> As to unfamiliarity with AI research, many papers I have been reading lately are very interested in measuring and minimizing the compute cost of models, and they often compare different methods and are often extremely precise about their training process and equipment

It's worth knowing this is a very recent phenomena. Before ~2020, it was extremely rare to see any such paper, with most of the focus in publishing being on maximizing metrics like accuracy. The biggest force pushing people toward smaller models were researchers at smaller institutions who lacked access to big GPU clusters.

> So, you are surprised that a corporation doesn't outlay $200k/year or more getting these figures to decorate your article with?

I think it's incorrect to suggest these figures would only serve to make for a better "The Verge" article. One of the externalized costs here is climate change.