Don't applaud fake "creativity" in AI-generated garbage. You're applauding a parody of creativity, and

[AZJonnie]

56. Okay, but as far as the effect on the earth's climate is concerned, it doesn't matter one whit

what our intentions or views were of "what's more or less moral" in our decision making. All that matters is physics. The numbers. The EROEI, if you will.

An analogy that pops quickly to mind is the case where an opioid addict, years into recovery, may tell the surgeon 'no opioid painkillers after the surgery'. Even though they have a great reason to take them in this scenario, they realize that their body's reaction to these drugs are identical, regardless of the reason for ingesting them that the brain came up with. What matters most is 'the drug', not 'the reason'. Same idea applies here wrt to climate impacts. The carbon is the carbon.

To answer first question, generally, yes. Always? Admittedly not. There are SO many things none of us would ever do if 'lessening our impact' was our first concern at all times. We certainly would never travel anywhere just for the sake of pleasure, or going to a wedding, or a funeral, or anything like that. Do you never do those things, on the basis they're a net negative on the climate? You never drive further than you need to to buy something, simply because the product is cheaper, further away? Certainly you'd never play any sort of game on a phone or a computer on the same basis, right, even if you enjoy playing them?

What I'm getting at is that in the total net, we don't really know if AI could be helping save the planet or not. It's really a LOT more functional than providing "fancy search results". You give AI the right prompts and the right privileges on the computer, it could make a fully functioning website for you in hours, whereas it could take weeks or months of humans working on it. Driving to work, all their computers burning energy as they develop, etc. That is WAY beyond 'fancy search results', and it is pretty easy to imagine it's impact on the climate could be a lot less than people actually doing the same work.

So while I find there ARE indeed a lot of compelling reasons to support serious restrictions on AI, I'm not yet convinced that climate concerns are the most compelling. If you replace millions driving to work each day with AI running on renewable energy? Then it almost surely is a net positive for the environment, yeah? Ergo, if 'impacts' are your first priority, then one would logically conclude it's 'better' for those people's jobs to be replaced.

I feel like we could find ourselves painted into a logical corner of our own making if we place climate-impact very high (or highest) on our decision-matrix, when it comes to AI. The impacts on jobs and people's livelihoods should probably be first.