The AI bait and switch.
For the past few years big companies have been pushing AI into our day-to-day lives and workflows. By AI I'm talking about especially the generative LLM kind targeting consumers. We've had free tiers of LLM tools for a few years now and people are already depending on them in their lives, but the rising demand for raw power that the AI servers need is not sustainable.
The climate burden of the Internet was already on the rise before we had LLM AI tools or bitcoin mining. The traffic on social media and streaming services alone meant that servers were already churning out smog more than the whole commercial aviation industry. Other effects of AI products and bitcoin mining on the consumer market have been the rising demand for GPU and RAM chips meaning that the prices for consumers will skyrocket. Also now we know that all that mining hardware became an e-waste problem itself and the same will happen with AI hardware.
Local LLMs
If you have ever tried to run a LLM locally on your machine, you'll notice that the quality is much much lower than even the free tier of OpenAI's ChatGPT. When you prompt a cake recipe or a silly image on that service, it will activate an army of GPUs more powerful than you'd ever afford for your casual PC gaming setup. All this is hidden from the consumer and all we see is a quick result.
Device manufacturers must have been planning on bringing pre-loaded LLM models as chips and making it a new selling point themselves. Next to your 16 GB Nvidia GPU you'll have the choice of an 8 or 12 GB AI chip. But oh no the new update demands a 16 GB AI chip! Time to go shopping again.
This I don't believe will ever practically work because of the quality I mentioned above. A proper AI chip should be so much more powerful than the computer itself that it's not achievable.
Who pays the bill?
The consumer, meaning you.
It has been a calculated risk from the AI industry to get people hooked on their AI tools so that people will not survive without them anymore. Last year Microsoft bought a nuclear powerplant to accommodate the power demand for their AI servers alone. My prediction is that these tools will suddenly worsen in quality and/or become paid services. Nothing wrong with doing business but that is the first sign that we've been seriously duped.
On a more positive note Microsoft has already dialed back on their AI features due to them not being very popular. In my opinion we don't need AI features on our operating systems because they'll eventually get in the way of other key features like gaming. These features should always be a separate install and opt-in.
Businesses can create more targeted and meaningful applications for LLM and in that way make it more worth the trouble. We should really separate the consumer and business applications. I also do understand that we need people who are "AI native", but we don't need all these silly features that are just for laughs.
Conclusion
As a consumer, dial back on your LLM AI usage and lessen your dependency on it. It's not all bad but be more conscious where and how you'll use it. There are proper business applications for LLM but for the common people, it's just harmful entertainment in the long run.
I also used AI to proof read this article but didn't give in on all of its suggestions ;)