An analysis argues that people shouldn't worry about harming the environment by using creative technology like ChatGPT. While these tools do use energy and water, the amount for a single user is extremely small. For example, watching one hour of Netflix has the same carbon footprint as asking about 300 questions. The large energy cost of training these computer models is also very small when it is divided among the billions of questions people ask. In terms of water, the article states that you would save more water by skipping a single beef burger than you would by never using ChatGPT for your entire life. The author concludes that worrying about the environmental impact of using these tools is a distraction from bigger climate issues, and that most of the energy used for this kind of technology comes from business applications, not from individual users of chatbots.
Your Tech Use and Environment
Using creative technology has a very small environmental impact compared to things like streaming video or eating meat.