Environmentalism is NOT a good argument agains AI

Before you downvote me, hear me out.

Saying AI is bad because of environmental reasons misses the entire point. What you just described is an engineering problem. Humans are pretty good at solving engineering problems.

There are already a large number of promising tools available and being developed to reduce AI's energy consumption. Pretty soon energy consumption in AI data centers is likely to be reduced by a large amount.

The deeper issue with GenAI that I see is the reduction of human intellectual creativity. Eight billion people have eight billion perspectives, AI reduces it down to just one.

I guess the best analogy to why environmental concerns is not a good argument is what I feel about veganism.

Sure veganism might consume less water and have a smaller carbon footprint but that is secondary to the prime issue that eating animals is wrong. Using the environment as a main driver of veganism implies that if it were the case that eating plants caused more environmental damage that would've been justification to eat animals. No! Eating animals is unethical even IF it was the most environmentally sound thing you could do.

Do you see the argument? Even if AI becomes the most environmentally sound thing on the planet, that still wouldn't make it morally justifiied.

Sorry if I haven't explained it fully, English is not my first language.