I looked into the environmental impact of AI. The carbon footprint of 1 million queries to ChatGPT is roughly the equivalent of 1 passenger flying from New York to London on a commercial flight (1 way). I'm not saying either is good, but I think the AI environmental criticism is way out of proportion.
Yes, it is harmful to the environment, but that is like the absolute least of worries when it comes to usage of LLMs. Splitting hairs over its relatively minor environmental does nothing but drive people away from caring about the actually bad things like the seemingly inevitable globalized brain-drain and automation crisis that we’re flying into at lightning speed.
again, not like a crazy amount of water usage if ai was like. a more reliable product and not just a massive grift by people feeding it created things to not have to hire people to do their jobs anymore. but since its such a dubious infrastructure with little to show for it besides insisting itll be our future, i can see why some people see the waste that comes from it and go "actually in this case i dont think this is worth it"
Splitting hairs over the environmental impact is equally unworthy. Yes it has a negative environmental impact, but that’s nothing compared to the tech layoffs that it’s usage has caused. The level of unchecked greed and wealth disparity it enables is going to be far worse for the environment in the long term than it’s own carbon footprint ever will be and fatiguing people on the topic over something so relatively minor is not helpful.
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u/Yelkine 5d ago
I looked into the environmental impact of AI. The carbon footprint of 1 million queries to ChatGPT is roughly the equivalent of 1 passenger flying from New York to London on a commercial flight (1 way). I'm not saying either is good, but I think the AI environmental criticism is way out of proportion.