this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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You do know that AI is (if not already) fast approaching a leading CAUSE of climate change?
Yes, I know it has an impact, though not as big as you make it seem, (and so is everything). When you divide it to calculate the personal impact, it is way lower than a huge number of other stuff. I agree that we need to address climate change, but I don't believe this should be the main focus.
Also, every individual should be able to choose how they spend their "carbon allocation", personally, I don't eat meat, I never take the plane, I don't own a car and do everything using bike and trains, my house is carbon negative (building it actually had a negative carbon footprint) which was a huge sacrifice I had to compromise getting a way way smaller house for way more debt than if I had built a cheap standard house (and of course I'm in debt for decade). LLM makes me more efficient at my job so I think I can afford the carbon footprint that comes with it which, as I said, is not as big per individual as you make it appear.
I understand that hanging on Lemmy makes it seem like AI/LLM is the worse thing that has happened to mankind, but it's really not, there are lots of issues with it, sure. But there is worse stuff to worry about.
I want to finish by saying that I DO support your action to minimize its impact, what you are doing overall is important and necessary, but I think you should revise the individual argument you put up against LLM, cause this one is not great.
While the environmental impact of AI is absolutely horrible I don't think it is even in the top 10 of industries. Meat production, Transportation by cars, Airplanes, plastic products etc are all much worse.
The problem is AI is absolutely useless for how big its climate impact is. The other industries at least provide value.
Your opinion isn't invalid, it's just incomplete
https://www.allaboutai.com/resources/ai-statistics/ai-environment/
Combining your source with this https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Well i wasnt wrong in the assumption that AI is absolutely dwarfed by other industries, agriculture and energy production, but it is in the top 10, on the same level as aviation (so like place 9)