23/06/2025

LYFE MONDAY | JUNE 23, 2025

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Protecting smartphones from sun, sea, sand B ETWEEN the heat, sand and water, being pool- or seaside can hazardous for smartphones. However, a o Drying your device in rice could damage it

WHAT is the environmental impact of using large language models such as ChatGPT? It is difficult to say, although several studies on the subject have already been conducted. OpenAI founder Sam Altman has now provided a very precise estimate, but how does that stack up against other experts’ calculations? What is the environmental cost of a single query on ChatGPT? This question has been on many people’s minds since the creation of OpenAI’s famous AI chatbot and more generally, the advent of large language models. It is a question that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, head of the company behind ChatGPT, recently answered in a post on his personal blog. “People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses. The average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water – roughly one-fifteenth of a teaspoon. “As datacentre production gets automated, the cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity,” wrote the CEO. However, Altman’s hypothesis does not address the increasingly widespread use of these rapidly expanding tools. When asked directly, ChatGPT itself pointed out that while a ChatGPT query may have a less significant environmental impact than most common digital uses, its footprint quickly accumulates with billions of daily uses. Multiplied by billions of daily interactions, the footprint can become significant, OpenAI’s chatbot said. Two years ago, the Greenly app (which allows companies to assess their CO2 emissions in real time) estimated that the overall carbon footprint of the first version of ChatGPT could be around 240 tonnes of CO2e, equivalent to 136 round trips between Paris and New York City. The learning systems alone were estimated to account for 99% of total emissions, or 238 tCO2e per year. In detail, operating electricity accounts for three quarters of that footprint (ie, 160 tCO2e), followed by server manufacturing (68.9 tCO2e) and refrigerant gas leakage (9.6 tCO2e), the report said. A more recent analysis also conducted by Greenly on the overall environmental cost of the new version of ChatGPT estimated that if an organisation uses the tool to respond to one million emails per month, ChatGPT-4 would generate 7,138 tonnes of CO2e per year, divided between training and use of the model. This would be equivalent to 4,300 round-trip flights between Paris and New York. US researchers at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimate that training several AI language models would be equivalent to five times the emissions of an average US car over its entire life cycle (including manufacturing). The environmental cost of these rapidly expanding technologies is therefore a crucial issue. It is with this in mind that an emerging trend for smaller AI models that are more efficient, cheaper and less energy-intensive is now gaining ground. – ETX Studio Environmental cost of ChatGPT queries The environmental impact of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has been a subject of much discussion since its creation. – AFPPIC

Smartphones, sand It is probably best to avoid using your smartphone at the beach. Sand is a risk for many reasons. Large grains can scratch the screen quite easily, while smaller ones can get into the ports and cause damage to the inside of the device itself. Before taking your smartphone on vacation, remember to equip it with a case and a protective film on the display. When you are not using it, place it in a waterproof pouch, such as a zip-lock freezer bag. If your smartphone comes into contact with sand or seawater, wipe it carefully with clean water and a soft cloth. Water risks Finally, if your phone falls into the water, do not try to dry it out by putting it in rice. As with sand, small particles could get into the device and damage it internally. In fact, it is better to switch off the device immediately, then place it in a dry, well-ventilated area. You can then start tapping it gently, with the connector at the bottom, to get out most of the water. You can also wipe it with a paper towel or soft cloth, taking care not to insert any foreign objects (tissue, cloth, etc.) into the connectors. Under no circumstances should you use a hairdryer or microwave oven to remove the last traces of moisture. – ETX Studio

little extra care can help make sure yours survives the wet and heat in one piece. Beware of sun In warm weather, your smartphone can heat up to dangerous levels. To avoid the risk of overheating, which could damage the device, it is essential to avoid exposing your smartphone to too much sunlight. To cool it down quickly, simply place it in the shade or in a cool place for a few minutes, and momentarily remove its protective cover or case. You could also place it near a fan, but never in the refrigerator. In the car, when it is hot, place your phone in the glove compartment rather than on a seat or near the windshield. As a general rule, it is best to switch off WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS when you do not need them, so as not to overheat the battery. If this does not work, simply switch your smartphone off and on again a few minutes later, and it should return to a normal temperature. Fortunately, most models now switch off automatically when they exceed a certain temperature. Finally, it is a good idea to choose a shady spot in which to recharge your smartphone.

Try to avoid using your phone at the beach.

AI’s arrival at work reshaping employers’ hunt for quality workers

PREDICTIONS of imminent artificial intelligence (AI)-driven mass unemployment are likely overblown, but employers will seek workers with different skills as the technology matures, revealed a top executive at global recruiter ManpowerGroup at the Vivatech Trade Fair in Paris earlier this month. The world’s third-largest staffing firm by revenue ran a startup contest at Vivatech in which one of the contenders was building systems to hire out customisable autonomous AI “agents”, rather than humans. Their service was reminiscent of a warning last month from Dario Amodei, head of American AI giant Anthropic, that the technology could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. For ManpowerGroup, AI agents are “certainly not going to become our core business any time soon”, the company’s chief innovation officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said. “If history shows us one thing, it is most of these forecasts are wrong.” An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report published in May found that around “one in four workers across the world are in an occupation with some degree of exposure” to generative AI models’ capabilities. “Few jobs are currently at high risk of full automation,”the ILO added. But the UN body also highlighted “rapid expansion of AI capabilities since our previous study” in 2023, including the emergence of “agentic” models more able to act autonomously or semi-autonomously and use software like web browsers and email.

An ILO report says around one in four workers across the world are in an occupation with some degree of exposure to generative AI models’ capabilities. – PICS FROM PEXELS

Soft skills Chamorro-Premuzic predicted that the introduction of efficiency-enhancing AI tools would put pressure on workers, managers and firms to make the most of the time they will save. “If what happens is that AI helps knowledge workers save 30%, 40%, maybe 50% of their time, but that time is then wasted on social media, that is not an increase in net output,” he said. Adoption of AI could give workers “more time to do creative work” – or impose “greater standardisation of their roles and reduced autonomy”, the ILO said. There is general agreement that interpersonal skills and an entrepreneurial attitude will become more important for

knowledge workers as their daily tasks shift towards corralling AIs. Employers identified ethical judgement, customer service, team management and strategic thinking as top skills AI could not replace in a ManpowerGroup survey of over 40,000 employers across 42 countries published this week. Nevertheless, training that adopts those new priorities has not increased in step with AI adoption, Chamorro-Premuzic lamented. “For every dollar you invest in technology, you need to invest eight or nine on HR, culture transformation, change management,” he said. He argued that such gaps suggest companies are still chasing automation, rather than the often-stated aim of augmenting human workers’ capabilities with AI. – AFP