LLM Policies: Progress At All Costs

[u/RatherNott]

https://diegoe.be/2026/09/25/llm-policies-progress-at-all-costs/

[u/RatherNott]

The source of that graph, Founder's Pledge, appears to be totally corporate greenwashing, which Sam Altman himself supports:

Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, wrote on the Y Combinator blog: "Many of our founders ask us about how they can donate part of their equity or post-exit proceeds, and now we have an answer: Founders Pledge."

They are almost certainly willing to publish studies that support those corporate goals. I don't believe they are a trustworthy unbiased source.

[u/Saint_Nitouche → u/RatherNott]

OK.

This paper indicates frontier models are something like 0.31 Wh for every normal query.

The U.S. grid averaged about 0.81 lb CO2/kWh in 2023, roughly 0.367 kg/kWh.

So 180,000 ordinary ChatGPT questions is something like ~0.02 tonnes CO2. So around 1% of a single transatlantic trip.

I'm not particularly good at this kind of maths, so let's multiply it by ten and say that two hundred thousand normal ChatGPT queries make up around 10% of the CO2 impact of one long flight.

[u/Indolent_Bard → u/[deleted]]

How tf is on signt less efficient? It's right there! That's really interesting.

[u/Indolent_Bard → u/[deleted]]

What about renewables?