24 January 2026

-

Today the Government of Aquria-Catopolis announced as follows:

(Originally posted on Scratch at https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1270392021/)

'Scratch has updated its Terms of Service.

It has stated that any projects uploaded to this platform may be used to train artificial intelligence models, to be used for "business", among other things. So much for this "non-profit."

Besides the ethical concerns, there is a huge environmental impact by AI. I.e., strained water supply from cooling needs, electronic waste, and significantly increased carbon emissions from fossil fuels. A single ChatGPT query can require up to 10200 watt seconds, or the equivalent to running a 60 watt light bulb for 2 mins 50 secs. There are 2.5 billion queries per day, or the equivalent of over 100 million(!) hours of a 60-watt lightbulb. The training of large AI models can take as much fossil fuels as a car in its entire lifetime.

From now onwards, the Government of Aquria-Catopolis will not be posting as frequently (or at all) on this platform, and will more frequently post updates on the official website of Aquria-Catopolis.

Good day.'

Directly quoting the Terms:

'From the ToS:

“you hereby grant … us a[n] ... irrevocable, royalty-free license ... to … use and exploit the User Content to provide the Service, for internal business purposes, to advertise, market, and promote the service … including through the training of AI models."

"you grant Scratch ... [the] right and license ... to store, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, ... distribute, and otherwise use and exploit ... for the purpose of providing, developing, improving, and extending the Service and for commercial purposes, which may include ... developing, and improving AI models and allowing third parties to do so for free or for a fee."'