UK Gov Restricts Civil Servants to Low Power AI for Environment

Official instructions for British government employees mandate using Gemini Flash and GPT Instant over more computationally expensive versions of these tools. The guidance for the civil service directs staff to keep their prompts brief and omit polite phrases such as "thank you" to reduce the environmental costs associated with processing AI requests.

Critics of the policy argue that limiting the state's access to high-performance AI makes it more difficult for the government to regulate and hold AI companies accountable. Some observers suggest the focus on minimizing usage rather than automating workloads indicates a preference for rules over productivity improvements.