I’m curious to get a general pulse on how people here view the rapid evolution of AI, specifically on lemmy. On one side, there’s growing interest in local open-weights models, self-hosted setups, and practical developer/productivity tools. On the other, there seems to be a growing list, I can’t keep track of, that are seen as major concerns. I’m not here to pick sides or be biased in one corner. Im genuinely curious what people have to say about AI in general. And maybe it will help me and other get a better handle on how we perceived it in our ever changing world.
I don’t really use it personally (other than times I log in on a work computer, look something up, and Google’s AI search defaults). But I also don’t really condemn it as strongly as others seem to, I guess. It depends on how it’s used.
When it’s used to take work done by humans, then regurgitate its own version of that work to replace those jobs, that’s a problem. If actual artists, writers, designers, engineers, coders, etc. can no longer earn a living after being replaced by AI, we run the risk of complete cultural and developmental stagnation.
But I think my main point of disagreement with a lot of the AI conversations happening here revolves around how we look at waste and environmental impact. Not in the sense that AI isn’t still a problem in those aspects, but that it seems like a very convenient boogeyman for people to blame while ignoring the myriad other wasteful aspects of the world we live in.
Basically, with the environmental impact of data centers and energy costs of hardware in general, why do we focus so much on what that compute is used for, as opposed to addressing those issues in a more comprehensive sense? Does it matter if a data center is built for AI or for any other hosting provider? Or if someone runs a local AI model on their PC, is that any more detrimental to the environment than someone who plays video games for several hours each day?
I feel like there are lines that people who claim to primarily care about the environment are afraid to draw, when it’s easier to pin the blame wholly on AI. So if someone says that they used AI to help make their spreadsheets cleaner, to translate a website, or to summarize the content of a book, I don’t really jump straight to blanket criticism. Otherwise I’d have to take the same criticism towards people who host a plex server, who play MMOs, or who run Lemmy instances.