[atemerev]

AI is just a tech like any other. Can be powered by CO2-neutral electricity like anything else. Otherwise, we'll have to protest against aluminum cans, airplanes, golf courts, lemon trees, and whatever else that uses water or electricity.

[NewJazz]

Plenty of people campaign against things like airplanes or golf courses. They might even be the same folks protesting AI usage! Imagine that!

[atemerev]

Well thanks, but I prefer to have airplanes, and maybe occasionally even golf courses. As for climate change - you'd need to protest against Chinese (and Western, but mostly Chinese) coal and gas power plants way way before than you protest against airplanes and golf courses. I don't see too many protesters holding signs like "stop Chinese coal plants". For some reason.

[NewJazz]

Maybe because their ability to influence coal power generation policy in China is much less than their ability to influence it in the US?

Or because Chinese AI has enabled a complete crackdown on dissent?

Hmm, imagine that!

[atemerev]

Well I see much less protests against gas and coal powered stations in the US than against, say, nuclear.

[ch71r22]

That's a false equivalence. AI is not the same as aluminum cans.

All technologies have political, social, ethical, and economic aspects, and not all technologies are the same. AI is not, in reality, powered by CO2-neutral electricity. As the article mentions, AI is the fastest-growing energy user in the world, so it probably merits a deeper look than aluminum cans.

[Legend2440]

AI is also an incredibly useful tool that could automate many industries, so it deserves some leeway because of the benefits it provides.

And while it is 'fastest-growing', it is small as an absolute share - around 0.2% of total world CO2 emissions.

[dminik]

So it can both outprice people as well as take their jobs? Well, leeway away.

[Legend2440]

The only reason we have the standard of living we do today is because of automation. I welcome more of it.

[dminik]

Only insofar as you were able to keep a job. If you lose your job to automation, and there are no more jobs left, what do you do? Where do you get the money to keep your standard of living?

[Legend2440]

Either we will invent new jobs, as we have always done in the past.

Or if truly all jobs can be done by machine, we retire and go live a life of fully automated luxury space communism.

[cuu508]

Incredibly useful for some definition of incredibly useful. What I see:

- I now regularly receive AI-written spam emails (marketing pitches, "vulnerability reports").

- I was receiving AI-written garbage quality pull requests. It got so annoying I closed pull requests on my project's repo.

- When I try to contact some company's customer support these days there's a good chance I will be fed slop by an agent posing as a customer support person, this is absolutely infuriating.

- When I search for information on the internet, for certain queries, 90% of the results is slop.

- AI crawlers are DDoSing websites.

- The already mentioned things – hardware getting more expensive, climate impact, unethically sourced training data.

[atemerev]

Aluminum production is one of the largest electricity consumers out there, much larger than AI.

[Legend2440]

True in fact. Aluminum manufacturing is responsible for roughly 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and if you add in metal manufacturing as a whole it comes up to 11%. Refining ore is very energy-intensive.

[TiredOfLife]

> AI is not the same as aluminum cans.

True. AI is actually useful.

[lptrap]

Aluminum cans had a distinct use. AI just invades a perfectly working industry that made Torvalds filthy rich and adds nothing- And he defends it because he is corporate now.

It is more like leaded fuel or DDT.

[atemerev]

Adds nothing? In what world are you living?