“The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI Than for Humans”, 2024-02-14 ():
As AI systems proliferate, their greenhouse gas emissions are an increasingly important concern for human societies.
In this article, we present a comparative analysis of the carbon emissions associated with AI systems (ChatGPT, BLOOM, DALL·E 2, Midjourney) & human individuals performing equivalent writing & illustrating tasks.
Our findings reveal that AI systems emit 130–1500× less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writers, while AI illustration systems emit 310–2900× less CO2e per image than their human counterparts.
Emissions analyses do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.