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The two worlds of programming: why developers who make the same observations about LLMs come to opposite conclusions
(www.baldurbjarnason.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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Programming
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It is an environment destroying disaster. The fact that AIs have some use-cases doesn't change that fact. Underneath all the small conveniences you experience as a developer, it will always be busy destroying the environment.
So the question is more, are all those small conveniences worth accelerating our destruction of the climate even further?
i agree with you, that it's not good for the environment. how bad is it exactly?
has someone numbers for this? how does a classical cawler + search + stackoverflow compare to a simple ai question/answer and the proportionate training effort? how much is the co2 output for a day of heavy vibe coding compare to this?
how does this co2 output compare to a flight/car drive?
i don't believe it rivals corn crops, but its still pretty high. the main issues i see is they are all being built off non-renewable energy and they're skipping regulations a lot of the time. one of Elon's data centers they found a pipe pumping toxic sludge into the local water runoff, potentially contaminating local drinking water
Even before the energy usage comparison it is still a disaster. If these things were being powered by renewables and being cooled without using massive amounts of potable water, both of which are possible, then we could have that conversation. As it is, they are being built using the worst systems they could ecologically, including in some cases in the US straight up illegal gas turbine generators that they're getting away with because the government is in cahoots
And the answer is no, they aren't.
They're not benefiting us devs anyway. We learn less. We get numb. It gets really easy to be lazy and undisciplined.
AI only benefits the fucking CEO of the company anyway. I hate it, regardless if it's good or not.
And my home use cases are not in any way worth the tradeoffs of AI being a thing in the world.
Ai is one of the greenest technologies for its impact we have made in the last 100 years. Moreover, it is the only solution to the climate apocalypse we are heading towards. Clearly we will only take action on climate if its profitable, or so cheap it can be crowd funded or a rounding error. Embodied ai is the only way to do this.
Unfortunately, getting beavers to fuck is too expensive. So we have to build beaver fucking robots for pennies.
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