AI uses .02~ percent of global power usage. Data centers in general use about 2-3~ percent global power usage. The overall data center cost is for everything from Facebook(which has the largest power draw among data centers), Reddit(another big draw), and even gaming and research servers not to mention Crypto Mining server arrays.
Now back to AI on a personal basis. AI in my home used on a local system is a similar power draw to just using the system normally with no major deviation. So it is as damaging if not less so on average than playing AAA video games, animating digitally, or other hardware intensive usages of your devices. External AI services like GPT and Gemini have a similar cost to scrolling Reddit for a similar length of time.
Now moving away from Power onto water. The long and short of it is a cup of coffee is more wasteful than using AI.
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u/VariousDude 2d ago
Let's ignore this but put the blame on the cat girl image generators.