Wasted large language models

Earlier this year I was developing some guidelines for more environmentally-friendly use of generative AI for the Norwegian certification foundation Eco-Lighthouse. In this process I collaborated with Stine Vintervoll, senior advisor from Eco-Lighthouse, who one day asked me: "Could we somehow connect AI's climate footprint with the waste hierarchy?" The waste hierarchy is a framework for managing waste to reduce environmental imapct. In its most basic form, it consists of 1) prevention, 2) reuse, 3) recycling, 4) recovery, and 5) disposal. I instinctively thought that this was a very interesting idea, but we struggled with concretizing how it would look like in practice, and in what sense it would make sense to talk about "waste management" in the context of AI. After pondering this idea for a few weeks, I realized that we think about AI models in a very different way than we think about physical products. The latter end up as physical waste that we're forced to handle, one way or…