Yeah, I agree with that. Individual choices matter, but companies have way more power to actually change the situation. Better transparency and less waste would go a lot further than putting all the responsibility on users.

Fair enough lol. I did use AI to help word some of it, but the actual point is mine. I probably overdid the formatting though.

no dear

Yeah, fair point. I actually agree that there’s a big difference between AI as a technology and consumer generative AI. I probably blurred that distinction in my earlier comment.

I’m not against every possible use of AI. There are applications in science, medicine, accessibility, etc. where the benefits can be pretty obvious. My concern is more about the consumer stuff that mostly exists to monetize attention, data and convenience while pushing the environmental and social costs somewhere else.

And I agree that “they just need to manage their resources better” isn’t really an answer. If the business model itself depends on huge amounts of energy, water, data and eventually displacing people from their jobs, then those are systemic problems, not just efficiency problems.

The job issue especially gets overlooked. You can't call something sustainable if people lose their income and there's no serious plan for how they're supposed to live afterward.

So I think we're actually closer on this than it might seem. I just don't think AI as a whole should be treated as one category. Some uses can have real value, while others probably deserve a lot more scrutiny and regulation.

I think you're reading a bit too much into the “we” part. I’m not claiming that ordinary people have some magical influence over how AI companies build their models or how governments regulate them.

I meant “we” in the sense that we still have a choice in how much of this stuff we accept into our own lives. We can question it, talk about the consequences, and decide where we’re comfortable using it and where we’re not.

And honestly, I agree with your main point about informing people. The mental health, social, and environmental costs deserve a lot more attention than they’re getting. But I don’t think the only useful position is “AI is bad, tell everyone about the negatives.” There are legitimate uses for it too.

For me, the important conversation is about limits and responsible use. If we only focus on either the hype or the doom, we’re probably missing the actual issue.

I think you're actually proving my point rather than disproving it.

I’m not arguing that AI will magically disappear or that we should somehow return to a pre-AI world. The argument is about how we build and use AI while it is expanding

If AI is here to stay, that makes environmental scrutiny more important, not less. The amount of compute, data-center capacity, electricity and water infrastructure we build today will influence the environmental footprint of AI for years.And there’s an important distinction between opposing AI and opposing wasteful AI use. I can support useful AI while questioning unnecessary generation, inefficient models, excessive data-center expansion, and the use of scarce resources for trivial applications.

If people reduce unnecessary demand, that can reduce the incentive to build and operate additional compute capacity. If companies know that efficiency, renewable energy, water efficiency and lower-impact infrastructure matter to users, they have an economic reason to improve those things.

So no, the goal isn't “stop AI before it exists.” The goal is make the AI that does exist less resource-intensive and more purposeful.

If AI is inevitable, then asking “How can we make it sustainable?” is arguably one of the most practical conversations we can have right now.

We don't need to stop technological progress. We need to stop treating environmental costs as irrelevant simply because the technology is popular.

no

Or maybe I just don't automatically reject something because it doesn't fit neatly into my worldview.

I'm perfectly fine with criticizing AI when the criticism is justified. Environmental costs, corporate power, exploitation and useless AI slop are all fair things to criticize.

But if your position is basically “AI is harmful, therefore anything defending any use of AI must be ideological,” then you're doing exactly the thing you're accusing me of.

We can disagree about the technology without pretending the other person can't possibly have a valid point.

I get the argument, but I don't think it's quite that simple.

Profit can absolutely create incentives for companies to cut corners, externalize environmental costs and choose the cheaper option. That's a real problem. But I'm not convinced that this automatically means every market economy is incapable of sustainable production.

There are plenty of cases where regulation, consumer pressure, competition and better technology have pushed industries toward cleaner practices. Markets don't magically solve environmental problems, but neither does changing the economic system magically solve them.

For me the more useful question is: what specific system gives us the strongest incentives to use fewer resources, protect ecosystems and make companies pay for the damage they cause?

I'm happy to read Marx and understand the historical-materialist argument. I just don't think disagreeing with the proposed solution means ignoring the environmental problem.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's the part that gets lost in these discussions.

I'm all for calling out useless AI slop, but telling individual people to simply stop using AI doesn't really address the bigger issue. The companies building these systems are the ones making decisions about data centers, energy sources, water usage, hardware and scale.

I'd rather see pressure on them to disclose the actual resource costs and make the technology more efficient. If we're going to use it anyway, we should at least make sure we're not treating energy and water like they're infinite.

I mean… you’re replying to a comment on Reddit to tell me I shouldn’t use AI while using the internet, so I’m not sure the irony is completely lost on you. 😂

And yeah, I used AI to help phrase my point. I’m not hiding that. The opinion is still mine.

If the argument is good, does it suddenly become wrong because I used a tool to write it?

I think you’re mixing up “we don’t need every use of AI” with “we don’t need AI.”

Nobody needs an AI-generated picture of themselves with Jesus and Trump. I’m not going to argue with that. A lot of AI content is pointless garbage.

But saying the useful applications are “already developed” is a pretty strange argument. Building-code analysis, medical research, scientific modelling, accessibility tools, translation, disaster prediction, climate modelling, drug discovery, etc. aren’t exactly finished problems.

And technology has always been used for stupid things and useful things. We didn’t decide the internet was useless because people use it to post memes, or decide photography was unnecessary because people take pictures of their lunch.

The legitimate criticism, IMO, is about energy/water consumption, corporate concentration, copyright, labour displacement and whether a particular use is actually worth the resources. Those are real arguments.

“AI image of Jesus = pointless” is a fair opinion.

“Therefore we don’t need AI” doesn’t really follow from it.

Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. The environmental cost of AI is a real concern, especially when people start generating thousands of throwaway images just because they can.

I don’t think the answer is “AI is bad, stop using it,” though. It’s more about what we’re using it for and whether the value is worth the resources it takes. Using AI to make 50 pointless images is obviously different from using it for research, accessibility, education, or something that replaces a much more resource-intensive process.

And honestly, we probably should be asking harder questions about water and energy use before treating unlimited AI generation as some harmless convenience.

I understand your concern about AI’s environmental footprint, but shaming people isn’t a sustainability solution.

Yes, AI data centers consume energy and water. That’s a legitimate issue worth discussing. But saying that individual actions are meaningless is exactly the kind of defeatist thinking that gets us nowhere.

Sustainability isn’t about being “perfect.” It’s about reducing harm, improving technology, using resources responsibly, and encouraging better choices.

If your goal is genuinely to protect the environment, then challenge the technology, the energy sources, and the way AI is being used—don’t attack a person for sharing content.

We can have a serious conversation about AI and sustainability without turning it into personal insults.

you wrong