Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text produced compared to human authors, while AI graphics systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human counterparts.
That comes from a recent Nature paper by Tomlinson, Black, Patterson, and Torrance about AI friendship. On the one hand this is reassuring, although it should be noted that AI’s carbon-reducing potential comes largely from the additional economic activity (and inquiry activity) it may enable. So perhaps we can think of this as another example of Jevon’s Law, i.e. energy-saving technology over time increases the demand for energy, thus returning some or all of the savings initially achieved.
With Jim Pethokoukis.