There are things to say about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence and things to say about how it contributes to bad information, but first I want to point something out that relates to both.
First of all, while I do not personally use Grok, I do often see other people asking it for more information. One of the delightful things about that is that Grok often refutes right wing talking points.
There is one area where it is disappointing, in that when asked about environmental damage from AI -- and this is not just Grok, because it has to pull that information from somewhere -- the standard response is that while there is a toll, AI can help find solutions to combat climate change.
You can find projects where it says AI is helping, though there doesn't seem to be a big return on investment yet.
"Yet" is a key word.
So let's go to another recent exchange with a human, though not a great one.
Elon Musk has explained his interest in settling Mars because eventually the sun is going to destroy all life on Earth.
Now, there were people mocking the quote out of context, thinking that he was talking about the sun eventually burning out, which will be a problem for life on Earth but would present the same problem for life on Mars.
What he was apparently referencing was the sun getting bigger until it is burning Earth. So this is something he projects for 450 million years away, as opposed to the estimated point 5 billion years away when the sun runs out of hydrogen and then expands, possibly only eating up Mercury, Venus, and Earth, but potentially also pulling in Mars. Which can potentially make it sound like he is talking about a real thing, but I don't think he has it right.
My point is that with that time scale, I don't think it matters. Given the damage that is being done and the rate at which it is being done, there will be too much destruction along the path to whatever hypothetical answers could be found.
We know enough to make things better now, and it will be done through people, not the pipe dreams of people who think they are smart because they were born rich and raised spoiled.
So I leave you with Musk's AI company belching methane into an area that already leads in asthma hospitalizations without regulation, because it is "temporary":
Well, given the environmental damage in this case, perhaps I should not really leave before also mentioning the proposed ten-year moratorium on state regulation of AI:
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5314757-house-republicans-propose-ai-regulation-ban/
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