The Unbearable Lightness of Prompting: A Critical Reflection on the Environmental Impact of genAI use in Design Education
It addresses the problem of environmental sustainability in genAI for design educators, but it is incremental as it builds on existing ethical critiques without introducing new technical methods.
The paper tackles the overlooked environmental costs of using generative AI in design education, developing five alternative stances and actions to promote conscious use based on a workshop with 49 students.
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.