Simon WillisonApr 29, 2025

I'm glad somebody out there is brave enough to push back against the "personal ChatGPT usage is terrible for the environment" message https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about

"If you want to prompt ChatGPT 40 times, you can just stop your shower 1 second early."

"If I choose not to take a flight to Europe, I save 3,500,000 ChatGPT searches. this is like stopping more than 7 people from searching ChatGPT for their entire lives."

Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment - a cheat sheet

The numbers clearly show this is a pointless distraction for the climate movement

Andy Masley
Show threadDjoerd Hiemstra 🍉Apr 29, 2025
@simon Instead of prompting ChatGPT 40 times, you may also do 4000 web searches with a standard web search engine (say, Google early 2000s,). It's a matter of perspecttives and (false) equivalences.
(edited, because I exaggerated orders of magnitude)
Show threadScott J.Apr 29, 2025
@djoerd @simon Agree with the spirit of this comment. 1 chatbot prompt saves me 10+ Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo searches and provides MUCH better results MUCH quicker.
Show threadDjoerd Hiemstra 🍉
@rgbenderkc @simon I was not talking about saving your personal energy 😉
Apr 29, 2025 at 4:27pmWeb
Show threadfrewApr 30, 2025
@djoerd @rgbenderkc @simon but surely personal energy is the thing we should be optimizing? Our lives are only so long, we as a society should be doing what we can to make computers cheaper/better/faster so I can spend my life doing what I love instead of writing boring code