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In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses
(www.technologyreview.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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There are zero downsides when mentally associating an energy hog with "1 second of use time of the device that is routinely used for minutes at a time."
https://xkcd.com/1035/
With regard to sugar: when I started counting calories I discovered that the actual amounts of calories in certain foods were not what I intuitively assumed. Some foods turned out to be much less unhealthy than I thought. For example, I can eat almost three pints of ice cream a day and not gain weight (as long as I don't eat anything else). So sometimes instead of eating a normal dinner, I want to eat a whole pint of ice cream and I can do so guilt-free.
Likewise, I use both AI and a microwave, my energy use from AI in a day is apparently less than the energy I use to reheat a cup of tea, so the conclusion that I can use AI however much I want to without significantly affecting my environmental impact is the correct one.
You should probably not eat things because of how much calories they have or don't have, but because of how much of their nutrients you need, and how much they lack other, dangerous shit. Also eat slowly until you're full and no more. Also move a lot.
We shouldn't need calculators for this healthy lifestyle.
The reason for needing to know which foods are healthy is because... well, we forgot.
I'm not saying that ice cream is healthier than a normal dinner, just that if I really crave something sweet then the cost to my health of eating it periodically is actually quite low, whereas the cost of some other desserts (baked sweets are often the worst offenders) is relatively high. That means that a lot can be gained simply by replacing one dessert with a different, equally tasty dessert. Hence my ice cream advocacy.
Yeah that's a good point, too. 😊