Although I do see the waste as some may say it is, I don’t think comparing a models emissions to that of the lifetime emissions of five average cars is fair and ultimately is hyperbolic, but please let me explain. Let’s say the average car lasts 20 years. Actually let’s say it lasts 50 years. Back of the hand math means shows that that’s equivalent to about 50*5=250 U.S. car emissions per year. Yes, that is a large number, but if you look at the value provided to society by things like voice translation, picture recognition, etc., that the set of all Google users enjoy, you have to consider that those models provide value to tens of millions of people, and the cost is equivalent to only 250 of those people driving cars for a year, i.e. the efficiency is pretty great in my opinion.

These news articles are hyperbolic and not addressing the true waste we have in society. Once again I’m not arguing that there isn’t inefficiency and waste, but we’re ignoring the fact that every one of the those Google users (or at least a substantial amount) has a higher carbon footprint in totality that FAR surpasses that of a single model. I do support further research in this area, but we must consider the harm us engineers cause when we write papers that can be manipulated so well by media to create click bait articles that only enable the mindset of “big tech is the actual problem” while individuals shift responsibility of their own carbon emissions onto others.