You can run a local LLM capable of assisting in software development for less energy than running a AAA video game. I’m not denying the environmental impact of the current AI landscape, but I kind of disagree that it’s intrinsic to LLMs as a whole, I think it’s more a symptom of capitalism and its disregard for sustainability causing everything it touches to have a high environmental cost.
Also, nearly all modern computing has high environmental costs, certainly all cloud computing. I think instead of focusing on AI only, it would be more helpful to engage in a broader discussion on how computing can be made more energy efficient as a whole, and do proper cost benefit analysis of all things we use computers for, including but not limited to LLMs. We may well still conclude from that process that we need to stop using LLMs, in which case we should.
If you’re against LLM use on environmental grounds (which I’m not disagreeing with), I submit to you that we should take the idea even further and things like gaming, video streaming, high frequency trading, social media, and any other nonessential computing should be on the same chopping block for the same reason. Applications of computing that we also use at scale with high environmental impacts, but that have been normalised and practically seen as a right by many of the same people against any amount of AI use (not saying that’s you, speaking generally). Why should AI be the only thing we raise concerns about if we’re to raise concerns? Doing environmental protection piecemeal by independently targeting single things and not the entire system has been shown time and time again to not work at best and make it worse at worst.
Probably people who thought they could make an app with AI, realised it’s not possible to make good software without actually learning how software is made, and never opened Cursor or whatever again.