Post

Whenever I read discourse on AI energy/water use that focuses on the "median query," I can't help but feel misled. Coding agents like Claude Code send hundreds of longer-than-median queries every session, and I run dozens of sessions a day. On my blog: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...

cc @andymasley.bsky.social @simonwillison.net might be interesting for you guys

(1/2) AI's very fast-moving and coding agents didn't exist when I started. I can only really cover so much at once. I wish people saying "it's deceptive to not also cover X" would consider just how many individual angles you need to cover.

(2/2) I would be a little surprised if the audience talking about AI and the environment were also regularly using coding agents, they've seemed pretty distinct.

At the point of coding agents, a lot of people have to start to make comparisons between the value they're getting out of AI vs other things. If I had a dishwasher that could do what Claude Code could do in a day, I'd probably run it once a day without feeling bad about its environment impact

Heard on all of your points, didn't mean to insinuate in the OP that any of your work here is misleading! My point was re: e.g. the Gemini team's paper and/or Sam Altman's blog post that mention very specific estimates for a poorly defined 'median query', but that could have been clearer.