The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

That's the thing I hate most about the whole AI frenzy: If it doesn't work, it's horrible, and if it does work, it's also horrible but for different reasons. The whole thing is a giant shit sandwich, and the only upside is for the few already-rich people serving it to us.

And regardless of whether or not it works - it's pumping giant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere which isn't a strictly local problem.

Any time a new technology makes people uncomfortable, someone pulls the CO₂ card. We've seen this with cryptocurrencies, electric cars, even the internet itself.

But curiously, the same people rarely question the CO₂ footprint of things like gaming, streaming, international sports, live concerts, political campaigns, or even large-scale scientific research. Methane-fueled rockets and the LHC don't exactly run on solar-powered calculators, yet they're culturally or intellectually "approved" forms of emission.

Yes, AI consumes energy. So does everything else we choose to value. If we're serious about CO₂, then we need consistent standards — not just selective outrage. Either we cut fairly across the board, or we focus on making electricity cleaner and more sustainable, instead of trying to shame specific technologies into nonexistence (which, by the way, never happens).

Nice whataboutism, except if you had read any of my other comments in this topic you'd know that I think all of those activities need to be taken into account.

We should be evaluating every activity on benefit versus detriment when it comes to CO2, and AI hasn't passed the "more benefit than harm" threshold for most people paying attention.

Perhaps you can help me here since we seem to be on the topic - how would you rate long term benefit versus long term climate damage of AI as it exists now?

Calling “whataboutism” is often just a way to derail those providing necessary context. It’s a rhetorical eject button — and more often than not, a sign someone isn’t arguing in good faith. But just on the off-chance you are one of "the good ones": Thank you for the clarification - and fair enough, I appreciate that you're applying the same standard broadly. That's more intellectually honest than most.

Now, do you also act on that in your private life? How beneficial, for instance, is your participation in online debate?

As for this phrase — "most people paying attention" — that’s weasel wording at its finest. It lets you both assert a consensus and discredit dissent in a single stroke. People who disagree? They’re just not paying attention, obviously. It’s a No True Scotsman — minus the kilts.

As for your question: evaluating AI's long-term benefit versus long-term climate cost is tricky because the landscape is evolving fast. But here’s a rough sketch of where I currently stand.

Short-term climate cost: Yes, significant - especially in training large models and the massive scaling of data centers. But this is neither unique to AI nor necessarily linear; newer models (like LoRA-based systems) and infrastructure optimizations already aim to cut energy use significantly.

Short-term benefit: Uneven. Entertainment chatbots? Low direct utility — though arguably high in quality-of-life value for many. Medical imaging, protein folding, logistics optimization, or disaster prediction? Substantial.

Long-term benefit: If AI continues to improve and democratize access to knowledge, diagnosis, decision-making, and resource allocation — its potential social, medical, and economic impact could be enormous. Not just "nice-to-have" but truly transformative for global efficiency and resilience.

Long-term harm: If AI remains centralized, opaque, and energy-inefficient, it could deepen inequalities, increase waste, and consolidate power dangerously.

But even if AI causes twice the CO₂-output it causes today, and would only be used for ludicrous reasons, it pales to the CO₂ pollution causes by a single day of average American warfighting ... while still - differently from war fighting - having a net-positive outcome to AI users' lives.

So to answer directly:

Right now, AI is somewhere near the threshold. It’s not obviously "worth it" for every observer, and that’s fine. But it’s also not a luxury toy — not anymore. It’s a volatile but serious tool, and whether it tips toward benefit or harm depends entirely on how we build, govern, and use it.

Let me turn the question around: What would you need to see — in outcomes, not marketing — to say: "Yes. That was worth the carbon."?

> Any time a new technology makes people uncomfortable, someone pulls the CO₂ card. We've seen this with cryptocurrencies, electric cars, even the internet itself.

I actually don't recall people "pulling the CO2 card" for the Internet. I do recall people doing it for cryptocurrency; and they were correct to do so. Even proof of stake is still incredibly energy inefficient at handling transactions. VISA handles thousands for what a proof-of-stake chain takes to handle a handful, and they do it faster to boot.

Electric cars don't contribute much CO2, so I don't recall much of that either. They do however have high particulate pollution amounts due to weighing considerably more (especially American-centric models like Teslas and the EV Hummer/F-150 Lightning) which aren't nothing to consider, and more to the point, electric cars do not solve the ancillary issues with infrastructure, like traffic congestion and cars effectively being a tax on everyone in a car-centric society who wants to be able to live. The fact that we all have to spend thousands every year on metal boxes we don't much care about just to be able to get around and have that box sit idle the vast majority of the time is ludicrously inefficient.

> But curiously, the same people rarely question the CO₂ footprint of things like gaming, streaming, international sports, live concerts, political campaigns, or even large-scale scientific research.

I have to vehemently disagree here. All scientific research, for starters, has to take environmental impact into account. Among other things that's why nobody in Vegas is watching nuclear tests anymore.

For another, people have long criticized numerous pop celebrities for being incredibly cavalier with the logistics for their concerts, and political figures have received similar criticism.

International sports meanwhile have gotten TONS of bad press for how awful it is that we have to move the stupid olympics around each year, both in the environmental sense, and the financial one since hosting practically renders a non-western country destitute overnight. Not even going into Qatar's controversial labor practices in building theirs.

> If we're serious about CO₂, then we need consistent standards — not just selective outrage. Either we cut fairly across the board, or we focus on making electricity cleaner and more sustainable, instead of trying to shame specific technologies into nonexistence (which, by the way, never happens).

No we don't. We can say, collectively, that the cost of powering gaming PC's, while notable, is something we're okay with, and conversely, powering plagiarism machines is not. Or, as people are so fond of saying here, let the market decide. Charge for AI services what they actually cost to provide plus profit, and see if the market will bear it. A lot of the interest right now is based on the fact that most of it is completely free, or being bundled with existing software, which is not a stable long-term solution.