I‘m not convinced this exercise in what to and what not to include in this cost-benefit-analysis will lead to anything. We can always arbitrarily include an extra item to include to shift the calculations in our favor. For example I could simply add the cost of creating the data which is fed into the training set of an LLM, that creation is done by our human biological machinery and hence has the cost of the frozen blueberries, the rigid fiber insulations, the machinery that dug the waterpipe for their shower, etc.

Instead I would like to shift the focus on the benefits of LLM. I know the costs are high, very very very high, but you seem to think that the benefits are also so high measured in time saved. That is the amount of tasks automated are enough to save humans doing similar tasks by miles. If that is what you think I disagree. LLMs have yet to prove them selves with real world application. We are seeing when we actually do measure how much LLMs save work-hours, that it the effects are at best negligible (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44522772). Worse, generative AI is disrupting our systems in worse way, where e.g. teachers, peer-reviewers, etc. have to put in a bunch of extra work to verify that the submitted work was actually written by that person, and not simply generated by AI. Just last Friday I read that arXiv will no longer accept submissions unless they have been previously peer-reviewed because they are overwhelmed by AI generated submissions[1].

There are definitely technologies which have saved us time and created a much more efficient system then was previously possible. The loom is a great example of one, I would claim the railway is another, and even the digital calculator for sure. But LLMs, and generative AI more generally are not that. There may be utilities for this technology, but automation and energy/work savings is not one of them.

1: https://blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/attention-authors-updated-...