Energy use is only bad if the user is doing something you disagree with. When crypto miners were in the news, it was terrible because crypto mining "provides no value" (to the people doing the criticizing).
Now that AI is using massive energy and the usual nags are coming out to criticize it, suddenly HN is promulgating the glorious benefits of such excess energy use. Pot meet kettle. Human nature never changes
There's a crucial difference between AI energy usage and Bitcoin proof-of-work energy usage.
Proof-of-work is set up as a competition. To earn coins, you need to burn more energy than anyone else (in order to win the hashing lottery). This means that energy usage trends upwards - if someone else builds a bigger coin farm than you, your incentive is to increase the size of yours even more.
With AI models, everyone is interested in finding and deploying new efficiencies. Have you noticed how the prices for hosted LLMs (OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini, Google's Gemini Flash, Anthropic's Haiku) keep dropping? That's because they keep finding new ways to optimize those models, serving useful results while using less energy to do it.
The AI space still has its competitive pressure: Google, Meta, Microsoft are all making huge speculative investments in GPUs and new data centers right now. But it's still not in the same class of waste as the proof-of-work competition used by Bitcoin.
At least some of cpu cycles in llms result to useful computation. That is in stark contrast to crypto mining where computation is done for the sake of computation scarcity.
It is a little funny that you're talking about 'safety against money printing' from a technology where you effectively print money. I know its called 'mining' but its really more like printing - low risk, repeatable process, expectable output. I know its not exactly that simple but still gave me a chuckle.
PoW is bad because PoS can do the same thing with 99% less energy yet some people refuse to switch. AI is already as efficient as we know how to make it.
Energy is good because it allows people to do things they care about. As long as the externalities are internalized [1] and the energy is paid for, the rest will mostly take care of itself.
[1] they aren't of course, but that's not crypto's fault and it's not AI's fault either
You trigger an idea of AI evolution in my brain. AI needs power to proliferate. AI that encouraged power consumption and de-emphasised climate issues naturally thrived. Like a successful virus; no thought required. Survival of the fittest.
Now that AI is using massive energy and the usual nags are coming out to criticize it, suddenly HN is promulgating the glorious benefits of such excess energy use. Pot meet kettle. Human nature never changes