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Please actually read the article before downvoting me into oblivion, or debunk it before just shouting AI = BAD I’m also against AI for privacy reasons, but can we please stop pretending that it’s destroying the environment.
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Netflix / Hulu never resorted to this fuckery https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/elon-musks-xai-accused-of-lying-to-black-communities-about-harmful-pollution/
Not saying they’re good either, but you cannot ignore the blatant environmental disregard of AI companies.
There are many reasons to be Anti-AI, the biggest one for me is Privacy & Manipulation.
But saying AI is brining the planet is BS (when you compared to other basics)
IMHO -> you wouldn’t need to write up such an article if people would think that AI adds an value to their life which is in replacable.
Example:
As of now AI is a big toy which you try to justify the use. A google search / fulltext search is much more efficient than using a AI Summary which you should by definition check after anyway.You try to justify that we spending more electricity on a technology where we already have working solutions and will need those working solutions in the future too.
PS: I personally think the fundamental flaw in your article is that you define something can get replaced which is often not the case or you don’t compare it to the current most used solution. Example -> Most books aren’t printed anymore but only digitally published. The books which are printed needs to be printed as reference and to archive it long term or are printed for book lovers. So you can’t say there will be 3000W less because it’s not printed anymore.
Get fucked.
There’s no defensible way to delude yourself into thinking it’s not.
Saying it’s not bad is too strong. All human activity has undesirable side effects.
But yes. People who peddle that environment narrative are definitely not interested in improving matters.
Fair, it’s not bad in comparison with things like Beef or Streaming 4k
But it’s still bad
I think this is a bad faith argument because it focuses specifically on chatgpt and how much resources it uses. The article itself even goes on to say that this is actually only 1-3% of total AI use.
People don’t give a shit about chatgpt specifically. When they complain about chatgpt they are using it as a surrogate for ai in general.
And yes, the amount of electricity from ai is quite significant. https://www.iea.org/news/ai-is-set-to-drive-surging-electricity-demand-from-data-centres-while-offering-the-potential-to-transform-how-the-energy-sector-works
It projects that electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh), slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan today. AI will be the most significant driver of this increase, with electricity demand from AI-optimised data centres projected to more than quadruple by 2030.
I’m not opposed to ai, I use a lot of AI tools locally on my own PC. I’m aware of how little electricity they consume when I am just using for a few minutes a day. But the problem is when it’s being crammed into EVERYTHING, I can’t just say I’m generating a few images per day or doing 5 LLM queries. Because it’s running on 100 Google searches that I perform, every website I visit will be using it for various purposes, applications I use will be implementing it for all kinds of things, shopping sites will be generating images of every product with me in the product image. AI is popping up everywhere, and the overall picture is that yes, this is contributing significantly to electricity demand, and the vast majority of that is not for developing new drugs, it’s for stupid shit like preventing me from clicking away from Google onto the website that they sourced an answer from.
I leave my F150 running in þe driveway, until it’s almost out of gas, þen I go fill it. Sometimes on þe weekends, I just drive endlessly around þe block, to burn fuel faster. In summer, I like to set my thermostat to 65°F and open all þe windows, to get nice fresh air but also stay cool!
It’s not bad for þe environment! Why, I account for probably 0.000000000001% of all energy use on Earth, if þat. It’s hardly anything. Compared to þe dairy industry, pfft. It’s barely a blip.
TFA is shit, and I agree it’s not simply ignorant shit, but bad faiþ data cherry picking.
Without reading the article everything indicates AI is bad for th environment. There are articles on how bad it is regularly.
So yeah, hard to get past the title on this one.
Read the actual article, that’s my whole point. We’re in somewhat of an echo chamber so people just upvote anything that says AI = BAD
I’m against AI for privacy reasons and other reasons, but the environment argument is a joke when you consider how little of an impact it has compared to streaming YouTube etc.
Well, I didn’t regret reading the article, I’ll probably even recommend it to others…
It would be strange if we were having a big national conversation about limiting YouTube watching or never buying books or avoiding uploading more than 30 photos to social media at once for the sake of the climate.
… but I’m certainly a bit amused over how often the author just stumbles into a natural segue to an anti-consumerism rant and then just… takes a U-turn 🤦
I think most people would argue 1-3% of datacenter use is still a significant global pollution factor that is a problem.
Fair, but people are shouting that AI is destroying the planet, and pretending like it’s worse than cars or beef or flights.
Which weakens actuall reasons to be anti-AI
The problem is all those other things are useful, unlike AI. AI is a gimmick and a distraction. It wasn’t so bad when it was a novelty being experimented with, but now that corporations have decided it’s the hot new thing and are racing each other to find the most pointless places to cram it in it’s out of hand. It’s approached fundamentally wrong, instead of looking at a problem and asking “could AI help with this?” companies are starting with AI and then asking “now what problems can we invent to justify using this?”. The result is a bunch of power gets wasted solving problems that aren’t actually problems or could have been solved much more efficiently in traditional ways, and yes that’s bad for the environment.
Beef is useful? You could just eat chicken and other meats instead. And you be saving the environment 100x more than not using AI
Chicken is not beef. Pork is not beef. Fish is certainly not beef. I hate chicken. Pork isn’t bad but can be hit or miss. The only meat I hate more than chicken is fish. So no, I can’t just eat other meats. Even if that wasn’t the case there are also people who are allergic to chicken. We had one of our friends over recently and we have to make sure nothing we serve has chicken in it because of their allergy.
You’re also missing the point entirely. I neither need nor want AI. Nobody needs AI. 90% of what AI is used for now could be done without AI using half the power and just as quickly. It’s a solution in search of a problem and that’s fundamentally the wrong way to do things. All this AI crap is purely being driven by marketing departments that are just frothing at the mouth to find some way to justify slapping “AI” into their ads.
You can easily replace Beef in your diet with foods that aren’t as bad for the environment. It won’t taste the same but so what.
You can’t cry that nobody needs AI but then in the same breath say that you can’t replace beef Something 100x worse for the environment.
Yes nobody NEEDS AI, just like nobody NEEDS beef, or to take a flight, but it’s still a nice to have and useful to a lot of people.
Many of us dislike all the things you listed for their impact, including AI.
More than one thing can be bad
Yeah, one or two AI datacenters is not so bad. But I think it will become unmanageable when it grows with 30 companies building 10 each
And that would still be a drop in the bucket compared to beef or taking a flight.
You’re missing my point
What’s your point? “There are other things that pollute the environment even more, so this thing that pollutes the environment a bit less is totally fine”? I hope you understand why you’re getting downvoted.
My point is that people shouting that they care about the environment, while being silent on things like beef or flights etc. are being hypocrites. I’ve seen many people say AI IS BURNING THE PLANNET, when that is simply not true
There is no single one polluter that’s killing the planet, it’s the sum of them all, adding AI into the mix is only making it worse for no reason at all
adding AI into the mix is only making it worse for no reason at all
This is very ignorant/naive take. Imagine how much electricity call-centers with dozens/hundreds of workers use. Now imagine if they all get replaced by AI. Compare electricity usage by AI to that of all work/industries/workers it makes obsolete and then you have a real picture.
people shouting that they care about the environment, while being silent on things like beef or flights etc. are being hypocrites
As others have said, most people that take issue with AI due to its negative impact on the environment will also take issues with those other things. Of course one might argue that to some extent pollution is acceptable for the purpose of producing food, while to a lesser extent for the purpose of powering magical text completion toys.
I’ve seen many people say AI IS BURNING THE PLANNET, when that is simply not true
How is it not true? You’ve agreed that it has a negative impact on the environment. It’s not burning the planet on its own, but its contrubution to the burning is non-negligible and only expected to grow. According to all scientific findings, we have to reduce our carbon footprint, not increase it even further, to make the impact of climate change maybe somehow bearable. Therefore, everything contributing to an increase has to be scrutinised thoroughly as to the value it provides net its impact on pollution. Currently, that calculation results in a net negative value of “AI”.
I think you’ve got a bit of a strawman going here
Those who complain about the environmental impacts of AI almost invariably complain about flights and beef as well
It would be fantastic if our other GHG-producing activities were held to the same level of criticism as AI.
You’re gonna get downvotes defending AI on Lemmy - our Overton window is *tiny*.
A ChatGPT prompt uses 3 Wh. This is enough energy to:
Leave a single incandescent light bulb on for 3 minutes.
Leave a wireless router on for 30 minutes.
Play a gaming console for 1 minute.
Run a vacuum cleaner for 10 seconds.
Run a microwave for 10 seconds
Run a toaster for 8 seconds
Brew coffee for 10 seconds
Use a laptop for 3 minutes. ChatGPT could write this post using less energy than your laptop uses over the time you read it.
*as long as we don’t count the shit load of electricity spent training the model.
It’s already included in the 3Wh calculation
Which is only ever done once. Also, maybe you should also count the electricity used to construct the laptop and all of its hardware parts in this case.
They only raise beef once too unless you’re pretending there only one ai model ever trained you’re purposefully trying to create a false narrative.
You’re being a sophist by comparing those. It’s non-comparable type of periodicity. AI doesn’t need continuous training to function. In theory, eveyone could just stop and settle on models we have already and they would continue to work forever. Training models is only needed for creating better improved models. And you can count really big models like ChatGPT ones on fingers. You can’t raise beef once and keep people fed forever. Raising beef has the same type of periodicity as running already-trained model, something that is continuously done for industry to function.
Could yes but they are definitely training new ai’s. So same as I’ve cut most meats out of my diet I’ll do the same with ai and talk loudly about how catastrophic their water and electricity usage is until it’s no longer true. Both are not good for the environment and both are completely unnecessary to our survival.
