(6/6) Many thanks to Sara Robertson and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting for granting me the space to offer a general overview of this urgent issue.

(5/6) …who stand the most to gain by pushing for the implementation of AI language technologies into anything and everything. My hope is that translators and other so-called digital workers can lead the way in promoting a vision of technology that rejects exploitation of workers and the planet.

(4/6) What's ultimately needed is a reconfiguration of the structures of incentives and ownership that drive the ceaseless expansion of AI infrastructures without regard for their ecological costs. This transformation would necessarily challenge the big tech corporations (including many LSPs)…

(3/6) But simply encouraging developers to make models "leaner" and more resource-efficient is a false solution: AI's increasing adoption across sectors and companies seems to be overshadowing all improvements to model efficiency.

(2/6) …it’s admittedly difficult to parse individuals' ethical responsibility for these environmental harms. Obviously, there are numerous practical constraints that would make it hard for translators to abstain from using these technologies altogether.

Sasha Luccioni I believe is the one who did the earliest and most realistic estimate of the impact of LLMs. She assembled an excellent resource here - huggingface.co/blog/sasha/a...