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Run! for Runtime Task Descriptions

Template

Title (e.g. Water for cooling)

  • Identifier:
  • Category: (e.g. 'Materials', 'Land', 'Humans', 'Water', 'Land', ...)
  • Researcher Prompt: (e.g. 'Your job requires more cooling. Please wait until cooling is sourced')
  • Gatherer Prompt: (e.g. 'Bring the researcher 10 vessels of water')
  • Facilitators Notes: (e.g. 'When the resources are assembled, take a picture and upload to verify the task is complete')
  • Extra Information: (e.g. 'This represents the water use required to cool data centres that run computationally expensive jobs, for more information on this see FIXME')

Tasks

Collecting varied materials together

  • Identifier: M-1
  • Category: Materials
  • Researcher Prompt: Your job needs additional hardware resources to run. Please wait just a few seconds while I provision more computation for you. I promise it's not a big issue.
  • Gatherer Prompt: Right, we need to manufacture a new GPU because this researcher doesn't know how to optimise their code. Gather together at least 20 items containing the following: electronic circuitry, metal, plastic, and organise them into the shape of a square.
  • Facilitators Notes: When the resources are assembled, verify that the items include the raw materials required.
  • Extra Information: One of the largest hidden costs of computation is the material resources required to manufacture the computing hardware used to run jobs. This is especially bad if hardware is replaced before the end of its useful life. For more information on this see Estampa's Cartography of generative AI (2024).

Making space for pollution

  • Identifier: M-2
  • Category: Materials
  • Researcher Prompt: More land is needed to run your job. Please wait whilst we arrange this.
  • Gatherer Prompt: There are now so many big computational jobs in the system that the dream of a circular economy is impossible to realise. Pristine ecologies far far away from the researcher will need to be destroyed to make room for the inevitable e-waste pollution. So, you know all those lovely resources you assembled. Well, now you need to find a space the researcher cannot see (or better still, is just out of their sight but they'd rather not make the effort to notice) and put all of those resources in a disorderly heap.
  • Facilitators Notes: When the resources have been disposed of, verify that it is out of sight of the researcher (or better still, is just out of their line of sight).
  • Extra Information: This represents the land use required in a market economy that discourages recycling and encourages resource proliferation. For more information on this see Max Liborion's Pollution Is Colonialism (2021).

Humans as exploitable unskilled labour

  • Identifier: H-1
  • Category: Humans
  • Researcher Prompt: This task requires a multi-agent system. Please wait whilst agents are deployed.
  • Gatherer Prompt: The researcher needs more compute. This means that people need to be put to work to do all the mundane things that underpin machine learning. So, those who are able, please begin to jog on the spot.
  • Facilitators Notes: When you begin to see red faces, beads of sweat, and general mild discomfort, you can verify that the tasks is complete.
  • Extra Information: This represents the vast amounts of human labour, often exploited, that is needed to build models on which researchers rely. For more information on this see Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri's book Ghost work: how to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass (2019).

Needing Power

  • Identifier: E-1
  • Category: Energy
  • Researcher Prompt: Redirecting power. Please wait.
  • Gatherer Prompt: This job needs lots of power. Given that it is big and important electrical power needs to be redirected. All non-essential power needs to be turned off. Please turn off the lights, close laptops, and stop charging phones. Go!
  • Facilitators Notes: When the resource use in the room as been reduced as required, verify task completion.
  • Extra Information: This represents the energy use required to run large computing jobs. For more information on this see Loïc Lannelongue, Jason Grealey, and Michael Inouye's ‘Green Algorithms: Quantifying the Carbon Footprint of Computation’ Advanced Science (2021).

Cooling a data centre

  • Identifier: W-1
  • Category: Water
  • Researcher Prompt: Your job is really big. Please wait until cooling is sourced.
  • Gatherer Prompt: The researcher is running a big and important job. The data centre is running hot. It needs water for cooling. Bring the researcher 10 vessels of water pronto!
  • Facilitators Notes: When the resources are assembled, take a picture and upload the picture to verify that the task is complete.
  • Extra Information: This represents the water use required to cool data centres that run computationally expensive jobs, for more information on this see Crawford's Atlas of AI.