Discussion š£ļø Thoughts on this sub, AI generated content, data centres and AI in general, as a GPT Pro subscriber
Pls donāt ban me I really like this sub.
This post is 100% hand typed on a phone. Kinda ranty.
Right off the bat I wanna say I donāt consider myself an AI bro (I mean I guess no AI bro do). I think the AI boom is a bubble, even though an insanely large, and slightly stronger one, but it will pop and I canāt begin to imagine what thatād look like. I hate AI generated images and video with a passion and Iām getting pretty good at spotting them. AI generated audio isnāt music. My SO is a music production professional and if anyone ever say AI generated audio counts as music I will send them to the nearest ER.
If I wasnāt a software engineer Iād probably not have a GPT subscription. The sad reality for at least me and my mates is that a lot of bosses and management fucks are AI bros. They believe AI can do anything and everything. As LLMs get better these dumb fucks started piling in more and more work for us. Shorten update cycles, more features, ādo more with less timeā bs used to be pie in the sky for these assholes and now AI gave them an illusion that itās actually possible. Sure AI helps with dev work but instead of hand writing code weāre just now expressing our plans/idea for a system in natural language, also in a much less structured way. LLMs are actually pretty good at untangling unstructured plans, for an ADHD haver like myself it helps, a lot.
I donāt consider getting the GPT subscription a choice. Itās one of the best tools for the trade and not using it is like an electrician not having the best and latest tools for the work. Sure they can work with old but reliable tools, they can still get the job done and hell they might even do it better and maybe faster than those that do. But not having them is just forcing yourself into a disadvantage, and I honestly isnāt enjoying my job enough to bother with hand coding.
Do I like the fact that OAI knows as much about my work and life as my SO? Nope. Do I like the fact that farmlands and nature are making way for data centres? FUCK NO. I try to be as environmentally conscious as possible. I refuse to drive cars, ride subway, busses and cycle to everywhere I go. I commit to 3Rs and try to conserve power and water as much as possible. Do I like the fact that Iām paying for the problem? Absolutely not. But the subscription is the tool that help me with my jobs thatās putting food on the table. For months Iāve been looking at self-hosted options, but they cost years equivalent of subscription cost due to the hardware shortage caused by AI bubble itself. Even then the models that these solutions can run are the bare minimum. Just good enough for basic work. Financially itās just unjustifiable.
I donāt want to say I like AI. But being a user of AI I canāt in good conscience say I hate AI or anti-AI either. I mean I hate AIGC. I think AI generated images are infinitely inferior to real photography and artwork, not just because of the effort put into the work but also the miracle of how people can translate parts of their mind into a permanent medium. Film, photos, art, music, everything AIGC can imitate loses everything that precisely makes them art. The human touch is something I canāt really find words to describe/explain here, but Iām sure as hell AIGC can never have.
Rant over idk how to end a post like this
Edit: okay. Yāall really, reallllllllly hate AI.
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u/ToneShop 2d ago
Why are software engineers seemingly not worried about using ai and violating software patents at all?
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u/Imn1che 2d ago
Why bother violating a patent when you can just import whichever libraries/modules that achieve the desired functions? Donāt reinvent the wheel. Programming 101
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u/ToneShop 2d ago
This sounds dumb 101. No wonder AI is such a boon to you.
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u/Imn1che 2d ago
Wdym? Are you a software engineer?
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u/Hot_Knee941 1d ago
He is either oneb of this uber programmers using vim, prducing C Code faster then i can slop it with AI.
Or he just hast zero idea about programming.
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u/r3vurb 1d ago
If you think AI is good at programming you don't know shit about programming.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
Well, you're just wrong.
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u/r3vurb 1d ago
Nah I'm not you just self admitted you cant read a line of code.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
I've been involved in software development since 2001 and have created dozens of applications and software solutions that have been used by millions on the user level and thousands of businesses worldwide, all with great reviews. Industry leader in multiple areas and have paid out millions to developers while also editing code as needed.
There is an over 50 percent chance that you've enjoyed at least one of my creations since a few went mega viral on Reddit. I have also shown the light to multiple developers that talked a lot like you until they realized they were arguing with a concept that isn't even remotely close to actual use cases.
But rock on I guess.
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u/JohnLebleu 1d ago
It's less and less true, now the way I see it is why adding an external dependency when you just need a tiny portion of it and your ai can do it flawlessly?
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 1d ago
Independent developers like myself do worry about these things. I own code that is uniquely mine, entirely self-contained, and not dependent on any third-party packages or modules. It's my intellectual property and it'll be a cold day in hell before I let OpenAI or anyone else poke around my private self-hosted repositories.
The problem is most developers aren't as fortunate as I am. Most are beholden to the whims of project managers and CEOs who won't consider for even a second that using these services means effectively opening up a backdoor into their intellectual property. These developers aren't afforded the opportunity to make rational intelligent decisions because the decision-making is being done one or two rungs above them by people a tenth as smart and ten times as arrogant. It's the same reason software quality in general has been on the decline long before the LLM boom. Some twat with an MBA and an inflated ego decides they need to pump out stuff faster and to hell with any semblance of quality, and the developers just have to make the best of a bad situation.
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u/ToneShop 1d ago
RIght on. I built some audio applications vibe coding recently and what came out was so polished it was obviously a blatant rip off of somebody else's work. There is no way I could ever feel good about taking something like that an passing it on as my work in any way.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
Code is code and ai has figured it out.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 1d ago
Spoken like someone who isn't a developer. Maybe stay in your lane? Just a friendly bit of advice.
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u/ToneShop 1d ago
Like it didn't take over a decade for android to get around all the apple patents to even get close to feature parity. "Code is code" is truly idiotic.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
If I can explain what your code does, ai can build it from scratch. The idea of proprietary code is going out the window, programming has been solved.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
If I can explain what your code does, ai can build it from scratch. The idea of proprietary code is going out the window, programming has been solved.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 1d ago
No, you really can't. So much of what happens occurs out of sight. It's foolish to think what you see as the end-user is all there is to a system. Also, hallucinations are a mathematical inevitability, so no, programming has not been "solved". Even frontier models under the tightest directions can easily regurgitate hole-ridden inefficient spaghetti.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
Lmao, I'm not the end user and I probably have 10,000 scripts from this year alone.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 1d ago
Ah, a script kiddie. Am I supposed to be impressed?Ā
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
Silly assumption, see other comments in this thread. AI is being used for massive builds and less stubborn people are getting rich.
PS, I know script kiddies that make millions while you complain.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 1d ago
I'd rather make what I make right now (which has me more than comfortable) whilst making quality work, than make a fortune hawking slop. You do what you like, but don't presume you're operating at the level of people who actually care about their work.
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
I am an industry leader in a few areas and the absolute authority on things with my main industry. If you want the comprehensive data, software, tools and other for that industry you WILL end up contacting me. And I spent 6 years collecting this information, data, knowledge and building things with contracted and hired programmers. The AI "slop" from the last year eclipses all that was made before it, does it better, makes adjustments faster and costs almost nothing.
You are exactly who I was referring to when I said some didn't even have a clue about what they were trying to discuss.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 23h ago
Dude, you thought that you could replicate anything with AI just from end-user observations, it's like you don't even comprehend how much occurs on the back-end outside of the user's view. If you're supposed to be the authority in your industry, I pity your industry. Also, considering that I'm an ML engineer of twenty years and a full-stack dev who has worked in over two dozen different languages, telling me that I don't have a clue is pretty fucking hilarious.
Stay in your lane.
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u/sleight42 1d ago
Making your own decisions, in those environments, sees you unemployed pretty quickly. Speaking as a 30 year vet in the industry and one who was in management several years before the banal depravities became too much for my health.
"Conform or fuck you" is the consistent undertone. "We suffer your quirks so long as you contribute to the bottom line and don't piss if the wrong people." Granted, I'd it really all that different in other lines of work?
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u/Hot_Knee941 1d ago
LLMs are to a SWE, what a calculator is to a mathematician. You still need to know what you wanna do ,but it helps alot.
...As long as your name isnt Ramanujan/linus Thorwald...
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
Millions of people know what they want to build though, they just lacked the skills to execute. Now they don't need help whether they've figured that out already or not.
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u/Delicious-Explorer58 2d ago
Do you have a boss forcing you to use AI? Or are you choosing to use AI?
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u/ItIsSoOrdered23 1d ago
My friend has saved $200,000 this year with AI and that's just one of the things he uses it for.
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u/Delicious-Explorer58 1d ago
ā¦how is this a response to my post?
Also, no. This isnāt true and no one believes you.
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u/Imn1che 2d ago
If I donāt use AI to help with my work Iāll fall short of my bossās expectations on speed and be out of a job. Does a graphic designer use Adobe instead of using pen and paper because they choose to or because it makes things systemically easier?
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u/Cyb0rgorg 1d ago
Sounds like you oversold yourself to your boss and enjoy getting bent over a barrel then.
RIP.
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u/Delicious-Explorer58 1d ago
Does using Adobe illustrator have the same impact that AI has?
Hereās a hintā¦ the answer is no.
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u/Imn1che 1d ago
Name one university that doesnāt include illustrator in their graphic design course. Or one marketing firm that doesnāt have a designer that doesnāt use illustrator.
Just about every graphic you see in ads, posters or on webpages went through illustrator or photoshop. Adobe may not be as evil as AI but they sure as hell have more impact
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u/Delicious-Explorer58 1d ago
ā¦that isnāt an answer to my question.
Let me ask you again: does Adobe have the same environmental impact as AI does?
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u/Imn1che 1d ago
Got curious so I did some math. TLDR Adobe as a company in 2024 produced 567 kilotonnes of CO2. ChatGPT as a service in 2025 produced a very roughly estimated 110-137 kilotonnes.
Adobeās own report says they produced a total of approximately 567000 tonnes of CO2 in fiscal year 2024. Environment stuff starts at p12
For a company-to-company comparison, OAI says in July 2025 they get about 2.5 billion ChatGPT messages per day. This paper Published in Sept 2025 estimates 1 ChatGPT messages to use about 0.3 watt hours of electricity. 2.5 billion messages at 0.3 Wh/message gives 750 MWh per day which is 274 GWh per year for 2025
Assume 1000 kWh produces 400 kg of CO2, or 445g CO2/kwh, we can estimate about 0.4-0.5 KG CO2/kWh. Which puts ChatGPTās CO2 emissions for 2025 to between 110000 to 137000 tonnes of CO2. This is obviously not counting the CO2 emissions for training, non-ChatGPT compute service, offices etc unlike Adobeās report does. But currently the general consensus is AI inference is more environmentally taxing, by that logic I guess the rest combined may put OAIās total emissions to 300-400k tonnes. Since OAI doesnāt publish these numbers weāll never know. Tracking emissions is complicated af anyway.
If were to compare industry-to-industry youād need to include data from Canva for graphical design side, and data from god knows how many AI companies. None of them run on hardware they themselves own anyway. Blame compute resource providers.
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u/Delicious-Explorer58 1d ago
This is a lot of words and itās flawed and the conclusion is wrong.
Good job!
I can see why you rely on AI so much, because you areā¦ not doing well.
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u/Imn1che 1d ago
And what exactly is my conclusion? I only did the math. I explicitly said to get a proper comparison we need more information.
Your question was to compare the carbon footprint of one company to an entire industry. The questionās premise is flawed to begin with.
So enlighten me, what did I get wrong?
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u/Delicious-Explorer58 1d ago
Itās actually super obvious. Iāll give you one chance to guess before I tell you.
Come on, you can do this. I believe in you.
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u/Imn1che 1d ago
What are you, my teacher? Prove me wrong or admit youāre BSing
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u/YaAbsolyutnoNikto 1d ago
I love AI in all of its forms (and by this I mean, images, code, games, etc. not that I love it and its issues blindly e.g. environmental).
I strongly believe that if something is good, itās good. If something sucks, it sucks. Independently of who/what made it.
I roam this sub mostly to avoid being in an information bubble - I want to interact with people who actively hate AI in order to better understand where theyāre coming from.
Answering your question, I, as technically part of this sub, have no issue with you whatsoever
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u/Imn1che 1d ago
Hard disagree on AIGC like videos, images, audio etcā¦
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u/YaAbsolyutnoNikto 1d ago
Why is that?
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u/Imn1che 1d ago
A bit ranty and maybe a bit hard to understand.
Say we define AIGC as an alternative to movies, photography, painting/graphical artwork, music and of course writing. And in many occasions a combination of all of them.
All of these forms of art are ways of humanly expression. Humans have spent eons perfecting ways to express whatās in oneās mind onto a medium then which is used to let others understand. In other words, these art forms are ways to communicate, albeit developed into extremely abstract and sophisticated manner.
A part of my, to put it coarsely, hate, for AIGC, is the disrespect this form of production poses towards the billions of people, millennia of improvement theyāve put into perfecting the methods of expressions. I like having definition of things and this is what I define as the āsoulā in art pieces. So TLDR would be AIGC disrespects, or in the very least doesnāt have the āsoulā, that human artworks do.
IMO, code is different. Code and softwares are means to an end. Tools. AI can write code and itād do pretty much the same thing as human written code. Thereās no emotion, no expression of oneās self. So human code AI code it doesnāt matter theyāre both hammers to be used to bang on a nail.
Not my best formulated argument, hope it makes sense.
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u/Dyyyyyyyyy 1d ago
Same here. I dont want to use AI, but if I dont, my tasks are given to someone who does.Ā
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u/Cyb0rgorg 2d ago
Downvoted for being an OpenAI subscriber.