2025: A LUDDITE ODYSSEY. Leonard Nimoy The BBC Goes In Search Of “The people refusing to use AI:”
[Sabine] Zetteler runs her own London-based communications agency, with around 10 staff, some full-time some part-time.
“What’s the point of sending something we didn’t write, reading a newspaper written by bots, listening to a song created by AI, or me making a bit more money by sacking my administrator who has four kids?
“Where’s the joy, love or aspirational betterment even just for me as a founder in that? It means nothing to me,” she says.
Ms Zetteler is among those resisting the AI invasion, which really got going with the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022.
Since then the service, and its many rivals have become wildly popular. ChatGPT is racking up over five billion visits a month, according to software firm Semrush.
But training AI systems like ChatGPT requires huge amounts of energy and, once trained, keeping them running is also energy intensive.
While it’s difficult to quantify the electricity used by AI, a report by Goldman Sachs estimated that a ChatGPT query uses nearly 10 times as much electricity as a Google search query.
Which, prior to the debut of AI in late 2022, similarly gave the BBC the heebie-jeebies: Why your internet habits are not as clean* as you think.
A decade ago, each internet search had a footprint of 0.2g CO2e, according to figures released by Google. Today, Google uses a mixture of renewable energy and carbon offsetting to reduce the carbon footprint of its operations, while Microsoft, which owns the Bing search engine, has promised to become carbon negative by 2030, and efforts are underway to investigate whether this footprint is now higher or lower.
According to Google’s own figures, however, an average user of its services – someone who performs 25 searches each day, watches 60 minutes of YouTube, has a Gmail account and accesses some of its other services – produces less than 8g (0.28oz) CO2e a day.
Newer search engines, however, are attempting to set themselves apart as greener options from the outset. Ecosia, for example, says it will plant a tree for every 45 searches it performs. This sort of carbon offsetting can help to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but the success of these projects often depends on how long the trees grow for and what happens to them when they are chopped down.
Regardless of the search engine you choose, using the web to find information is more sustainable than browsing in books. In fact, a paperback’s carbon footprint is around 1kg (2.2lbs) CO2e, while a weekend newspaper accounts for between 0.3kg (10oz) and 4.1kg (9lbs) CO2e making reading the news online more environmentally friendly than poring over a paper.
But you could still read a lifetime of paperbacks – 2,300 to be precise – for the same carbon footprint as a flight from London to Hong Kong, so don’t feel too guilty for reading the next best seller. (Read more about how to reduce the impact your flights have on the environment.)
Or not – it’s eco-guilt all the way down with the British left. And it all ends in a very, very bad way:
This is vandalism – pure eco vandalism.
Farmers lives are being destroyed for this junk. Future land fill. Imported. Plastic wrapped.
This needs to be stopped. And fast pic.twitter.com/zphU16r4zO
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) May 1, 2025
* I’m not sure that’s a headline I’d want to run if I worked at the Beeb…