← Concept IndexDEFINITION WHY IT MATTERS COMMONLY CONFUSED WITH SOURCES
Environmental impact
Also called: energy use, water and compute cost
Training and running large models consumes significant electricity and water for cooling. The footprint of a single query is small; the footprint of billions of them, and of training, is not.
It's a real cost that belongs in 'should we use AI here at all?' — favouring the smallest model that does the job, and not spending a data-centre's energy on what a search or a formula would answer.
A per-question guilt trip. The meaningful lever is systemic — model choice and whether a task needs AI — more than any single prompt.
- Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial IntelligenceUNESCO · 2021-11-23
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