this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
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As a vegan, yes. But also both need to be stopped. Its like if everyone in history was vegan and meat started to become a fad, you would want to nip it before it becomes entrenched. That's what we need to do with AI, because if we don't it will be like the factory farming issue that is so entrenched it may never to away.
Well put
There is nothing inherent to AI that requires water usage or CO2 emissions. These are the wrong angles to be attacking if you are fundamentally against AI for some reason. These sorts of problems resulting from nothing but greed occur every time there is a boom or rush, and their remedies lie in humanist governance, not targeting AI specifically.
Those are easy to fix problems that only exist for reasons that have nothing to do with AI; what would you do then? There are very significant problems with AI that relate specifically to AI and need AI-specific remedies. This water and climate stuff really feels like the public being manipulated by bad arguments that they are predisposed to accept for their own emotional reasons.
Cooling systems (water) and power generation (coal/gas/other) are required in large amounts to perform AI tasks compared to a traditional method of generation. Especially when you have AI thrown into every aspect of Windows OS and browsers generating garbage you never asked for.
Yes but there is no reason that power for example has to be coming from fossil fuels burned on-site, emitting at some of the highest intensities on the planet. AI doesn't care where the electricity comes from. There is obviously rampant corruption and abdication of government responsibility here, and that's not going to go away if AI magically disappears.
All industry, indeed all work of any kind necessarily generates waste heat. Every factory, office, and hen house has to export waste heat or it cooks itself. AI is not out of line with what people accept elsewhere when it comes to wasting water for industry, for leisure, for their lawns, and dozens of other frivolous applications. The scale of the water problem is only an issue on an extremely local scope, where a locally finite water supply is being consumed to the detriment of other local water users. I guess those people should have paid the bribes which are now apparently de rigueur.
I really feel like this water angle is being promoted by foreign interests who see AI as an arms race and want to retard American corporations as much as possible. It doesn't make any goddamn sense when you pick it apart and place it in context.
But USA doesn't have Hydro power everywhere, and the admin has blocked solar and wind in favour of fossil fuels, so it will be CO2