Ask HN: Are LLMs a net environmental positive, deserving of green tech status?
1 thedevilslawyer 6 6/9/2025, 2:06:13 PM
I've been wrestling with a notion lately from a recent HN discussion, and debating with a colleague: could LLMs actually be a net positive for the environment? Should it earn all the benefits that come with ESG status? It's a bit wild, but we haven't found a solid, economically defendable argument against it. it assumes a claude (200$/month) subscription can in many cases replace a 10K/m SWE.
The best we've managed to push back with is that the environmental cost of a human worker, like their commute or office space, would be there anyway. But that feels like a cop-out; it basically means no technology can ever really improve productivity in an environmentally beneficial way, and we don't apply that logic to anything else.
So on one side: the environmental cost of the LLMs themselves (as indicated in the subscription price). On the significantly higher cost of a human engineer. Am I missing something here?
Perhaps that the base environmental cost of a living human being is incurred no matter what they're doing. Replacing them with LLMs is just adding a new cost on top of the existing one. It is not removing the cost of the human.
The reason it did not fly by us was that this means no technology that improves productivity (electric taxi) can ever be ESG. This did not make sense.
They produce a tremendous amount of heat in usage and at power generation. In most circumstances are powered by fossil fuels. I cant see how this would ever be justified.
>Should it earn all the benefits that come with ESG status?
Not a chance. AI is literally an antithesis to climate folks and ESG.
The ESG/climate folks should be opposing AI as much as possible.
Not only that, your argument depends on the saved emissions/energy consumption from laying off someone. Which is first and foremost just dark - but also how do you know that the laid off SWE isn't 10x more energy intensive when they're at home? Driving a lot, flying a lot, has a Ford F350, 5 kids and now runs AC all day while they're home?