r/Anticonsumption • u/Sad_Butterscotch7063 • 2d ago

Discussion Does anyone avoid using ChatGPT because of its water usage?

Hey, I recently came across something about how using ChatGPT, Blackbox AI and similar AI tools actually consumes a surprising amount of water (cooling data centers, I guess). Made me wonder, have people here stopped or reduced using it because of that?

Curious how others are thinking about it in terms of sustainability and personal impact.

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u/RManDelorean 2d ago

It's the new 20 ?'s game. A glorified toy, a novelty, an illusion of what what we think artificial intelligence should be. As others have mentioned it's often just wrong, to the point that I don't think anyone has any business using it for any serious or professional applications. And the ones admittedly just using it for fun.. should find something better to do

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u/Disastrous-Team-6431 2d ago

Almost all serious programmers use an llm. They make tedious and error prone tasks like writing tests and documentation extremely efficient. They can sometimes debug errors quickly that are hard for humans to see. The catch is of course that the result always has to be checked and double checked.

I'm not saying that they aren't anti human - I am not a fan. But saying that nobody has any serious or professional use for llms is not correct.

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u/Runthescript 2d ago

I think what the commenter was describing is the lack of professional insight. Id argue that if I wrote a professional piece on a subject matter I am heavily involved in vs an LLM, it's not even close. If i write documentation vs LLM I save almost no time, if not consume more. It's great for outlining and other tasks but it's not going to get you a Nobel prize or even an academic paper at any point in the future.

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u/Disastrous-Team-6431 2d ago

No, exactly. It's not a substitute for human thought, it's just an extremely high tech parrot.

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u/RManDelorean 2d ago edited 2d ago

Is writing tests and documentation.. programming? Well anyway, you have a point that may have been a bit of hyperbole to say they have no professional use. But I do worry about our reliance and trust in them for professional applications given the mistakes they are known to make. And I think that's only going to get worse. So it's not that I don't think they have literal professional applications, but rather I'm skeptical if any professional has any business handing over that kind of risk and liability to AI so casually. Again not because it's going to take over the world or anything, but just that it can be hard to tell where and how it will get things wrong.

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u/Disastrous-Team-6431 2d ago

At our company we have rules about using gpt for actual code; we can ask it questions but it's quite limited because we can't paste our own code to give examples or ask questions.

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u/RManDelorean 2d ago

So.. you can't use it for serious professional applications, that's my point. You're using it for smaller supplementary help, not the main professional project itself, as it probably should be