@shirtshawaiian well, I *have* looked it up and Objectively speaking it's "anywhere near" and then some. The most unfavorable estimate for energy consumption from individual AI usage (the one commonly used by people when they talk about how bad using AI is for the environment) is that a single chatgpt query uses 2.6Wh of energy. Watching a 1-hour video on the internet uses 400 to 800Wh, depending on factors like video quality or what device you're watching it on. This means that the environmental impact of watching youtube (or netflix, or any other video streaming service) for an hour is roughly equivalent to using chatgpt 153 to 306 times.

And like. I am someone who doesn't use AI or fw the AI Industry, and spends a frankly unhealthy amount of my free time watching youtube. But I'm just pointing out how, once you put the energy consumption of individual AI usage in context of how it compares to the energy consumption of pretty much anything else we use the internet for, and notice how you never see statements like "I'd fw watching youtube if it wasn't so bad for the environment" from the same people, the way people on here talk about the environmental impact of AI starts looking less like a principled environmental stance and more like a post-hoc attempt to add moral legitimacy to a stance that actually has very little to do with environmental impacts.

[ID: tags. # like generally is being very generous here #i have thoughts on this i wanna come back and type abt it in tags #took me a few rereads to comprehend the post #bc Objectively ai is impacting the environment in a way different from youtube video games etc #like just replacing the text makes the past False #post* not past #like thats just misinformation at that point #then again i could be wrong i will be honest haven't researched the environmental impact of using youtube etc #but im pretty sure its not anywhere near what Al is doing #i'd fw Al if it weren't unethically sourced and also so bad for the environment /end ID]

does watching netflix, youtube, etc destroy freshwater sources and the local environment for Black and brown communities, or is the only metric "energy consumption"?

Considering that keeping any of those services running requires relying on the usage of datacenters whose carbon and water footprint had already been a cause of concern for years before generative AI was even invented, and that the practice of building datacenter infrastructure near impoverished black and brown communities definitely didn't get started with the invention of AI, the answer is: Yes, netflix, youtube etc. also destroy freshwater sources and the local environment for black and brown communities, and the fact that you're flippantly asking this question as a gotcha is further evidence of how people treat the environmental angle primarily as a way to add to the appearance of moral legitimacy over the AI Techbros™ and nothing else.

Sorry it's still not comparable. You need to be comparing similar things. One chatgpt query compared to one Google search. Except you probably have to ask chatgpt a few follow up questions because it's stupid and doesn't get it right the first time. Watching/uploading a video on YouTube compared to the creation of an AI video. A camera image or photoshop usage compared to an AI image.

Those are the numbers that matter. Because everyone's excuse to use AI is "well the internet uses a lot of power too and we use that so it's ok to use AI" and the reality is, just because we let the internet completely take over so that you literally cannot navigate the world without using it anymore, doesn't mean it's ok to do that AGAIN with something WORSE. In an ideal world, we'd all reject AI so hard the tech bros heads spin, and then we'd make rules banning bot accounts which every day account for more and more internet traffic, and then we'd work towards removing unnecessary forced internet usage like qr code menus and downloading apps to access concert tickets and bus maps and washer dryers, and keep trying to find ways to reverse the dependence we've developed.

At the end of the day while OP's original argument does have some merit, that line of thinking is being weaponized by losers as a "so really AI is fine and just a drop in the bucket anyway so why fight progress might as well use it"

I think comparing genai usage to how it stacks up internet usage habits that people are likely to actually have is not only a perfectly reasonable point of comparison, but also probably more useful to put its actual effects into perspective than comparing use cases unit-by-unit.

Like yeah, one chatgpt query is not directly comparable to watching or uploading a youtube video, but I don't see how illustrating the point "this extremely common internet habit you've probably spent hours doing in the past consumes more energy per hour than the number of queries you'd probably make if you spent the same entire hour using chatgpt" lacks merit as a point of comparison just because it's not one unit of the same use case being compared.

As for your last point, I've clarified several times that I do think AI usage as it currently exists is environmentally unsustainable, but so is the majority of things we use datacenter infrastructure for, and we're gonna have to collectively confront that fact sooner or later, but that 1) people convincing themselves that it's only AI that's exceptionally environmentally damaging is actively counterproductive to confronting that fact, and 2) that treating the environmental impact of any of these services as a marker of individual moral failure on the users' side is stupid and useless, and that includes AI users. My point is not "the entire internet has a really bad environmental impact so there are no problems with AI actually"

I’m confused, what is left…

Oh nvm lmao my brain. You right sis lol you is right

You really forgot your whole brain.

she read this post with her pussy