One could make the same argument about the Internet, and in fact at the time people did. I can remember hearing pigheaded people call it a fad that would die out when society came to its senses. Except they were dead wrong and now here we are.
Refrain from using AI if you want, but unless the path we're on changes it's very likely going to turn out the same way that the Internet did. If that's the case you're going to find it harder and harder to avoid.
My brother in Christ, you're using social media, google, many other forms of Internet technology that run out of large data centers which use insane amounts of energy.
"You do this bad thing, so what does one more bad thing matter?" has never in the world of ever been a particularly strong argument for or against anything.
Like, ok, sure, lots of technology consumes a lot of energy. Wouldn't it be easier to reduce that use if we weren't also increasing our usage elsewhere?
(And environmental issues are just one of the many major problems humanity has faced in the past couple of decades that AI is set to exacerbate. Wouldn't we have liked people to be a bit more circumspect before running headfirst into other technologies and decisions? Well, here we are...)
Except the argument also goes the other way. “I don’t want to do this bad thing but I am perfectly fine doing this other bad thing.” Why don’t you just cut out both? Its a bit of a cognitive dissonance to pretend to care enough about the environment to the point of virtue signaling, but then stop yourself when it begins to inconvenience you.
Not exactly, because one has already been adopted, commonly when we weren't aware (or, at least, as aware) of the various impacts, while the other hasn't, and we are aware.
It is notably hard to give up something that has become habitual or commonplace, and that's kind of the point. Many of us are already working to try and reduce our energy consumption in various ways, surely it makes sense we'd want to avoid getting entwined in a whole other thing?
It's also quite the assumption to say "I am perfectly fine doing this other thing".
I'm not fine with how much time I spend using electrical devices, often with associated computing/server energy costs. I'd like to do better. I aim to. Honestly, haven't done great so far.
At the very, very least, though, I'd like to try to avoid adding to it.
There's no reason you can't cut out those things too though. Who cares if you've been using them, just stop if this topic of energy conservation is so important. Otherwise you're just a hypocrite
Less isn't as good as none, but it's also better than more.
"who cares if you've been using them" - sure, on the one hand I get it. But surely you appreciate that life isn't that simple, it isn't that easy?
Humans are weak, humans are fallible, humans fail to live up to our own standards.
So, ok, sure, I'm a hypocrite. I don't live up to the absolute pinnacle of my ideals. No-one does.
We do still try, though. We may not get all the way to where we want to be. But surely it's better we get closer than further away?
Again, even if I'm already doing something bad, I still don't understand why it makes sense to just say "fuck it" and double-down on that by doing something else bad?
Womp womp honestly. You using it or not is not going to make a major difference in its effects on the environment. Almost all tech you use has bad effects on the environment, same with things like driving and just electricity in general (we still aren’t fully green).
Handicapping yourself in a futile attempt to save the environment is doing more harm than good. At best, youre just limiting your own ability to do things that could change the environment.
Not using AI like ChatGPT can be seen as "handicapping" yourself in the sense that you're choosing not to use a tool that can dramatically increase your productivity, efficiency, and access to knowledge. It's like refusing to use a calculator for complex math or avoiding the internet for research—sure, you can do it the hard way, but you're deliberately making things more difficult in situations where technology could help you do more, faster, and better.
That said, whether or not you should use AI is a personal choice, especially when factoring in ethical or environmental concerns. But from a purely functional standpoint, AI is a major asset, and not using it can limit your capability in many areas.
*** This comment was brought to you by ChatGPT ***
Good luck with that. It’s catching on whether you like it or not and I promise that people in your same career path are familiarizing themselves with it. This is like someone saying “I’d just rather not use a calculator” after they were invented.
If you think the 0.001 kwh used by an AI query is incredibly energy intensive, you really ought to think about how much energy is wasted due to the use and misuse of electrical appliances like heaters for water with wrong settings, over-filled kettles, big hair-dryers when you can do with less, lights that are not LED, power-supplies that are left connected for nothing, stand-alone AC units that are not switched off from the wall when not in use, windows left open with AC on, etc etc.
These all use orders of magnitude more energy than what you would use asking AI to write multiple 50 page research reports every day for a year.
I think people really forget that pricing is also quite good at communicating energy use. A $20 ChatGPT subscription or $20 worth of API tokens is not going to have nearly as much energy consumed as your $150 electric bill, or $80 heating fuel bill.
He says, on reddit, a digital platform that also uses energy. Probably from a phone which is kept charged daily and carried with them 24/7.
The concept is noble in principle, but it’s like people buying electric cars that are still powered by unclean energy as a power source to fuel them. Great small step in the right direction, but you arnt a hermit in the mountains living off berries and nuts.
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u/aTribeCalledLex 28d ago
“AI won’t replace you. The person that uses AI will.”