There is a relatively hard upper bound on streaming video, though. It can't grow past everyone watching video 24/7. Use of genAI doesn't have a clear upper bound and could increase the environmental impact of anything it is used for (which, eventually, may be basically everything). So it could easily grow to orders of magnitude more than streaming, especially if it eventually starts being used to generate movies or shows on demand (and god knows what else).

There are several takes looking at this comparison. Here's a representative one: https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2025/05/02/ar...

Any evidence behind your claim?

I have a hard time believing that streaming data from memory over a network can be so energy demanding, there's little computation involved.

In a sense, it’s also very trendy to hate on AI.

If you tried the same attitude with Netflix or Instagram or TikTok or sites like that, you’d get more opposition.

Exceptions to that being doing so from more of an underdog position - hating on YouTube for how they treat their content creators, on the other hand, is quite trendy again.

Generated video is just as costly to stream as non-generated video.

The point isn’t the resource consumption.

The point is the resource consumption to what end.

And that end is frankly replacing humans. It’s gonna be tragic (or is it…given how terrible humans are for each other, and let’s not even get to how monstrous we are to non human animals) as the world enters a collective sense of worthlessness once AI makes us realize that we really serve no purpose.

Interesting take I haven't heard so far. Any sources for this?