Technology

I use LLMs for the following, you can decide for yourself if they are major enough:

• Generating example solutions to maths and physics problems I encounter in my coursework, so I can learn how to solve similar problems in the future instead of getting stuck. The generated solutions, if they come up with the right answer, are almost always correct and if I wonder about something I simply ask.
• Writing really quick solutions to random problems I have in python or bash scripts, like "convert this csv file to this random format my personal finance application uses for import".
• Helping me when coding, in a general way I think genuinely increases my productivity while I really understand what I push to main. I don't send anything I could not have written on my own (yes, I see the limitations in my judgement here).
• Asking things where multiple duckduckgo searches might be needed. E.g. "Whats the history of EU+US sanctions on Iran, when and why were they imposed/tightened and how did that correlate with Iranian GDP per capita?"

What does this cost me? I don't pay any money for the tech, but LLM providers learn the following about me:

• What I study (not very personal to me)
• Generally what kinds of problems I want to solve with code (I try to keep my requests pretty general; not very personal)
• The code I write and work on (already open source so I don't care)
• Random searches (I'm still thinking about the impact of this tbh, I think I feel the things I ask to search for are general enough that I don't care)

There's also an impact on energy and water use. These are quite serious overall. Based on what I've read, I think that my marginal impact on these are quite small in comparison to other marginal impacts on the climate and water use in other countries I have. Of course there are around a trillion other negative impacts of LLMs, I just once again don't know how my marginal usage with no payment involved lead to a sufficient increase in their severity to outweigh their usefulness to me.