TL;DR
This paper emphasizes the importance of assessing the ecological impacts of AI, especially large language models, and advocates for practical, philosophically informed sustainability analyses beyond just greenhouse gas emissions.
Contribution
It highlights the need for comprehensive ecological impact assessments of AI and proposes a framework for practical, philosophically informed sustainability evaluations.
Findings
Current assessments are limited and often incomplete.
Philosophical ideas can inform more holistic ecological impact analyses.
Encourages development of practical tools for sustainability evaluation.
Abstract
Philosophers of technology have recently started paying more attention to the environmental impacts of AI, in particular of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI (genAI) applications. Meanwhile, few developers of AI give concrete estimates of the ecological impact of their models and products, and even when they do so, their analysis is often limited to green house gas emissions of certain stages of AI development or use. The current proposal encourages practically viable analyses of the sustainability aspects of genAI informed by philosophical ideas.
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