This entire post seems to hang on climate change as the reason to be anti-LLM but nothing I've see seems to point at LLMs being any worse than literally anything else. It feels like the oil companies pushing recycling knowing that the individual effort of recycling does not begin to offset the damage done by corporations. This constant reframing as if it's the individual's responsibility (and fault) is tiring, verging on nauseating.
My use of of "AI" or lack of use will not influence anything. Period. To suggest otherwise is to ignore reality. It's the same silly arguments we hear about the USA/China "pausing" AI advancement, as if that's a thing that could actually be done.
I recycle and I'll gladly support bills/laws around forcing corporations to pay for their effects on the environment (even if that means higher costs for myself) but pretending we can stick our heads in the sand and ignore AI and that will have an effect? Pipedream. You are literally only shooting yourself in the foot.
Lastly, this reeks of the same thing as almost all "boycott" calls to action do, which is "This thing I don't like, let's boycott it!"... Ok, you understand it's easy to _not_ do something you _don't_ like right? That's not a boycott. That's just you living the same as always while feeling morally superior (trust me, I've been that person before). "FIFA is corrupt! I won't support them!", spoiler, I don't care for Soccer/Football so it really doesn't matter.
The number one indicator of people caring about climate change is diet for me. If you still are eating meat every meal you probably don't care that much about climate change in my opinion. It is an easy thing to cut out and makes a big impact yet most still won't do it
Because recycling takes relatively little effort for me and, aside from costing extra, doesn’t really negatively impact me. Giving up LLMs is a completely different story.
I’m happy to “do my part” but I go in eyes wide open and I won’t be guilted into doing it if it negatively affects me if there is someone/thing having a much larger negative impact without consequences.
You want to fine/charge LLM data centers? Be my guest. Ask me to stop using LLMs? Yeah no.
Calls to completely stop using LLMs are beyond absurd at this point.
> It’s worth highlighting that explicit climate denialism is well out of vogue here in 2026. Most people profess belief in the scientific consensus that society’s dependence on fossil fuels is warming the climate. This stops few of them from using a technology that is directly increasing society’s thirst for oil. When people like me argue that this technology is unfit for adoption on the basis of its energy requirements alone, AI users will simply ignore anything that we have to say.
I am generally pretty concerned about the environment. It's probably my most left like policy position. But I don't see why we should single out AI when it comes to this.
I would like to know some measurement of how much AI contributes to further environmental degradation compared to anything else, ranging from driving a hybrid ~10 miles per day or all of the other data centers involved in supporting the internet economy.
> we exist in a world where it’s impossible to live a regular life (within the world’s rich countries) without relying on the exploitation of countless people and finite environmental resources; any coherent pro-social moral stance is instantly compromised upon contact with this society.
Is AI really particularly worse than anything else we do with computers?
I haven’t seen something that really convinced me yet. In particular, I feel it suffers from the problem of comparing an electric car to an IC engine, where more goes into it then miles per joule, like the energy and environmental damage of mining the raw materials to build the vehicle.
How much energy and time would I spend to accomplish a task without llm vs the total of my fraction of ownership of the training costs plus the inference cost.
80% of what I read are thinly veiled advertisements and shills pretending to be average Joes proudly presenting AI slop they "created" (so thinly veiled advertisements).
> Something seems to be lost on my peers today: it’s still easy to not use AI. The food we eat, clothes we wear, and every electronic device we touch may embody innumerable injuries to the world, and all this is inescapable. Eschewing AI is one thing that we can actually do to live out ethics that affirm values of human and environmental rights.
I disagree. Giving yourself a pass on decisions around food, clothing, and electronic devices as if you cannot choose to have minimal social and environmental impact in those domains is completely false. I would venture as far as to say as getting on your high horse w.r.t. AI but not be simultaneously (self-)critical in these other areas doesn't endear me to the author's overarching narrative.
I think TFA's point is that one cannot completely abstain from food or clothes (or, in many places, at least some tech) without suffering very severe consequences, so it is unreasonable to expect this behavior. Not so AI, at least for most people.
There is so much daylight between "completely abstain" and making better choices, even if those choices are painful. I can assure you the author uses an expensive phone, and shops at the same clothing stores we do. By shear coincidence, the thing he doesn't want to use is the easy choice.
> Being anti-AI feels the same as being anti-war.
Ok.
This entire post seems to hang on climate change as the reason to be anti-LLM but nothing I've see seems to point at LLMs being any worse than literally anything else. It feels like the oil companies pushing recycling knowing that the individual effort of recycling does not begin to offset the damage done by corporations. This constant reframing as if it's the individual's responsibility (and fault) is tiring, verging on nauseating.
My use of of "AI" or lack of use will not influence anything. Period. To suggest otherwise is to ignore reality. It's the same silly arguments we hear about the USA/China "pausing" AI advancement, as if that's a thing that could actually be done.
I recycle and I'll gladly support bills/laws around forcing corporations to pay for their effects on the environment (even if that means higher costs for myself) but pretending we can stick our heads in the sand and ignore AI and that will have an effect? Pipedream. You are literally only shooting yourself in the foot.
Lastly, this reeks of the same thing as almost all "boycott" calls to action do, which is "This thing I don't like, let's boycott it!"... Ok, you understand it's easy to _not_ do something you _don't_ like right? That's not a boycott. That's just you living the same as always while feeling morally superior (trust me, I've been that person before). "FIFA is corrupt! I won't support them!", spoiler, I don't care for Soccer/Football so it really doesn't matter.
The number one indicator of people caring about climate change is diet for me. If you still are eating meat every meal you probably don't care that much about climate change in my opinion. It is an easy thing to cut out and makes a big impact yet most still won't do it
So why do you recycle? Based on your argument, you're just wasting your own time or "shooting yourself in the foot".
Because recycling takes relatively little effort for me and, aside from costing extra, doesn’t really negatively impact me. Giving up LLMs is a completely different story.
I’m happy to “do my part” but I go in eyes wide open and I won’t be guilted into doing it if it negatively affects me if there is someone/thing having a much larger negative impact without consequences.
You want to fine/charge LLM data centers? Be my guest. Ask me to stop using LLMs? Yeah no.
Calls to completely stop using LLMs are beyond absurd at this point.
> It’s worth highlighting that explicit climate denialism is well out of vogue here in 2026. Most people profess belief in the scientific consensus that society’s dependence on fossil fuels is warming the climate. This stops few of them from using a technology that is directly increasing society’s thirst for oil. When people like me argue that this technology is unfit for adoption on the basis of its energy requirements alone, AI users will simply ignore anything that we have to say.
I am generally pretty concerned about the environment. It's probably my most left like policy position. But I don't see why we should single out AI when it comes to this.
I would like to know some measurement of how much AI contributes to further environmental degradation compared to anything else, ranging from driving a hybrid ~10 miles per day or all of the other data centers involved in supporting the internet economy.
> we exist in a world where it’s impossible to live a regular life (within the world’s rich countries) without relying on the exploitation of countless people and finite environmental resources; any coherent pro-social moral stance is instantly compromised upon contact with this society.
Yes, and this problem pre-exists AI.
???
Is AI really particularly worse than anything else we do with computers?
I haven’t seen something that really convinced me yet. In particular, I feel it suffers from the problem of comparing an electric car to an IC engine, where more goes into it then miles per joule, like the energy and environmental damage of mining the raw materials to build the vehicle.
How much energy and time would I spend to accomplish a task without llm vs the total of my fraction of ownership of the training costs plus the inference cost.
> the media and much of the population treated critics with absolute contempt. Being anti-AI feels the same as being anti-war.
The propaganda machine is just that good. With enough money, you can control public opinion.
80% of anything I read online is hating on AI, what are you people even talking about?
Smartest thing this article says: dont like it? Don't use it. Done.
100% of what everyone hates about AI is what other people do with it, so “dont like it, don't use it” is fully unproductive here.
Not to derail the conversation, but isn’t that true of every issue people say this about?
80% of what I read are thinly veiled advertisements and shills pretending to be average Joes proudly presenting AI slop they "created" (so thinly veiled advertisements).
[dead]
>The food we eat, clothes we wear, and every electronic device we touch may embody innumerable injuries to the world, and all this is inescapable
Classic. "All the things I don't want to give up... inescapable. But this thing over here I don't like? Yeah, you should give it up."
I'll give up AI when you give up your phone.
> Something seems to be lost on my peers today: it’s still easy to not use AI. The food we eat, clothes we wear, and every electronic device we touch may embody innumerable injuries to the world, and all this is inescapable. Eschewing AI is one thing that we can actually do to live out ethics that affirm values of human and environmental rights.
I disagree. Giving yourself a pass on decisions around food, clothing, and electronic devices as if you cannot choose to have minimal social and environmental impact in those domains is completely false. I would venture as far as to say as getting on your high horse w.r.t. AI but not be simultaneously (self-)critical in these other areas doesn't endear me to the author's overarching narrative.
I think TFA's point is that one cannot completely abstain from food or clothes (or, in many places, at least some tech) without suffering very severe consequences, so it is unreasonable to expect this behavior. Not so AI, at least for most people.
There is so much daylight between "completely abstain" and making better choices, even if those choices are painful. I can assure you the author uses an expensive phone, and shops at the same clothing stores we do. By shear coincidence, the thing he doesn't want to use is the easy choice.