cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/24295950
Source (Bluesky)
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Fuck AI
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This "art" costs far more environmentally than any other. It uses mass amounts of electricity and water. It's nothing like, say, eating steak instead of salad, or driving a pickup truck to work. The "miracle" of AI has to come from somewhere, after all.
Sure, but so does everything. Pigments have to be mined or synthesized. Paper comes from cut down trees. Brushes are either synthesized or from natural hairs. Ink is a vat of survival chemicals.
Electricity by itself is just one resource. You could argue that by centralizing the resource like that, you can easier reduce environmental impacts overall via more sustainable, less damaging energy production.
Ai isn't a miracle, any more than air conditioning is, or refrigerators, or Christmas lights, or even just a stove. It's a tool.
Again, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind here. It's just for the enjoyment of babbling about the subject, maybe having a nice conversation along the way. I have very definite opinions about the way generative models are being used, the impacts it's having, but a lot of the time that's not really interesting because pretty much everyone hates the slop factor.
But that's, to me, like objecting to shovel because someone is using it to dig under your house. Misuse of a thing isn't the same as the thing itself
Running a local gen model for 500 images uses less electricity than playing Baldur's Gate 3 for 30 minutes.
Edit: Correction; less than 5-10 minutes depending on settings.