What Uses More?

It's hard to know what to believe about the ecological impact of generative AI when the Internet seems evenly divided between "Stop worrying" and "It's the apocalypse." This nonpartisan calculator is an attempt to provide a more objective comparison of the energy and water usage of various AI tasks versus other common digital activities, like watching Netflix or searching Google. The calculations are based on academic papers, industry reports, and expert estimates.

The calculations include only current energy and water usage, and not growth scenarios or actual environmental impact. Even for energy and water, it's extremely difficult to do more than estimate values given the lack of transparency in the tech industry. It's also unclear how some future tradeoffs will play out, eg whether improved efficiencies will cancel out increased demand. These calculations also exclude numerous potential AI downsides apart from environmental risks, which you can find explained in the IMPACT RISK framework.

You can find a list of all sources with rationales for calculations here. Please contact me with suggestions of research that updates or contradicts these findings.

These are the default units for energy and water, chosen because they are intuitive:

• 💡watt-hour (running an incandescent light bulb for 1 minute)
• 🥤liter (about a quart)
• ☔️cubic centimeter (a raindrop).

First, thank you for caring about climate and education! In the hopes that this tool may help that cause, here are some recommendations:

Do's

• Do encourage students to experiment with different combinations of tasks, energy sources (solar vs coal), prompt complexity, and local climate to see how these factors affect energy and water usage.
• Do help students who need handholding by suggesting that they:
  1. Pick an activity from the First task menu they're familiar with, such as "Watching 1-hour Netflix movie" or "Searching Google without AI."
  2. Use the Second task menu to select a task that students are less familiar with, such as "3-second AI video from text" or "Storing 5 GB in the cloud for 1 month."
• Do experiment with turning the tool into a game, eg:
  • Ask the class to vote on which of two tasks uses more energy or water before clicking the Calculate button, or
  • Ask them to choose different tasks from the menus and adjust the parameters to see if they can find equivalences, eg "How many 3-second AI videos from text equal the energy of watching a 1-hour Netflix movie?"
• Do brainstorm what environmental impacts are missing from these parameters, such as energy embedded in server components, data center strains on local electricity and water supplies, or the health risks of discarded electronics (e-waste).
• Do remind students that these figures are guesses based on incomplete and often contradictory sources.
• Do let me know any other activities or suggestions to share!

Don'ts

• Don't use this tool to make definitive claims about the environmental impact of AI. The calculations are based on estimates and assumptions and may be superseded in future.
• Don't ignore the broader context of AI's environmental impact, including hardware manufacturing, data center cooling, and other factors not covered by this calculator.
• Don't permit students (say, above middle school) to cite this tool directly; require them instead to track down and read the related sources in the associated Google Sheet.