My point abut the environment was more that people don’t have perspective on how good or bad it is. The thing you linked had to go to multiple image and video generation to be 3hrs of microwaving, and I think it’s pretty clear to anyone text is cheaper. For the same amount of time, running a microwave is worse than text based chat with an LLM. You can make up your own mind as to whether that’s unacceptably horrible, but I think a lot of people would be fine with that level of damage for what they get out of it.

Data centers are a separate issue to me. Those are just stupid. Neither sensible business nor the population at large are going to buy into SaaS and training even more models that have clearly reached diminishing returns is utterly pointless, but again that’s more a why are our corrupt politicians taking bribes for this? I strongly agree with the anger at the government for wasting tax payer money and otherwise being a bunch of corrupt bastards – we need better democratic systems. You cannot consent to being governed if you cannot say no, and our elections don’t have a none of the above or lottery option. That makes them illegitimate.