As you can tell from the previous answers: It depends.

The bigger an LLM is, the more power it uses. AI models can be quantized or distilled to yield smaller but less capable models. Providers may try to route you to the cheapest model that can handle your prompt.

Another question is the length of the output. The length of the input matters less but might be relevant for processing long texts.

The energy used for training is relatively insignificant once you average it over its lifetime. The energy efficiency of a particular data center will certainly matter more.

Providers like OpenAI claim that the typical query uses about 0.3Wh. That’s about the same as an idling phone charger uses in an hour; ie charger plugged into the outlet but not into the phone.

People in the English-speaking countries generally don’t have government issued ID beyond a driver’s license. That’s also true for the UK. Historically, ID cards are connected to military conscription. The UK could rely on the Navy for defense and did not maintain vast land armies like the continental nations. Political initiatives to introduce ID cards are usually rejected by voters as totalitarian overreach.

The former slave states in the US have a history of using procedural rules to exclude blacks from voting. After the end of slavery, there was formally equality before the law. So, laws were created to maintain the status quo that were non-discriminatory on their face. EG literacy tests. This not only targeted blacks who were denied an education. Administering such tests was fully in the hands of local elites. They could be made arbitrarily hard to black people, while politically reliable white illiterates could be excused.

I remember a guy about 3 years ago trying that grift with images. Went nowhere because the images it flagged as the “source” looked nothing like the generated images. In music, it might be more successful. Marvin Gaye’s estate showed the way.

Hmm. What are the chances that they manage to sneak such a fraudulent scheme past courts or lawmakers?

So true.

This talking point, too, is so infuriatingly silly:

I mean yes I know you’re going to say socialism is about workers getting fair pay

Workers, by definition, don’t own what they produce. Copyrights are intellectual property; business capital. Somehow, capitalists are workers in the minds of these people. This is your mind on trickle-down economics.

I think, in the short run, some have reason to worry about their skills. AI does make digital skills more important and manual drawing skills less so.

OTOH, I don’t think it’s reasonable to worry about styles. Go to aliexpress or some such place and look for paintings. They offer cheap “handmade” paintings and replicas of famos works. They don’t offer novel paintings in someone else’s style. I don’t believe there is any demand for that.

Allowing Ai to train for free is a direct threat towards creatives

No. Many creatives fear that AI allows anyone to do what they do, lowering the skill premium they can charge. That doesn’t depend on free training.

Some seem to feel that paying for training will delay AI deployment for some years, allowing the good times to continue (until they retire or die?)

But afterward, you have to ask who’s paying for the extra cost when AI is a normal tool for creatives? Where does the money come from to pay the rent to property owners? Obviously the general public will pay a part through higher prices. But I think creatives may bear the brunt, because it’s the tools of their trade that are more expensive and I don’t think all of that cost can be passed on.

True, Big Tech loves monopoly power. It’s hard to see how there can be an AI monopoly without expanding intellectual property rights.

It would mean a nice windfall profit for intellectual property owners. I doubt they worry about open source or competition but only think as far as lobbying to be given free money. It’s weird how many people here, who are probably not all rich, support giving extra money to owners, merely for owning things. That’s how it goes when you grow up on Ayn Rand, I guess.