Environment

We have some actual numbers on tokens! In their commentary on the latest earnings report, Microsoft report: We processed over 100 trillion tokens this quarter, up 5X year-over-year – including a record 50 trillion tokens last month alone So we’ve got a baseline, and can estimate a growth rate. Assuming exponential growth and a three month token split of 19/31/50 we get 62% month on month growth, or, if it keeps going 100 T → 424 T → 1.8 P → 7.6 P, which is lower than the 5x yoy growth MS quote. ...

As Andy Massick explains well, if you are making a few requests per day to a simple non-reasoning text based AI model the carbon impact is, to use a technical term, bugger all 1. I probably ask ChatGPT and Claude around 8 questions a day on average. Over the course of a year of using them, this uses up the same energy as running a single space heater in my room for 2 hours in total. Not 2 hours per day, just a one-off use of a single space heater for 2 hours […] By being vegan, I have as much climate impact as not prompting ChatGPT 400,000 times each year ...