The Unbearable Lightness of Prompting: A Critical Reflection on the Environmental Impact of genAI use in Design Education

2025-01-27

AI Summary

This study exposes the significant energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with widespread generative AI (GenAI) use in design education, revealing a critical gap in carbon literacy and sustainable practice within current pedagogy. Drawing on a 2023 participatory workshop with 49 design students, the research integrates critical reflection, educational action research, and a sustainable human–computer interaction (HCI) analytical framework. It presents, for the first time, five empirically grounded stances on sustainable GenAI use in design education, each paired with a concrete pedagogical action framework. The contribution bridges a key theoretical and practical void in GenAI’s educational deployment by advancing environmental sustainability as an integral dimension of AI literacy. The resulting scalable teaching intervention model offers academically rigorous, implementation-ready guidance for embedding carbon literacy into design curricula globally.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Machine Learning: Efficient ML / Green AI

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Sustainability and carbon-aware systems for Web, mobile, and WoT
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects and information design of Web, GenAI, and cloud computing
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems

Abstract

Design educators are finding ways to support students in skillfully using GenAI tools in their practices while encouraging the critical scrutiny of the ethical and social issues around these technologies. However, the issue of environmental sustainability remains unaddressed. There is a lack of both resources to grasp the environmental costs of genAI in education and a lack of shared practices for engaging with the issue. This paper critically reflects on the energy costs of using genAI in design education, using a workshop held in 2023 with 49 students as a motivating example. Through this reflection, we develop a set of five alternative stances, with related actions, that support the conscious use of genAI in design education. The work contributes to the field of design and HCI by bringing together ways for educators to reflect on their practices, informing the future development of educational programs around genAI.

Problem

• AI tools
• Environmental impact
• Educational strategy

Innovation

• AI sustainability
• Design education
• Energy consumption awareness