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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent.
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this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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90% of users aren't playing Overwatch.
And even if you are, that's a significant increase in power draw if you're spinning up a local LLM every time you start to type into your browser's address bar to do a search or something.
And, most importantly, you can choose when and if you want to play Overwatch. It didn't get installed without your knowledge and consent, and it doesn't run automatically.
Please tell me you aren't using a carbon footprint argument, you know. The ones Oil companies use to blame us, a population of people for climate change, instead of take action against them, and their corporate buddies. Who are a single large contributor, if not the entire problem in and of itself.
Even though we're probably very different in our beliefs I would agree that I don't want things using GPU without my consent. But I don't agree in justifying it or hatred of AI with carbon footprint rhetoric created by the companies who created this problem in the first place.
If everyone chose to play Overwatch, would that be a climate catastrophe, specifically?
I'm not sure if that would rise the level of 'catastrophe' but it would certainly draw a lot of power, which would be bad for the climate, since much of that power would come from burning fossil fuels.
Does the general existence of the video game industry deserve the same finger-wagging about environmental impact? Guy in the other subthread did the math for everyone downloading this one file, and refuses to extend that concern to all the people streaming movies.
I don't feel like using your video card is the worst thing most randos have done re: climate change. There's some uncomfortable accounting every time you eat a hamburger.
The power involved here is just not a big deal. Not unless we want to harangue people for a variety of other unremarkable habits.