The seven line script isn’t burning down the rainforest. Programmers are a 1% slice of AI token usage. A seven line script takes less datacenter power to generate than your monitor does to show you this message thread while you read it. What’s burning down the rainforest is billions of “ordinary” people using AI to make Rule 34 animations, graphic layout flyers for their next coffee date, research papers on obscure topics that will never be read by anyone, schemes to trade bitcoin, etc. etc. etc.
I glanced across one once, I doubt any of the demographics are entirely reliable, but even with the uncertainty it appears that programmers are but a small minority even among Claude users.
I know a family that uses it to write sappy greeting card type mini-novels to each other.
Others use it to make graphic promotional flyers (give me a flyer describing this event, time place, activities and illustrate it with pictures of geckos and calla lillies…)
Some (bad) colleagues at work use it to summarize their e-mail inbox, and draft replies when warranted.
I know a woman who has been teaching “Creative Writing” at an online university for 10 years. Her past two crops of students are 99% using it to write their papers.
I’m sure there are day-traders out there using it all kinds of ways to try to gain advantage in the markets.
Customer support is a big one (reading the manuals to the customers) and, sadly, customer engagement - constant contact type messages.
A friend of ours recently took a 3 week vacation in Ireland, gave AI some “hard constraints” that they had to meet and let it plan out their routing, lodging, car rental, train fares, etc.
The seven line script isn’t burning down the rainforest. Programmers are a 1% slice of AI token usage. A seven line script takes less datacenter power to generate than your monitor does to show you this message thread while you read it. What’s burning down the rainforest is billions of “ordinary” people using AI to make Rule 34 animations, graphic layout flyers for their next coffee date, research papers on obscure topics that will never be read by anyone, schemes to trade bitcoin, etc. etc. etc.
i’ve not actually looked at the demographics. is that available somewhere?
I glanced across one once, I doubt any of the demographics are entirely reliable, but even with the uncertainty it appears that programmers are but a small minority even among Claude users.
what’s everyone else doing then? isn’t it specifically for code?
I know a family that uses it to write sappy greeting card type mini-novels to each other.
Others use it to make graphic promotional flyers (give me a flyer describing this event, time place, activities and illustrate it with pictures of geckos and calla lillies…)
Some (bad) colleagues at work use it to summarize their e-mail inbox, and draft replies when warranted.
I know a woman who has been teaching “Creative Writing” at an online university for 10 years. Her past two crops of students are 99% using it to write their papers.
I’m sure there are day-traders out there using it all kinds of ways to try to gain advantage in the markets.
Customer support is a big one (reading the manuals to the customers) and, sadly, customer engagement - constant contact type messages.
A friend of ours recently took a 3 week vacation in Ireland, gave AI some “hard constraints” that they had to meet and let it plan out their routing, lodging, car rental, train fares, etc.
ew :(
Yeah.