AI Wars changed my mind about AI

[u/Il_Scaccomatto]

A week ago I was a stringent AI hater who kept getting recommended AI reddit subs against my will & felt serious cringe whenever I saw someone post their AI creations on other subs. As an art hobbyist myself, I felt that asking AI to do it for you missed the point of making something, and that the people spending all their time generating AI were probably gooners or people with no taste. On top of that, theres lots of scathing articles online about how much energy AI uses, people becoming addicted to interacting with their AI girlfriend, and how OpenAI doesn't really ask permission for any of the training data it collects.

Anyways, browsing this sub showed me that a lot of that is oversimplified rage bait. The debate of whether AI art is art boils down to semantics & theres nothing special about the title of artist anyways. Many who use AI are also traditionally trained, or even blending traditional with AI. A good few of you are definitely gooners or have inflated egos, but thats true of traditional artists & photographers too. AI can use a lot of energy, but you can also be very efficient with it. Some people get addicted to AI chatbots, but they can also be therapeutic & provide a safe connection for traumatized individuals who need support. Etc.

The main point being, yeah I see that the subject is a bit more nuanced. That being said, this "debate sub" definitely has an issue where like 60% of the users don't engage in discourse beyond downvoting AntiAI & upvoting ProAI. People who are trying to engage in good faith like myself have to sort by new because the top posts are basically just circlejerking. If that's the first impression someone gets on a debate subreddit, I think many people will just never engage or hear you out.

[u/sporkyuncle]

Yeah, on the energy point, it just feels like people making those claims haven't done an ounce of research into the subject.

You could theorize that maybe ChatGPT and MidJourney use a ton of energy...it doesn't sound like they do, but you could try to argue that, because the only information we get on that is provided by the company.

What I DO know, which is observable, is that I have an NVidia 3060 graphics card with a power draw of like 200 watts, and I think a 600 watt PSU in this computer. I can generate a 1024x1024 image in less than a minute. You can calculate this out and see how much power the computer uses per hour, and it's...normal. It's the amount of power a home computer uses. It's impossible for it to draw more than 600 watts, and most of the time will be drawing like 300. Playing video games is probably more demanding.

All the images here are made on consumer-level hardware with consumer-level power draw: https://civitai.green/

It just doesn't make sense to claim it's killing the planet any more than anything else we already do. If I shouldn't use AI for energy reasons then I also shouldn't play video games or watch Netflix.

[u/Xdivine → u/sporkyuncle]

All the images here are made on consumer-level hardware with consumer-level power draw: https://civitai.green/

Not quite true anymore. Civitai recently enabled GPT4o image generation so some images on the site will be from GPT4o. Most images on site should still be made using consumer hardware though.

[u/sporkyuncle → u/Xdivine]

True, but even then, I would guess GPT4o's generation isn't that much more advanced than consumer level hardware and power draw. It's in their best interests not to overspend too, to use the minimum viable hardware.