[herodoturtle]

> And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate the jobs of the poor and replace them with a robot that lies.

That sentence jumped out at me.

[CobrastanJorji]

It's a little wrong. It's probably going to replace middle class jobs more than the jobs of the poor.

[soperj]

The middle class is poor now.

[nickvec]

Yep. The middle class is quickly disappearing.

[sam_lowry_]

Poor tend to think of themselves as middle-class.

[metalliqaz]

so do the rich

note I used "rich" there, not "wealthy"

[linkregister]

For an environmentmaxxer, eliminating upper-middle class jobs is extremely effective, as this group consumes the lion's share of resources and bears the greatest impact on carbon emissions. Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.

Not endorsing this world view, just noting that the wealthiest 1% of people in the world (encompasses most US citizens) have an enormously outsized impact on climate.

[CobrastanJorji]

The "upper middle class" is not strictly defined, but they are pretty clearly the folks below the wealthiest 1%. You can't be in the middle without something on either side.

They certain consume far more than the poor, on account of having resources, but they also consume far less than the wealthiest 1%.

[linkregister]

You are almost certainly in the global 1% of the wealthy [1]. Compared to developing nations' residents, we have an order of magnitude greater impact on the environment.

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040

[Legend2440]

>Remember that the majority of industry is upstream of consumption.

People forget this. Oil companies may have dug up the oil, but they did so because we paid them to, so we could use the energy for good and useful things.

Climate change isn't 'evil billionaire companies are ruining the world', it's 'these things we did to improve our lives turn out to have side effects'.

[sam_lowry_]

The discussion is about the current generation of LLMs. It's not yet clear whether side-effects outweigh the advantages.

OTOH, I can already argue with numbers at hand that Bitcoin made the world poorer and worse off.

[Legend2440]

This is backwards. If it weren't for 'eliminating jobs' we'd both be peasant farmers right now. Automation has improved the standard of living and raised wages for everyone, rich and poor alike.

[snackerblues]

Ok, Claude.