Just a quick glance shows that they consider the overall emissions of a persons day to day life to be involved in the act of writing:<p>"The emission footprint of a US resident is approximately 15 metric tons CO2e per year (14), or approximately 1.7kg CO2e per hour. Therefore, assuming that a person’s emissions while writing are in line with their overall annual impact, we propose that the carbon footprint for a US resident generating a page of text (250 words) is approximately 1400 grams CO2e."<p>That's a pretty big assumption, which seems hardly scientific. You would think that they would isolate the act of writing and measure that against the CO2 emissions of equivalent AI.
I only skimmed the article, so may have missed something, but it doesn't seem that they are taking into account how much CO2 emission humans emit just for living.<p>If I spend an hour writing my emissions will be about the same as if I had instead spent that hour reading, or watching TV, or playing my guitar, or doing most other things I do.<p>Computers can be turned off when not working so only need to cause CO2 emission when actually working. Humans cannot be turned off between jobs.
Like the cyanobacteria before us which killed off most previous life by overloading this planet with oxygen, maybe we're just prepping the world for the next forms of life which will live on CO2.