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[–] 146 points 5 months ago (14 children)

People see this and think "AI is just generating a bunch of useless slop."

What they need to be thinking about is how much of our environment was destroyed to produce this useless slop.

Like, imagine all of those bullshit cheap plastic nic nacs that flood our oceans and landfills, times a million.

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  • [–] 55 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    Exactly this. It is not that AI generates meaningless slop, it also destroys the environment and increases costs to populations near data centers…

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  • [–] 23 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    Dont forget the decimated value of the houses nearby.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    It's a self solving problem. As soon as people pay the actual cost of AI, usage will drop automatically. It's just because investors are willing to burn money inflating the bubble is the resaon AI is being used as much as it is.

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  • [+] -19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I'm using Opencode and the free Deepseek in it pretty much daily, how is this destroying the environment and increasing costs to other people?

    It feels like there's a push on the internet against AI because it's a largely western product.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    Because you are using exponentially more energy than you did before AI. And all for something that at best could have been made without AI, and at worst is completely frivolous and useless.

    And this at a point in human history where we desperately need to cut down on energy usage.

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  • [–] 39 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I knew we were truly fucked the moment I realized that even non-AI content on the internet is affected negatively by AI. Take this comment I'm typing out right now. I'm not using AI for it, but the content of what I'm writing is based on experiences I have had with AI - nothing is purely human made anymore.

    At one point I had an issue with a tool and searched for it on the web and found someone who looked like a real person describing a similar-ish issue. They mentioned trying a setting but it didn't work for them. I thought "that setting seems to be what I need". I searched for that setting on the web and also in the codebase of that tool - zero matches. It was made up. I didn't use any AI myself, but I still wasted time with an AI hallucination.

    Now every time I find something on the web I have to do additional searches to see how many other sources corroborate the information I get from any result. And eventually this too will be pointless.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago

    Not saying you’re not correct but I keep hearing, what I take to be at least slight overstatements, of how much environmental impact is caused by agentic ai but is there some good source where I can red up on exactly how much? While ”Plastic nic nacs that flood our oceans and landfills, times a million” is surely a good ballpark I’d like to narrow it down a bit

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