Mistral's new "environmental audit" shows how much AI is hurting the planet

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/mistrals-new-environmental-audit-shows-how-much-ai-is-hurting-the-planet/

by pjmlp • 12 months ago

19 28 12 months ago

linotype3• 12 months ago

I’ll stop using ChatGPT when private jets are banned, families drop down to one car and stop having more than two kids. Seriously there are probably more emissions from a few supertankers/cargo carriers than all LLMs combined.

Zacharias030• 12 months ago

3 if you raise them vegan!

zekrioca7• 12 months ago

No one is asking people to stop using the Internet. However, becoming aware of one’s consumption is important, and as of now, people are generally oblivious to their digital footprint beyond power consumption, which is only one of the aspects.

nsksl• 12 months ago

Of course they are. We continuously hear that we have to stop having cars, kids, and consuming in a way that the elites have described as irresponsible, all whilst they travel the world in private jets where they definitely do not eat tofu.

readthenotes1• 12 months ago

it made me look. a private jet emits 4,900 g of c02 per mile (how the author's mind didn't explode mixing the measurement systems is beyond me) vs 1 prompt emitting 1.14 g.

https://flybitlux.com/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-priv...

BriggyDwiggs422• 12 months ago

Honestly not as dramatic as I’d have hoped. 5000 chatgpt prompts propelling a jet for a mile is a pretty surprising amount of energy useage.

Buxato• 12 months ago

WTF, the level of .... in this phrase is astonishing IMO, specially when you said the kids "issue". Seriously WTF

linotype3• 12 months ago

WTF, the level of .... in this phrase is astonishing IMO, specially when you said the kids "issue". Seriously WTF

What?

votepaunchy• 12 months ago

Let’s talk about fewer kids after people stop owning pets.

M4v3R3• 12 months ago

environmental impact of a single average prompt (generating 400 tokens' worth of text, or about a page's worth) was relatively minimal: just 1.14 grams of CO2 emitted and 45 milliliters of water consumed

While it’s non-zero, it doesn’t strike me to be “hurting the planet” as some people would want me to believe I’m doing when I decide to use LLMs.

Yes, the training has a much bigger impact but the benefits of training are shared will all users and it’s a one-time cost per model.

I did the math and if I’m right the environmental footprint of a single LLM training, emitting 13,600 metric tons of CO2 and consuming 187,333 cubic meters of water annually, represents 0.000026% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 0.0000047% of freshwater use.

zekrioca7• 12 months ago

How many trainings and retraining are happening as we speak? How many more when the transition from millions of jobs replaced by AI do you expect? What about inference across all of that?

M4v3R3• 12 months ago

How many trainings and retraining are happening as we speak?

Quite a lot. Let's assume a hundred different LLMs of this scale are being trained at the same time. If you multiply the global use percentages by a hundred you'll get: 0.0026% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 0.00047% of freshwater use. Still a literal drop in the bucket.

How many more when the transition from millions of jobs replaced by AI do you expect?

Dunno, but the argument is that I should feel bad about my current impact on the environment as I use my LLM to autocomplete my code or answer my questions. We have no idea what the future will hold. We can and of course should do everything to minimize the environmental impact of everything we do, but that's a different discussion. For example switching to clean energy sources will make a big positive impact on these numbers.

What about inference across all of that?

The report speaks about that, the inference cost in marginal when compared to the training cost (~15% for CO2 and ~9% for water consumption).

tomhow• 12 months ago

Mistral reports on the environmental impact of LLMs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44651661 - July 2025 (56 comments)

riffraff• 12 months ago

Is this article showing an ai slop header image with credits to Getty Images? I'm deeply confused.

joegibbs• 12 months ago

It’s definitely a render, look how clear the small text is, you can see the lower resolution ground texture in the foreground.

M95D• 12 months ago

The surprizing conclusion for me from this article is not how much LLM hurts the planet, but how much video streaming hurts the planet!

Mistral's new "environmental audit" shows how much AI is hurting the planet

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