The whole “AI = bad” crowd isn’t exactly known for nuance. But let me wade in anyway:

AI has saved me hours on tasks that once took forever. What used to cost me hundreds of dollars in transcription fees—and take days to get back—I can now do in minutes for pocket change.

It generates alt-text for images, which is a huge win for accessibility. It trims dead air and filler words out of audio, so I don’t sound like I’m stumbling through every thought.

Want to soften a tone? AI can do that. Want to sharpen it instead? It can do that too—and it’s shockingly good at detecting whether someone’s being sarcastic or sincere.

Yes, people point out that AI requires massive data centers and a lot of energy. That’s true. But you can also run AI locally on your own hardware—and it’s surprisingly affordable.

So no, I’m not about to throw AI under the bus just because some people use it badly. Tools aren’t the problem. People are.

@atomicpoet the problem is that people use trucks for racing and sports cars for hauling lumber.

AI can do a lot, including stupid things.
And stupid people will only use it for stupid things.
So yes, people are the main problem.

But like 'guns don't kill people; people do' : don't give guns to stupid people.

The whole “AI = bad” crowd isn’t exactly known for nuance. But let me wade in anyway:

AI has saved me hours on tasks that once took forever. What used to cost me hundreds of dollars in transcription fees—and take days to get back—I can now do in minutes for pocket change.

It generates alt-text for images, which is a huge win for accessibility. It trims dead air and filler words out of audio, so I don’t sound like I’m stumbling through every thought.

Want to soften a tone? AI can do that. Want to sharpen it instead? It can do that too—and it’s shockingly good at detecting whether someone’s being sarcastic or sincere.

Yes, people point out that AI requires massive data centers and a lot of energy. That’s true. But you can also run AI locally on your own hardware—and it’s surprisingly affordable.

So no, I’m not about to throw AI under the bus just because some people use it badly. Tools aren’t the problem. People are.

@atomicpoet even those locally run models took massive amounts of power and copyright/IP rights violations to produce, but the toothpaste is out of the tube, so... ‍️

I'm more concerned with bad applications of AI, and bad ideas seem to abound these days.

The whole “AI = bad” crowd isn’t exactly known for nuance. But let me wade in anyway:

AI has saved me hours on tasks that once took forever. What used to cost me hundreds of dollars in transcription fees—and take days to get back—I can now do in minutes for pocket change.

It generates alt-text for images, which is a huge win for accessibility. It trims dead air and filler words out of audio, so I don’t sound like I’m stumbling through every thought.

Want to soften a tone? AI can do that. Want to sharpen it instead? It can do that too—and it’s shockingly good at detecting whether someone’s being sarcastic or sincere.

Yes, people point out that AI requires massive data centers and a lot of energy. That’s true. But you can also run AI locally on your own hardware—and it’s surprisingly affordable.

So no, I’m not about to throw AI under the bus just because some people use it badly. Tools aren’t the problem. People are.

@atomicpoet (if you run your AI locally on your own hardware it requires more energy than if you run it in a data center though)

Vivien At home, you can turn off the hardware when it’s not in use whereas a data centre is always on.

@atomicpoet It’s also always in use.

Vivien Nonsense. Usage patterns vary widely. Most people aren’t running continuous AI workloads. Training massive models or serving thousands of inferences per second is the exception, not the rule.

For intermittent use—like occasional inference or lightweight models—running locally can actually be more efficient because you avoid the baseline power draw of data centres, which remain active even at low utilization.

@atomicpoet I’m skeptical there exists data centres with low utilization.

Vivien I thought your point is that running AI locally consumes more energy than data centres.

@atomicpoet That is correct. It does so by having newer generation hardware, more fit to the task than consumer hardware.

Vivien Sure, but again, usage patterns vary. I can always unplug when the hardware is not needed.

@atomicpoet I’m not sure there is an idle data centre anywhere. That would be a huge loss of money.

Vivien How is a machine in your house a “data centre”?

@atomicpoet It is not. It is different because while your machine in your house may be underutilized, a data centre is never (what I mean by idle), so there is no wasted power.