It feels like the new argument from LLM users is that “Well yes, they create a lot of waste, but so do other things.” Recently an active member in a specific Discord I generally like (the Discord, not this person) argued that it’s ok to use ChatGPT because video games are unsustainable too. In case you don’t understand why this is ridiculous, one is a form of art and the other is a plagiarism machine that contributes massive amounts of pollution to marginalized communities, drives up the cost of computer hardware, constantly makes stuff up, and tells kids to commit self harm. These are not equivalent things.

I think there’s an argument that video games could be more sustainable, absolutely. There’s also folks like Fireflower Games, who donate a percentage of proceeds to environmental efforts, and the Solar Server, a website for games that is powered entirely by solar power. This is not what LLM users care about though. It’s similar to when people say “No ethical consumption under capitalism” to say that it doesn’t matter what they buy because it’s all bad so why should they bother even trying, keep buying stuff from the worst people (btw, boycott Microsoft).

There’s also an argument that not all games are ethical. If you’re making video games for the US Army so they can recruit kids, you should immediately quit your job. Generative AI also falls under this since it’s a tool being used by fascist governments to generate misinfo, another reason to never use these things.

But even if LLMs weren’t telling kids to kill themselves and polluting communities I would be sick of them. Imagine being so dull that you’re going to use a machine to do the fun part of making art? Or doing research or programming, yes, I think both of these are fun. It’s endlessly irritating to me that people will say LLMs for art are bad but not for coding. Programming is not any less worthwhile or creative than coding. In fact, there’s a whole book I would recommend if you want to know more about creativity in programming. Even if you only cared about productivity, it doesn’t seem to help that either. In addition to that, you’re now building a group of coders at your company who don’t know anything about programming and can’t work with the code base you have. Nice work!

On a final note I’d like to say that I accidentally shared something recently that used Claude for coding and someone sent me a DM to let me know. I truly appreciated this! I never want to share any art or games where the creativity has been stripped out when there’s so much I can share that hasn’t been.

Anyway, yeah, it’s a grumpy post but there’s so much harm in the world right now being caused by ChatGPT and the like that I think it’s the ethically right thing to do to call this usage out.