I recall the actual emissions figures for AI usage are much lower than commonly touted in the media. And if one really cares, efficient local models exist, but I doubt the average Photoshop user thinks about their emissions in their usage of the application while simultaneously fear-mongering about AI art, which I've seen happen before.
Still, the training of bigger and bigger models is expensive. Models that nobody asked for in the first place.
I dont drive a car, I also wont use LLMs. I live near dikes and I'd really prefer to be able to live here for a few more decades...
It is correct that training 1 model is a lot more expensive than running that same model 1 time. But when you have many people using AI, then you also get a lot of emissions.
The key challenge with greenhouse emissions is that the sources are so diverse and so distributed. We need to look at all the emitters, even if they are only in the range of 0.1-1.0% of global emissions.
Okay, I think you are in the extreme end of most people, in the US at least (among many other countries as well), so it will be difficult to convince you of things most people might want or need. People also live in the woods in log cabins, they might not have asked for central heating, but for most people, that sure does help.
I live in the country with probably the biggest car lobby. It just disgusts me that families now have 3-4 cars instead of 1. One is fine, it worked 20 years ago, why doesn't it work today? People just became so entitled to getting anywhere any time they want with zero regards of their carbon footprint. Maybe im biased because we actually learned about that in school so I try to minimize mine... But yeah, I wont change shit with being sparse.