Seems like over the last week everyone in this community is talking about how the real reason AI is bad is because it is destroying the planet. Does this even matter though? AI is bad for so many other reasons. It’s destroying art. It’s destroying Hollywood. It’s removing jobs from the workforce, and it’s concentrating power and money. And ontop of all that, it produces only soulless slop.
We have a good front line there. We can rally around those points.
When you try to bring questionable objections like power an water usage onto the table, it just makes our front-line look weaker, since opponents can easily pick these arguments apart. “Sure it’s a lot of power, but this will lead to nuclear power, which is a net win environmentally.” Or, “a single AI query consumes 2 litres of water?? You mean milliliters, and it’s just going to rain from the sky, and nobody is putting big datacentres in California anyway, and that’s only 1/6th of the amount of water it takes to grow an almond.” Or “yeah, google alone uses as much power as the entire city of Toronto, but Toronto uses green power; so what?”
And yes, we all have counter-arguments to these – “how to deal with nuclear waste?” and “only a fraction of rain water is collected as potable water” and “almonds may take more water than AI but almonds are still bad” and “there are some datacentres in California” and so on but the deeper these arguments go the harder it is to maintain a stable front.
Can we all just admit that this environmental angle is a red herring? I could almost believe it’s a psy-op intended to discredit the anti-AI crowd. Even if the environmental impact of AI is bad, I still think it’s worse for our cause to focus on the environmental aspect than the other aspects. The world has already decided it doesn’t care about the environment.
The problem with this idea is that the environmental impact is quantifiable. We can talk about it with hard numbers.
The things you’ve identified as a hard front line for us all to rally around have “easy” counters too. Plus there’s very little “hard numbers” or “indisputable fact” behind them to rally around.
For the record, I agree with your points. I agree with these dangers. I agree that these should be easy points to rally around.
But so should the environmental impact, and it isn’t. So you should probably expect that your personal “rally points” won’t work for absolutely everyone else either.
So, the devil’s advocate/steelmanning/whatever you want to call it. Here are some example counterpoints to what you seem to think is inarguable and strong enough to stand on its own. I don’t agree with this shit, I’m not looking to debate club this shit, I’m just trying to demonstrate that these points are just as “assailable” as the ecological/environmental impact.
It’s destroying art.
How in the hell do you even begin to quantify this? Also, the general counter that it expands the availability of expression through art to those without formal training (🤮, but it is a point they keep leaning on)
It’s destroying Hollywood.
A lot of people would cheer for that. Hollywood’s corporate bullshit and overwhelming impact on societal viewpoints has had horrible effects on the world for fucking decades. It is not some bastion of creative freedom and expression, and hasn’t been for ages.
It’s removing jobs from the workforce
Do we actually have numbers around that? I see it being used as an excuse plenty, but the economy was in the/headed for the shitter before the current AI fad. The suits are going to use whatever excuses are convenient for their already madr decisions anyway.
it’s concentrating power and money.
See: almost every bit of progress forever, especially the last few decades. No ethical consumption under capitalism, etc etc.
it produces only soulless slop.
When we have people using it as therapy, clearly some population is able to connect with it in a way that they feel a personal (or soul-having) connection with (🤮). That’s crazy as shit and terrifying, but again it is example that there is counterpoint to this fact. Also, arguments of meaning being found/made by the consumer of a piece rather than the creator.
Look, this is just a lot of words for me to say that I feel like your post against this particular bugbear could also be made about most of the points you feel are hard solid facts.
You make good points, but we should probably be steering away from more internal division.
I don’t know of anyone out there who opposes AI for purely environmental reasons but approves of its societal impact. I could be wrong. But I think a lot of us don’t really believe that it has much impact on the environment. The numbers are quantifiable – and it’s pretty small compared to other things. It could become a problem with exponential growth, but like, is it that big a deal if we end up with nuclear power? And all the water being used as coolant comes from, say, Virginia, where as I understand it they have no dearth of water and that’s where most of the datacentres are being built?
I’m not saying that the it being soulless slop is a hard fact. I’m saying the whole fuck-ai crowd agrees on this, as do I. But I don’t think we all agree about the environmental impact being a serious concern (since the evidence for this is, in my view, questionable; and I suspect this is the opinion of others here as well.)
Do you think it’s more important to make the world care about AI or to make the world care about the environment?
The “front line” is irrelevant when either one is an existential threat on its own. You can’t just redirect your forces to one side. You argue we should make a strong “front line” in front of AI, while we are being overrun from behind by the environment. It doesn’t matter that people don’t care about it, it’s still going to kill us.
Yeah I agree that AI is going to kill us, but I don’t think it’s the environmental impact from AI that is a serious concern. Google’s numbers are that their water usage is equivalent to 55 golf courses (there are nearly 1k golf courses in california) – that’s their whole company, not just AI. And as for power usage, they’re about equal to the city of Toronto – that’s a lot, but they’re already building nuclear power plants, so that seems like a net positive for environmental impact to me. We won’t need to burn coal if they are selling bone-aching ad-driven nuclear power as a side hustle on their AI business. (I’m speculating they would do this, but it seems like something they’d do.) I hate ads but I’ll take ads over fossil fuels.
I most likely hate AI as much as you do, so you know, I am not stubbornly resistant to the idea that they might be bad for the environment. This is just what my research indicates, that they’re not a serious environmental concern. You can change my mind if you have a different perspective – I mean this earnestly. I’m all ears.
My point is, even without AI, if all AI were banned tomorrow, all the data centers shut down, what we’re doing to the environment WITHOUT AI is most likely going to kill us all and render the Earth uninhabitable, possibly within 100-200 years. It is, as far as science’s ability to predict, the end of the human race and almost all life on Earth. People thinking we’ll adapt, or that we can just go live on other planets or space stations after this one is destroyed, or that we’ll magically find out a solution and have the technological means to fix it, are all frankly delusional and their wishful thinking is unsupported by current climate science and space science.
My point is we can’t stop fighting for the environment and throw it under the bus just because AI is the new threat of the day. If you truly believe “the world has already decided it doesn’t care about the environment” then there’s no point fighting AI or fighting for anything anymore, because if that is the case then we’re straight up doomed, humanity is cooked (literally), the game is over, might as well have fun on the way out.
My point is that if you intend on humanity having any future, both these things need to be fought. You can’t claim defeat on one and still fight the other, there’s no point and you’re wasting your time because the other will get you. They’re both utterly existential threats, and either one is as completely fatal as the other.
My point is we can’t stop fighting for the environment and throw it under the bus just because AI is the new threat of the day.
100% agree. However, I don’t think AI is a serious environmental threat. It’s a threat for other reasons.
I totally agree and time is probably running out, to my disappointment everything is heading towards a rather sad outcome and this is inevitable as people instead of acting strategically start to panic and openly attack or just give up prematurely which will ultimately end in total defeat.
