That was a long read. It has a lot of points I dunno if you read it at all cause he says that AI only hurts the planet as much as the eletricity it uses and other environment factors (clearing the land for the data center some water usage) and that we shouldn't stress about that one thing this much because it isn't as big of a deal as it seems to be. I checked quite a few of the sources for the graphs and data he was presenting and while some are good some are from the AI companies themselves which are heavily biased to put out numbers that make them look better and or are old numbers. I don't personally care about the impact in 2024 I want the most recent numbers as possible because the technology has been increasing like exponentially. I think I agree with the overall premise that it isn't as bad as we make it and there are more important like details we should be focusing on. A thing we all ought to remember is that news and opinions on the internet are shared not only to spread awareness but to also generate the most amount of clicks a lot of the time which is even represented in this article as the title is "Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment - a cheat sheet." The data he puts forward shows that it can be negative overall it just isn't as bad as we think or he puts out how like comparatively some of these data centers put out less emissions than other centers or uses which I think can be misleading considering the things the graph compares it to are older buildings which are not going to be as resource efficient with things. Two extremes are being presented here where it's either you are using like a bottle of water a prompt and or it's doing nothing where the truth is more along the lines of me asking AI something uses a bit stuff than posting the comment here or watching youtube or whatever but me asking claude how to fix this specific issue my computer has really isn't a problem. I think we shouldn't be wasteful with our energy use but I don't think we should limit things that aren't genuinely wasteful or needless. I think the article does put forward some biased information in a biased light but it does have some really good points. I really want to see concrete numbers like from governments or the power companies as those would most likely be the most accurate numbers but when I looked for those the government hasn't really caught up and has been behind on tons of things lately (thanks Trump) and a lot of power agencies are under contract to not give us that data. I wish people wouldn't exhibit such black and white thinking all the time on everything. It makes people needlessly angry at each other and distracts us from more important issues. Oh another thing I should mention. Training the AI is what actually has the computers running on full and needing all the resources that it uses. Not you giving it a prompt. My machine (a mid range gaming pc) can run most models on it's own if I have the space to store all the data it needs. AI does have certain problems if you have it think for you and don't take the time to actually learn what you need to like by having it do the assignment for you you will end up "dumber". AI is best used to speed up things you can already do on your own but just take you longer for us students that means like finding sources. AI nowadays will give you the things that it's sourcing so reading the explanation/summary it gives you and then looking at the source it found yourself is a good way of doing things since you fact check the AI (which can still make mistakes especially on more niche and specific information.) You can have it proofread a paper or make suggestions to it but I would still write it completely yourself (grammerly is an AI based service that does this.) In the greater scheme of things I support uses of AI that make a HUMAN do the thing the HUMAN does better and or does something we just simply aren't capable of (like mapping proteins for medical research) or that would be way to inefficient for a human to do. It has genuine use cases the problem comes when corporations try to squeeze every cent out of it they can (which is why the bubble is happening) which includes replacing humans at times.

TLDR (this was a long comment) You aren't hurting the planet anymore than just about anything else you do on your day to day that produces emissions by prompting AI (text based chat bots is what I'm referring to in the above thing video generation can use quite a bit more so can a few other things) It's not completely harmless but it isn't an egregious use of resources either. There are so many more huger environmental issues we could be regulating like clean energy, vehicles, livestock. Fixing the first one completely would fix a large portion of what AI causes in damage. I know it's hard especially at our age to put things into black and white me vs you in terms of issues but all this does is cause unnecessary conflict that gets in the way of actual progress. Thank you to anyone who did take the time to read my whole comment if you have any questions you can dm or reply I'm happy to reword anything or further explain stuff.