negotiations in EU parlament committee a few weeks ago. His take was that the pro-tech/pro-business parties conceded the 'AI users must track their energy use'-point to the Greens in the latest draft (which is the parliament's counterproposal to earlier drafts by the commission --think EU executive-- and council --think governments of the member states--) because it's so unrealistic in practice that it's likely to be stricken out of the law again during the final negotiation round between parliament and council negotiators.

I really hope that'll be the case. FWIW, I believe companies _should_ be required to keep tabs on their (and their supply chain's) emissions, but demanding that this be done at model/system level by data scientists is just ridiculous.

edit: grammar

[londons_explore]

The problem is, as soon as it's a law, there will be some official way to calculate it, penalties for misreporting, perhaps even a professional who must audit the energy use. Etc. Getting that number gets expensive!

Whereas if it is a company voluntarily reporting it, the number would just be number of GPUs * wattage of GPUs / tokens generated past year = energy per token.

[hdkrgr]

I agree and share this concern in principle.

But... have you seen the state of GDPR enforcement? Anyone who made an honest effort is fine. I don't know of any GDPR enforcement action where the indicted company wasn't blatantly and willfully violating or ignoring the law.

FWIW, everything I've seen from regulators and the legislators involved in the nitty-gritty of the act seems to suggest that most of them are really smart people who know what they don't know. They know that AI is quickly evolving and the draft of the law goes out of its way to _not_ be too specific about _how_ to comply. E.g., I would not expect the EU (or national regulators) to bring down 'one right way' to report energy consumption.

The fact that they COULD still bothers me.