Post #1997976

2026-04-26 17:01 UTC

Fossil fuels are bad. Cars are bad. Ideally, I should use no fossil fuel, not drive a car. Is it better to use less fuel, better to drive less, rather than make no change in what I do? Seems it must be. This is a question about &quot;AI&quot;. Happens that I don&#39;t use any of the programming &quot;AI&quot; things. I know folx who do. I&#39;m wondering what I should think about that.

Replies (5)

@gdinwiddie@mastodon.social 2026-04-26 17:16

@RonJeffries@mastodon.social To be honest, I'm more worried about the degradation in thinking skills than the energy consumption. There are known solutions to use of polluting energy sources.

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@stevefenton@mastodon.social 2026-04-26 17:48

@RonJeffries@mastodon.social I'm trying to work this out right now. My technique is compiling a list of harms so I can work out what the red lines are, who I need to campaign to remove harms, and what I would and wouldn't do with AI if the harms were to be resolved.

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@splendid_alex@mastodonapp.uk 2026-04-26 18:20

@RonJeffries@mastodon.social Way too much of the way we design our towns and countries has dependenceon cars for getting anywhere quickly and easily. Im worried the same will happen with software design - abandonment of other ways if getting to your solution.

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@sakhavi@aoir.social 2026-04-26 18:32

@RonJeffries@mastodon.social whenever I find myself engaging in system-damaging behavior for system-mandated reasons (cars fit the infrastructure we have; the economy is forcing LLMs on everybody), I have to ask myself if I’m spending a regular fraction of the time I spend working in the system working *on* the system. (I get to answer yes at this point bc I am spending a lot of my time studying the system.) Are people working with LLMs working for a better system than one that mandates LLMs?

Open ##2712428
@kdgregory@hachyderm.io 2026-04-26 18:33

@RonJeffries@mastodon.social I've been giving this a lot of thought. I don't use LLMs to generate code, but I find them invaluable for answering questions when normal web searches fail. The LLM, by combining multiple sources, is able to create knowledge that may not be apparent in the sources. It also might not be correct, but that's why you research answers, no matter where they come from. Given that usage, my question for myself is: are LLMs inherently bad due to environmental impact, while Google, Bing, and others are not? I can't answer that with a "yes".

Open ##2712432