this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Right? Why aren't leftists embracing the environmentally-destructive mechanism the techbro billionaires are using to simultaneously enrich themselves and enslave humanity?
It's only as environmentally destructive as the environment in which it operates, if you train your AI in France using Nuclear power it is effectively carbon free training is it not? The biggest limitation on the carbon use of AI appears to be entirely limited to how fast or slow the USA transitions to renewable energy.
If you run your LLM locally on a solar powered device is that not carbon free inference?
enrich themselves? I thought AI was a massive money losing adventure bubble that was about to pop?
enslave humanity? I thought AI was slop not worth of even being used because apparently all it does is hallucinate answers?
You do realize, don't you, that there is more to hurting the environment than just energy use, right?
Water use is through the roof, and water is kind of useful for making food and keeping humans alive: https://theconversation.com/data-centers-consume-massive-amounts-of-water-companies-rarely-tell-the-public-exactly-how-much-262901
Construction uses concrete and steel and other natural resources, as well as using gas to run the heavy equipment to build.
Large centers take away natural land that could be used as carbon sinks but instead are concrete heat traps.
There are more hits to the environment, but I'm not going to lay them out. Just looking at one source of possible energy use, which they aren't actually using since many are in the US and not in France, is stupid.
Also, to your pseudo-intellectual "gotcha" points about thinking AI was a waste so how can billionaires profit: just because it doesn't make money in the long run doesn't mean billionaires aren't making a TON of money in the short run. Long term losses will be born by the public and not private money-holders. And even if AI is mostly useless, billionaires will still lay off employees only to learn that AI was in fact worthless, but the people who lost their jobs will fall further into debt and will be slaves to that debt.
You do understand, that AI doesn't need to be run in data centers. Much less water cooled ones right? Don't make the mistake of thinking that anyone showing an interest in AI is for or defending the broligarchs. In fact I would wager that most of them are just as against them if not more so than even you.
You as a complete novice could download Jan or comfy ui and run both on your PC. I would never use any of them as final output, or ever trust them. But I will say that feeding a list of data into a model in Jan and having it format and annotate it, barring necessary corrections can be useful. Not a replacement for people, but a useful tool.
No one but the oligarchs and their lackey's want to see it implemented as they are currently implementing it.
Distracting hypothetical - ie a red herring. The question is not is it conceivable to build AI in a way that isn't inherently environmentally destructive. It isn't being done. Not at scale, nor is there any plans to do so. There's no intention to reduce reliance on fossil fuels powering datacenters. There isn't even a suggestion of intention to give lip-service to the problem so fantasizing about it serves no purpose.
These are not mutually exclusive. The golden parachute problem still exists.
That it is worthless doesn't make it not psychologically destructive. People want things that destroy their lives all the time. Drugs, gambling, AI sex bots, etc. We've known for a very long time there's ways to hijack people's behaviour and make them behave in ways that violate their values and good sense. The fact that AI slop directly engages in hacking our brains, and filling our heads with junk data and hallucinations is not internally inconsistent.
There is here in Australia
https://reneweconomy.com.au/byo-renewables-new-national-principles-set-bar-for-data-centre-energy-and-water-use/
There is in Europe:
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-ai
It's simple economics, renewables are the cheapest form of electricity so they want it, America != the world
But how does being fed useful information, coding for us, providing interesting stories, a caring AI boyfriend or girlfriend lead us to enslavement? This is like suggesting we're slaves to McDonalds, it's feels less like slavery and more like hyperbole, especially with the existence of open source models...
Speaking of open source models, happy release day of mistral medium!
https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-Medium-3.5-128B
It's from Mistral a french company!
https://mistral.ai/news/our-contribution-to-a-global-environmental-standard-for-ai
Maybe there is a suggestion ?
Misdirection. You're comparing the equivalent of small local retailers with a multinational mega-corps the scale of Amazon. Such projects are a rounding error in the wider market.
The "Usefulness" of this information is questionable at best, and wildly incorrect all too often. "Coding for us" is a double edged sword in that it makes an appealing shortcut, while also leaving us at extreme risk when it makes what is all too often a critical mistake we don't understand, a problem which will only get worse as we gradually forget how to code for ourselves. Also, it's not a "Caring AI Boyfriend" its a simulacrum of human interaction that does not care about anyone or anything. It's a Lovecraftian horror dressed up as a relationship. A perversion that treats humanity as a disease to be treated into remission.
*promotional consideration for this post was provided by Palantir.
what is promotional consideration?
I'm calling you a shill
Even if they were a shill I don't understand what you imagine achieving by telling them that as if they don't already know.
Or maybe you're not actually even talking to them but rather just performing to your imagined audience.
ah, next time if you could be a bit clearer or ideally not respond at all that’d be great
i prefer people who can argue not just throw shit
you lost all your remaining credibility when you were fantasizing about the "Caring AI Girlfriend/Boyfriend"
What, chat gpt didnt know those words either?