[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

The concerns being raised here are valid, but the solution is to change how AI is used and regulated, not to try to outlaw it or destroy it.

Environmental concerns are paramount. The IEA---a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization consisting of experts in energy use, production, and conservation---did data-based projections of the future net environmental impact of data centers. They calculated that "the adoption of existing AI applications in end-use sectors" could result in emissions reductions three to four times larger than total data center related emissions. The report stresses that this is only factoring in existing AI capabilities, and not including AI contributions to any technological breakthroughs (for example, innovations in battery design and materials science).

https://www.iea.org/...-climate-change

From the report:

Quote

Energy innovation challenges are characterised by the kinds of problems AI is good at solving. For example, only 0.01% of next-generation solar PV materials have been experimentally produced, leaving a huge set of possible materials still to be explored. AI could allow scientists to dramatically accelerate the process of finding and testing promising materials, battery chemistries and carbon capture molecules.

https://www.iea.org/...ecutive-summary

It also found that AI grid optimization could result in up to 175 gigawatts (GW) of additional available power, which is more than projected total data center power use in their base case scenario.

So if you really care about climate change, instead of trying to outlaw AI, the better solution is to regulate it so that its net contribution to emissions reduction is overwhelmingly positive. And other substantial environmental concerns should also be addressed by regulation.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 31 July 2026 - 06:42 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

That's all very well but they're not are they they're just expanding it because rich people are never satisfied. And they will fight it every step of the way. Bezos was saying a couple of weeks ago that human water consumption is hammering the potential for AI. That's chilling.

[Illuyankas]

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18161

Quote

> Large language models (LLMs) are used by over a billion people globally, most often to assist with writing. In this work, we demonstrate that LLMs not only alter the voice and tone of human writing, but also consistently alter the intended meaning. First, we conduct a human user study to understand how people actually interact with LLMs when using them for writing. Our findings reveal that extensive LLM use led to a nearly 70% increase in essays that remained neutral in answering the topic question. Significantly more heavy LLM users reported that the writing was less creative and not in their voice. Next, **using a dataset of human-written essays that was collected in 2021 before the widespread release of LLMs, we study how asking an LLM to revise the essay based on the human-written feedback in the dataset induces large changes in the resulting content and meaning. We find that even when LLMs are prompted with expert feedback and asked to only make grammar edits, they still change the text in a way that significantly alters its semantic meaning.** We then examine LLM-generated text in the wild, specifically focusing on the 21% of AI-generated scientific peer reviews at a recent top AI conference. We find that **LLM-generated reviews place significantly less weight on clarity and significance of the research, and assign scores that, on average, are a full point higher.** **These findings highlight a misalignment between the perceived benefit of AI use and an implicit, consistent effect on the semantics of human writing**, motivating future work on how widespread AI writing will affect our cultural and scientific institutions.