Comment by jeffbee
8 hours ago
> Energy/Resources: do I even have to provide evidence that LLMs waste enormous amounts of electricity, even leading to scarcity in some local markets, and even coal power plants being turned back on?
Yes, if you want to be taken seriously, then your claims about this should be based in evidence and contextualized amid the overall energy market.
Exactly. Energy/resources line is by far the most silly out of anti-AI arguments being regurgitated by people.
Electricity is fungible. Before decrying that LLMs are using it to provide the world (probably) more utility on the net per watt than your own work output (which segues into an actual problem of labor as source of personal and social worth), contrast it with what we'd otherwise be doing with that same electricity - e.g. more sportsball streams in higher definitions, more cryptocurrency shams, more Juiceros and other borderline-fraudlent startups in physical space (cheap energy means cheaper manufacturing, which means materials become more like bits, and it's easier to pull the same crap in the real world, as companies now pull in virtual).
Point being, if you want to judge use of electricity on AI, judge it in context of the whole human condition - of everything else we'd otherwise be using it on.