Running ai locally is the same energy as playing a 3d AAA game for the same time
I wonder if they’re factoring in the energy usage to train the model. That’s what consumes most of the power.
Comment on Why I don't use AI in 2025
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 days ago
These endless “AI bad” articles are annoying. It’s just click bait at this point.
Energy use: false. His example was someone using a 13 year old laptop to get a result and then extrapolating energy use from that. Running ai locally is 10x more energy than playing a game for the same time on a Nintendo switch. 2 minutes of AI is 20 minutes of playing Mario Kart. No one screams about the energy footprint of playing games.
AAA game development energy use ( thousands of developers all with watt burning gpus spending years creating assets) dwarfs AI model building energy use.
Copyright, yes it’s a problem and should be fixed. But stealing is part of capitalism. Google search itself is based on stealing content and then selling ads to find that content. The entire “oh we might send some clicks your way that you might be able to compensated for” is backwards.
His last reason was new and completely absurd: he doesn’t like AI because he doesn’t like Musk. Given the public hatred between OpenAI and Musk it’s bizarre. Yes Musk has his own AI. But Musk also has electric cars, and space travel. Does the author hate all EV’s too? If course not, that argument was added by the author as a troll to get engagement.
dan@upvote.au 3 days ago
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I addressed that in my second paragraph.
In another thread someone brought it up so I did some quick math to see if it was true:
Gta5 cost $300 million. 4000 developers each with the latest GPU burning hundreds of watts per employee to create the assets. A rough estimate of 750watt pc, 4,000 developers, 8 hour a day, 300 days a year, 5 years = 36 giga watt-hours. That’s the energy to power 3.6 million homes for a year and I’m not even including the HVAC costs of the office space. For 1 game.
AI training energy use is small in comparison. ChatGPT 4 cost $80m to train.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 days ago
it’s okay, Rockstar is only launching one game every 15 years now /s
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If gta5 was the only game sold, it wouldn’t be an energy issue!
tombrandis@reddthat.com 3 days ago
Hi, I’m the writer of the article.
To be clear I am not trying to attack anyone who uses AI, just explain why I don’t use it myself.
Energy use: false
I don’t dispute that AI energy is/might be comparable to other things like making a AAA game (or other things like traveling). I also don’t want to say that ‘AI is bad’. However if I used AI more, I would still play the same amount of video games, thus increasing the total energy use. If I was to use AI it would probably replace lower energy activities like writing or searching the internet.
Copyright, yes it’s a problem and should be fixed. But stealing is part of capitalism. Google search itself is based on stealing content and then selling ads to find that content.
I agree with you that the copyright angle is a bad way to attack AI, however AI does seem like it ‘gives back’ to creatives even less than other things like search as well as actively competing with them in a way that search doesn’t. This isn’t my main objection so I don’t really want to focus on it.
His last reason was new and completely absurd
I considered leaving out the “I just don’t like it” reason but I wanted to be completely transparent that my decision isn’t objective. This is only one reason out of many - if it was just this problem then I would be quicker to ignore it. I get your point about EV’s - I don’t hate them despite the fact that Musk is/was an advocate for them. If I was to use a AI it would be something like Jan.ai which @Flagstaff@programming.dev mentioned.
Do you agree with me on my other main point on reliability?
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 days ago
However if I used AI more, I would still play the same amount of video games, thus increasing the total energy use.
Then that’s like writing about the evils of cars while driving a giant SUV for fun.
Do you agree with me on my other main point on reliability?
The Google AI forced on me in searches has seemed correct because every sentence has a footnote with a link to source that I usually click. The OpenAI code generation I used a year ago was brilliant. It wrote working VBScript for me which was a language I had no desire to learn. The microcontroller code for another project was also fantastic because it gave me an outline to start working with.
Flagstaff@programming.dev 3 days ago
Copyright, yes it’s a problem and should be fixed.
The quick fix: stick to open-source like jan.ai.
Long-term solution: make profiting AI companies pay for UBI.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 days ago
make profiting AI companies pay for UBI
As I said, many companies steal content and repackage it for sale. Google did it long before AI. AI is only the most recent offender. Courts have been splitting hairs for decades over music similarities and that’s ignoring that entire genres are based on copying the work of influential artists.
lmuel@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
I agree on the part that Musk sucks, OpenAI also sucks.
And yup, open source (if you can really call them that, I’d say they’re more like openly available) locally hosted LLMs are cool and have gotten pretty efficient nowadays.
My 5 year old M1 MacBook Pro runs models like Qwen3:14b at decent speeds and it’s quite capable (although I only ever use it for bullshitting lol).
proceduralnightshade@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
I agree, there are still good reasons not to use commercial AI products though.
anthropic.com/…/securing-america-s-compute-advant…
www.mintpressnews.com/…/289313
A new AI/informational war arms race? Whatever, because…
I just don’t like it
drmoose@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I never thought I’d see the web fight for copyright.
For me it seems like all AI issues boil down to “I don’t like stions” which is fine but its kinda delusional to pretend it’s something else be it silly energy use complaints or hypocritical copyright nonsense.
Tournesol@feddit.fr 3 days ago
OP said "people like Musk" not just Musk. He's just the easiest example to use.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There’s a huge difference between an outright Nazi like Musk and an average techbro.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
They are more alike than they are different to normal people.
belastend@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Given how much of Tech bro ideology is informed by types like Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin, no there isn’t.
Tournesol@feddit.fr 3 days ago
That's my point : no.
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 3 days ago
No, there isn’t. Musk is a tech bro cranked up to 11.