I don't like this meme.

There's a million things to hate corporate AI over, but resource use is the most... mixed one.

Stuff like Cerebras API, anyone hosting Deepseek v4, self hosting Qwen 27B or RAG models or whatever all use less energy than your computer will use as you read this comment.

It's AI Bros like Altman and Musk trying to gaslight the world into thinking we need to give them trillions of dollars. Utilitarian machine learning does not need a lot of infrastructure; a lot can run locally, anyway. But they don't want that for the same reason Reddit bans any mention of Lemmy, or you have to subscribe for printer ink.

...And that aside, much of the waste comes from:

• FOMO. Impatience. That this server farm must be built right now, not a month from now. The urban locations, gas turbines, evaporative cooling; it's all used only because it's the absolute quickest to set up, not because it's economical long term. It's all bubble play.

• Being stuck on Nvidia (who are pushing voltages too high). Chinese hosting (using actual ASICs now, which they developed because of the sanctions) is proof it doesn't have to be that way. Cerebras WSLs, bitnet and binary models, NPUs, they're all proof none of this has to eat so much power.

• Sheer development inefficiency in the US. The amount AI dev houses here burn to make meager products is... shameful, really. I've heard rumors they give GPU farms busywork just to give the appearance of being useful, and their development is way more dysfunctional than you'd think.

I could go on and on, but basically resource usage is a distraction from all the things that actually suck about corporate AI. Like the centralization. The rent-seeking. The safety theatre to squash competition. The crypto-like scamming and FOMO. Blatant immunity to IP law if rich enough. The clinically insane financial and corpo fervor. The "magic lamp" packaging and presentation, the dark patterns in the UI, the sycophancy for engagement, the shoving it down everyone's throat, there's a million reasons to complain. But I swear, the AI Bros are inflaming the resource usage argument just to gaslight the "other side" into giving them money.