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Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

andymasley.substack.com

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Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#51

Post by 9rx »

zdragnar wrote: post #3

The title does not match the content. A more appropriate title is "Emissions caused by chatgpt use are not significant in comparison to everything else." But, given that title, it becomes somewhat obvious that the article itself doesn't need to exist.

> "Emissions caused by chatgpt use are not significant in comparison to everything else."

Emissions directly caused by Average Joe using ChatGPT is not significant compared to everything else. 50,000 questions is a lot for an individual using ChatGPT casually, but nothing for the businesses using ChatGPT to crunch data. 50,000 "questions" will be lucky to get you through the hour.

Those businesses aren't crunching data just for the sake of it. They are doing so ultimately because that very same aforementioned Average Joe is going to buy something that was produced out of that data crunching. It is the indirect use that raises the "ChatGPT is bad for the environment" alarm. At very least, we at least don't have a good handle on what the actual scale is. How many indirect "questions" am I asking ChatGPT daily?

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#53

Post by noirbot »

hexage1814 wrote: post #4

To me the "ChatGPT is destroying the environment "card always felt somewhat like bad faith arguing from the anti-AI crowd trying to find any excuse for being against AI. Like, the same people who complained about "using AI is destroying environment" seemed to have no issue with boarding a plane which would emit a bunch of CO2 so that they can have a vacation in Europe or the like. Selective environmentalism.

I mean, it's a literal net new expenditure of power and water. I also deeply doubt they have "no issue" with plane travel. You're just assuming the worst and most hypocritical position to someone, which seems deeply bad faith as well.

It's literally true that most of the AI vendors and their data center partners are writing off energy and water conservation targets they'd had for the near future because of LLM money. That is actually bad in the short and likely long term, especially as people use LLMs for increasingly frivolous things. Is it really necessary to have an LLM essentially do a "I'm Feeling Lucky" Google Search for you at some multiple of that environmental cost? Because that's what most of my friends and coworkers use ChatGPT for. Very rarely are they using it to get anything more complex than just searching wikipedia or documentation you could have had bookmarked.

A person has a choice of if they take a flight and if it's worth it for them. They have no power except for raising a complaint in public on if OpenAI or Google or whoever spends vast amounts of money and power to train some new model. If your bar is that no one is allowed to complain about a company burning energy unless they live a totally blameless life farming their own food without electricity then random companies will get to do any destructive act they want.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#54

Post by simonw »

The absolute best thing I've read on this subject is this article here: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-generative-ai-the-powe...

It talks at great length about data center trends relating to generative AI, from the perspective of someone who has been deeply involved in researching power usage and sustainability for two decades.

I made my own notes on that piece here (for if you don't have a half hour to spend reading the original): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/12/generative-ai-the-powe...

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#55

Post by strogonoff »

simonw wrote: post #28
getwiththeprog wrote: post #8

This is a great article for discussion. However articles like this must link to references. It is one thing to assert, another to prove. I do agree that heating/cooling, car and transport use, and diet play massive roles in climate change that should not be subsumed by other debates. The flip side to the authors argument is that LLMs are not only used by home users doing 20 searches a day. Governments and Mega-Corpor…

The question this is addressing concerns personal use. Is it ethical to use ChatGPT on a personal basis? A surprising number of people will say that it isn't because of the energy and water usage of those prompts.

I would be surprised if many people said it is unethical to use LLMs like ChatGPT for environmental reasons, as opposed to ethical principles such as encouraging unfair use of IP and copyright violation.

Still, LLM queries are not made equal. The environmental justification does not take into account for models querying other services, like the famous case where a single ChatGPT query resulted in thousands of HTTP requests.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#56

Post by simonw »

strogonoff wrote: post #55
simonw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question this is addressing concerns personal use. Is it ethical to use ChatGPT on a personal basis? A surprising number of people will say that it isn't because of the energy and water usage of those prompts.

I would be surprised if many people said it is unethical to use LLMs like ChatGPT for environmental reasons, as opposed to ethical principles such as encouraging unfair use of IP and copyright violation. Still, LLM queries are not made equal. The environmental justification does not take into account for models querying other services, like the famous case where a single ChatGPT query resulted in thousands of HTTP re…

I see people complaining that ChatGPT usage is unethical for environmental reasons all the time. Here's just the first example I found from a Bluesky search (this one focuses on water usage): https://bsky.app/profile/theferocity.bsky.social/post/3lfckq...

"the famous case where a single ChatGPT query resulted in thousands of HTTP requests"

Can you provide more information about that? I don't remember gearing about that one - was it a case of someone using ChatGPT to write code and not reviewing the result?

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#57

Post by throwaway314155 »

irishloop wrote: post #44
saagarjha wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Americans are about 15% of the world's emissions, of which 25% or so is transportation, of which well over half is cars. So you not driving to work is making direct impact on 2-3% of the world's overall emissions. Likewise, your decisions on all the other things, if taken in aggregate, will have a significant impact on overall…

Meat and dairy specifically accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). If people collectively just ate a bit less meat and dairy, it would go a long way. Don't even have to be perfect. Just show a little bit of restraint.

Right just a little bit of restraint. On an unprecedented scale of coordination by hundreds of millions to billions of people - a scale of cooperation that has probably never occurred in human history (and there's no reason to believe it will any time soon).

But sure, if people "just" did a "little", it would go a long way. Just a _little_ restraint from the entire population all at once in perpetuity. No big deal.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#58

Post by teaearlgraycold »

irishloop wrote: post #44
saagarjha wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Americans are about 15% of the world's emissions, of which 25% or so is transportation, of which well over half is cars. So you not driving to work is making direct impact on 2-3% of the world's overall emissions. Likewise, your decisions on all the other things, if taken in aggregate, will have a significant impact on overall…

Meat and dairy specifically accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). If people collectively just ate a bit less meat and dairy, it would go a long way. Don't even have to be perfect. Just show a little bit of restraint.

I was able to cut out 95% of meat without it being much trouble.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#59

Post by eru »

fastball wrote: post #47
saagarjha wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Americans are about 15% of the world's emissions, of which 25% or so is transportation, of which well over half is cars. So you not driving to work is making direct impact on 2-3% of the world's overall emissions. Likewise, your decisions on all the other things, if taken in aggregate, will have a significant impact on overall…

This assumes all emissions / externalities are created equal, which they are not.

You are right. Though for CO2 that simplification comes pretty close to true.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#60

Post by seanmcdirmid »

scottcha wrote: post #40

Yet we also see that hyperscale cloud emissions targets have been reversed due to AI investment, Datacenter growth is hitting grid capacity limits in many regions, and peaker plant and other non-renewable resources on the grid are being deployed more to handle this specific growth from AI. I think the author, by qualifying on "chatgpt" maybe can make the claims they are making but I don't believe the larger argument…

Is that true though? Data centers can be placed anywhere in the USA, they could be placed near a bunch of hydro or wind farm resources in the western grid which has little coal anyways outside of one line from Utah to socal. The AI doesn’t have to be located anywhere near to where it is used since fiber is probably easier to run than a high voltage power line.
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