Reposted by Ruben Wiersma
Charles Babbage intentionally designed the computer as an automation of mental labor. Today, computer graphics automates visual art production via privately governed generative models. How did we get here?
Critical Labor History of Generative Models, SIGGRAPH Talks '26 🧵
![MOTIVATION
Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) are at the core of Computer Graphics research. These chips are critical for rendering images, processing geometric data, and training machine learning models. Yet, the production and disposal of GPUs emits CO2 and results in toxic e-waste [1].
METHOD
We surveyed 888 papers presented at SIGGRAPH (premier conference for computer graphics research), from 2018 to 2024, and systematically gathered GPU models cited in the text.
We then contextualize the hardware reported in papers with publicly available data of consumers’ hardware [2, 3].
REFERENCES
[1] CRAWFORD, KATE. The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press, 2021.
[2] STEAM. Steam Hardware Survey. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
[3] BLENDER. Blender Open Data. https://opendata.blender.org](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gpta66q3ots5ia23kvfzpu5r/bafkreidqnyftshkcmtpzqlxsknnvcn34xszafururgdixddtcuzrmwloqq)
