So glad you’re vegan. I’ve been wanting to make this point for ages. People scream about personal responsibility when it comes to AI but not about their diets or lifestyle
I try not to be too aggro about veganism but when someone starts shaming me for using ChatGPT it’s hard to resist the temptation to say “bro you just paid to torture a pig”
I know, like I want to write a piece on veganism but honestly it’s so personal to me I can’t even be reasonable or nice about it so I try to avoid the topic all together 😭
Strong agree, I struggle to keep it calm on this one, and so somewhat counterintuitively don't talk about it much despite feeling so strongly about it.
This is brilliant and bookmarked, a very useful resource. The real issue here is that many people just generally don't like AI and therefore it gets a negative halo, including environmentally, which as you say makes no sense. One can legitimately disagree about the thing itself, but as you so comprehensively show, the environmental side is not a meaningful one.
Yup to be clear I think a lot of other concerns about AI are well-founded. Splitting things up into specific issues to avoid the negative halo's super important.
Social problems like deepfakes, hallucinations/getting important info wrong, algorithmic bias, and risks from advanced AI weapons systems/other issues. Listed them in the intro
As do I. However, using AI to assist with certain aspects of the creative process (like spell checking, for instance) does not constitute a lack of ability or courage in creating something.
Many respected authors pay an editor to check their work and make needed corrections. Yet, the author isn't generally thought of as someone lacking ability or courage.
1000 Wh worth of claps for this post! Much of what people complain about on social media is produced and provided without commentary or evidence. The world of memes and social media responses is rife with emotionally triggered people who read something that was designed to spark a reaction one way or another, and very little actual research or reading goes into it.
Bravo for pulling back the curtain in your OMG long post and cheat sheet. It was nice to see someone do the math and present the evidence (as clearly and accurately as possible). When you whip out the comparisons, then drive to Costco and see families buying so much bottled water, you think the apocalypse is coming, I feel like using ChatGPT is just fine.
IMHO, what people should be decrying is the wasted AI efforts in things like Google search, Facebook, email summarization, and all the other BS that you see out there in the world now, simply because AI is the cool thing and everyone has to have it. There are good places for AI, essential problems to solve, but because AI is used so frivolously, it's easy to wag your finger.
Enjoyed the article in general, but I couldn't find support for this bit in the linked article - it seems to say the opposite (that thinking hard doesn't materially change calorie consumption). Have i missed something?
>Thinking hard about something uses 4 calories more per minute. All food we eat causes carbon emissions, around 10-30% of your carbon footprint is your food. The average American diet emits between 1-4.5 kg of CO2 per 1000 calories. So thinking hard for an hour emits between 0.24-1 kg of CO2. That’s the same as 200-800 ChatGPT prompts.
Thanks so much for this Andy. I was directed via Hannah Ritchie's post on this. I am prepping a graduate course for students in climate studies. There are concerns among students about the environmental footprint of AI assignments to teach AI literacy in relation to scientific information. I am so glad to have this information. It helps us get past the "environmental footprint" objection so that we can get to the deeper concerns about AI. Deskilling humans and overreliance on AI, job displacements, data bias and discrimination, privacy, security, governance, and for me personally, concern about the possibility of further eroding our social connections. We see how social media has created vast alienation in our society. I'm concerned that AI will exacerbate this issue.
I would throw my own analogy into the ring. It takes 93 Watt hours to bring a litre of water from room temperature to boiling point. One prompt uses the same energy as bringing 3.2ml of water to a boil.
So when you go to make a cup of tea, if there is a tablespoon of boiled water in the kettle when you're done, that's 5 prompts. A cup of water, nearly 80 prompts. If you boil a full kettle, then forget about it or decide you didn't want tea after all, 312 prompts down the drain. And if you're making pasta in an 8-inch pot and fill it 1 inch higher than necessary, 250 prompts.
The numbers are even worse if your kettle is less than 100% efficient! If you aren't weighing out the exact amount of water you need to boil, you're easily being just as wasteful as the average LLM user.
I was just told I'm a moron for asking ChatGPT a question about how a vintage dress should be worn.
Someone who has 114K followers posted a video to Instagram asking how her (absolutely beautiful) dress should be worn. I thought the V neck was front, and Y neck was back. ChatGPT hilariously disagreed with me.
Some random follower then started harassing me over using ChatGPT.
Dude. That IG post alone (and the fact that she was responding to it) cost about 2000 times as much energy as me trying to figure out the issue for her.
An elevator is 100-200 Wh to move one floor. By walking down the stairs from my sixth floor apartment instead of summoning the elevator, then riding it back to the ground floor, I conserve enough energy for 400 queries.
I like this! I think it would be an improvement if you included some points of comparison for the UK or larger European nations. I kept getting addressed as "you" in the piece because it assumes I'm American. America is known to be exceptional in its water and energy use. I think saying, "even if you just compare stats for the UK, it still looks like this many dots, the moral is you're always using more water/electricity than ChatGPT whatever you do", it would be an effective addition to your argument.
now that sora 2 exists would you consider doing a deeper analysis on energy/water impact of AI video generation? would just be curious to read your take
Would really like to. My hesitation is that for other stuff I've really only relied on expert estimates and measurements, and there don't seem to be any for the newer video models
yeah that makes sense, i figured the issue might be that you are data-limited. fwiw i think i would learn something even from some heuristics-based estimate but very understandable to not want to put that out as a post
This is an impressive effort for its scope, intellectual rigor, AND for its value in contributing to a set of genuinely important, intersecting debates that seem to rage on and off the internet with seemingly little progress for all the investment. Thank you!
Can you do a post on what these numbers might be in a year from now? Will models need more/less energy as they get “better” and will that start to tip the scales in either direction? Will advances we make in energy production and efficiency due to improved AI capabilities offset any increase?
Seems hard to predict. It seems like there are a lot of forces pushing in both directions where energy gets optimized but models get bigger. I'd feel silly making specific predictions about which direction that will go.
Can you do a post on what these numbers might be in a year from now? Will models need more/less energy as they get “better” and will that start to tip the scales in either direction? Will advances we make in energy production and efficiency due to improved AI capabilities offset any increase?
I've seen arguments that it's bad because it uses enough energy to charge your phone to a nontrivial percentage (for most Androids, that'd be around 15-20%, not sure about iPhone). But that just means phones are efficient!
So glad you’re vegan. I’ve been wanting to make this point for ages. People scream about personal responsibility when it comes to AI but not about their diets or lifestyle
I try not to be too aggro about veganism but when someone starts shaming me for using ChatGPT it’s hard to resist the temptation to say “bro you just paid to torture a pig”
I know, like I want to write a piece on veganism but honestly it’s so personal to me I can’t even be reasonable or nice about it so I try to avoid the topic all together 😭
IMO more good public writing about animal welfare from people with large followings seems really useful!
I will at some point 😭
Have a separate section on animal welfare here if it's interesting https://andymasley.substack.com/s/animal-welfareveganism
Strong agree, I struggle to keep it calm on this one, and so somewhat counterintuitively don't talk about it much despite feeling so strongly about it.
This is brilliant and bookmarked, a very useful resource. The real issue here is that many people just generally don't like AI and therefore it gets a negative halo, including environmentally, which as you say makes no sense. One can legitimately disagree about the thing itself, but as you so comprehensively show, the environmental side is not a meaningful one.
Yup to be clear I think a lot of other concerns about AI are well-founded. Splitting things up into specific issues to avoid the negative halo's super important.
Specifically what concerns?
Social problems like deepfakes, hallucinations/getting important info wrong, algorithmic bias, and risks from advanced AI weapons systems/other issues. Listed them in the intro
I’m liking this comment because it correctly used terminology related to a cognitive bias :)
Wow, a post about AI that isn't decrying it as evil or on the “look how much better I am than you because I don't use it” bandwagon.
I was starting to think such a thing didn't exist around here.
Meh. I still prefer people who have the ability and the courage to write and draw for themselves.
As do I. However, using AI to assist with certain aspects of the creative process (like spell checking, for instance) does not constitute a lack of ability or courage in creating something.
Many respected authors pay an editor to check their work and make needed corrections. Yet, the author isn't generally thought of as someone lacking ability or courage.
Equivocate harder Jamie
Be nice in my comments section please 🫵😇
1000 Wh worth of claps for this post! Much of what people complain about on social media is produced and provided without commentary or evidence. The world of memes and social media responses is rife with emotionally triggered people who read something that was designed to spark a reaction one way or another, and very little actual research or reading goes into it.
Bravo for pulling back the curtain in your OMG long post and cheat sheet. It was nice to see someone do the math and present the evidence (as clearly and accurately as possible). When you whip out the comparisons, then drive to Costco and see families buying so much bottled water, you think the apocalypse is coming, I feel like using ChatGPT is just fine.
IMHO, what people should be decrying is the wasted AI efforts in things like Google search, Facebook, email summarization, and all the other BS that you see out there in the world now, simply because AI is the cool thing and everyone has to have it. There are good places for AI, essential problems to solve, but because AI is used so frivolously, it's easy to wag your finger.
Hey @andy,
Enjoyed the article in general, but I couldn't find support for this bit in the linked article - it seems to say the opposite (that thinking hard doesn't materially change calorie consumption). Have i missed something?
>Thinking hard about something uses 4 calories more per minute. All food we eat causes carbon emissions, around 10-30% of your carbon footprint is your food. The average American diet emits between 1-4.5 kg of CO2 per 1000 calories. So thinking hard for an hour emits between 0.24-1 kg of CO2. That’s the same as 200-800 ChatGPT prompts.
Thanks for catching! Will circle back
Yup this was wrong, will edit and remove this specific point. Got my wires crossed with another number I think. Thank you!
fyi there were like 4 duplicate copies of this comment so I just removed the others
Thanks so much for this Andy. I was directed via Hannah Ritchie's post on this. I am prepping a graduate course for students in climate studies. There are concerns among students about the environmental footprint of AI assignments to teach AI literacy in relation to scientific information. I am so glad to have this information. It helps us get past the "environmental footprint" objection so that we can get to the deeper concerns about AI. Deskilling humans and overreliance on AI, job displacements, data bias and discrimination, privacy, security, governance, and for me personally, concern about the possibility of further eroding our social connections. We see how social media has created vast alienation in our society. I'm concerned that AI will exacerbate this issue.
I would throw my own analogy into the ring. It takes 93 Watt hours to bring a litre of water from room temperature to boiling point. One prompt uses the same energy as bringing 3.2ml of water to a boil.
So when you go to make a cup of tea, if there is a tablespoon of boiled water in the kettle when you're done, that's 5 prompts. A cup of water, nearly 80 prompts. If you boil a full kettle, then forget about it or decide you didn't want tea after all, 312 prompts down the drain. And if you're making pasta in an 8-inch pot and fill it 1 inch higher than necessary, 250 prompts.
The numbers are even worse if your kettle is less than 100% efficient! If you aren't weighing out the exact amount of water you need to boil, you're easily being just as wasteful as the average LLM user.
I was just told I'm a moron for asking ChatGPT a question about how a vintage dress should be worn.
Someone who has 114K followers posted a video to Instagram asking how her (absolutely beautiful) dress should be worn. I thought the V neck was front, and Y neck was back. ChatGPT hilariously disagreed with me.
Some random follower then started harassing me over using ChatGPT.
Dude. That IG post alone (and the fact that she was responding to it) cost about 2000 times as much energy as me trying to figure out the issue for her.
But no, I'm a monster for using AI.
Good grief. 🤣
The hyperbole gets so exhausting. I don't know how people are constantly speaking like that.
An elevator is 100-200 Wh to move one floor. By walking down the stairs from my sixth floor apartment instead of summoning the elevator, then riding it back to the ground floor, I conserve enough energy for 400 queries.
More like 40-60 Wh. Not sure where you're getting your numbers.
I like this! I think it would be an improvement if you included some points of comparison for the UK or larger European nations. I kept getting addressed as "you" in the piece because it assumes I'm American. America is known to be exceptional in its water and energy use. I think saying, "even if you just compare stats for the UK, it still looks like this many dots, the moral is you're always using more water/electricity than ChatGPT whatever you do", it would be an effective addition to your argument.
now that sora 2 exists would you consider doing a deeper analysis on energy/water impact of AI video generation? would just be curious to read your take
Would really like to. My hesitation is that for other stuff I've really only relied on expert estimates and measurements, and there don't seem to be any for the newer video models
I would love to see this as well. In May, the MIT Technology Review estimated that a 5 second video on Sora used "about 3.4 million joules, more than 700 times the energy required to generate a high-quality image." That's a heck of a lot. (ref: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/)
yeah that makes sense, i figured the issue might be that you are data-limited. fwiw i think i would learn something even from some heuristics-based estimate but very understandable to not want to put that out as a post
The effort that has gone into this blog is astounding. Cleared many things for me. Thanks.
This is an impressive effort for its scope, intellectual rigor, AND for its value in contributing to a set of genuinely important, intersecting debates that seem to rage on and off the internet with seemingly little progress for all the investment. Thank you!
Can you do a post on what these numbers might be in a year from now? Will models need more/less energy as they get “better” and will that start to tip the scales in either direction? Will advances we make in energy production and efficiency due to improved AI capabilities offset any increase?
Is that topic even something we can predict?
Seems hard to predict. It seems like there are a lot of forces pushing in both directions where energy gets optimized but models get bigger. I'd feel silly making specific predictions about which direction that will go.
Can you do a post on what these numbers might be in a year from now? Will models need more/less energy as they get “better” and will that start to tip the scales in either direction? Will advances we make in energy production and efficiency due to improved AI capabilities offset any increase?
Is that topic even something we can predict?
I've seen arguments that it's bad because it uses enough energy to charge your phone to a nontrivial percentage (for most Androids, that'd be around 15-20%, not sure about iPhone). But that just means phones are efficient!