The climate change alarms have been sounding for decades and yet vehicles keep getting bigger. Even in formerly "doing it right" countries like Japan. Turns out humans will always choose vanity and status symbols over facts. Oh well

One person's waste is another's value. Do you have any idea how "wasteful" tik tok or any other streaming platform is? I'll grant that AI is driving unprecedented data center development but it's far from the root cause, or even a leading clause, of our climate issues. I always find it strange that this is the first response so many have to AI, when it poses other more imminent existential threats IMO.

A lot of code is "useless" only in the sense that no one wants to buy it and it will never find its way into an end user product. On the other hand, that same code might have enormous value for education, research, planning, exploration, simulation, testing, and so on. Being able to generate reams of "useless" code is a highly desirable future.

Optimists will imagine it to one day be as taxing and thus as wasteful as firing up MS Paint.

No that’s a stretch, but firing up a AAA game.