It's absolutely not "still small", it's huge vs the benefits it "provides"... (mostly a glorified autocomplete to a few coders so far)
the problem is the rebound effect, even though we might improve its efficiency, then people will start using it in many more places, leading to a global energy usage increase, not decrease.
For instance, now websites are routinely implementing "assistant" features on regular pages, which let you hover on/select text, to immediately do an assistant query... which creates 10 new "useless" queries, where none would have existed before
Although huge/small is subjective, I wouldn’t consider 22% of new demand “small”—especially for LLMs, which seem to present more problems than solutions. Sounds like a public relations piece to me. Many interested corporations launder the money through various think-tanks and institutes, and people are none the wiser.
the problem is the rebound effect, even though we might improve its efficiency, then people will start using it in many more places, leading to a global energy usage increase, not decrease.
For instance, now websites are routinely implementing "assistant" features on regular pages, which let you hover on/select text, to immediately do an assistant query... which creates 10 new "useless" queries, where none would have existed before