How to Survive in the Tech industry in 2026

Post by surgical_fire » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 12:55 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #8

holyra wrote: post #3

"If you resist AI, it helps to ask why" I am not intrinsically opposed AI. I am opposed to its environmental and social impacts. I constantly see spamming AI bots that send zillions of useless or poor-quality PRs to OSS. I see PRs that add features, but are really huge, making maintenance even harder in the future without the help of AI. AI creates bloatware everywhere. I see AI trained on stolen data without respect…

I promise you I spent more energy air conditioning my house this month than the collective energy of all my prompts over the past year to date while refinaries are being blown up in multiple countries right now. It's a silly argument. The hardware coming out now is 10x faster while using the same amount of energy as a regular desktop while I'm gaming. I legit can't take this "please think of the environment" argument…

Post by hparadiz » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

surgical_fire wrote: post #21

hparadiz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise you I spent more energy air conditioning my house this month than the collective energy of all my prompts over the past year to date while refinaries are being blown up in multiple countries right now. It's a silly argument. The hardware coming out now is 10x faster while using the same amount of energy as a regular desktop while I'm gaming. I legit can't take this "please think of the environment" argument…

Neither are yours. Any talk of new AI datacenters is peppered with its humongous energy needs. A cursory internet search can point to that: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-... > Global electricity generation to supply data centres is projected to grow from 460 TWh in 2024 to over 1 000 TWh in 2030 Just to be clear, 540TWh is the yearly energy consumption of developed industrialized countri…

Post by hellisothers » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:34 PM UTC

holyra wrote: post #3

"If you resist AI, it helps to ask why" I am not intrinsically opposed AI. I am opposed to its environmental and social impacts. I constantly see spamming AI bots that send zillions of useless or poor-quality PRs to OSS. I see PRs that add features, but are really huge, making maintenance even harder in the future without the help of AI. AI creates bloatware everywhere. I see AI trained on stolen data without respect…

Post by surgical_fire » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #26

surgical_fire wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first link I posted is from IEA directly. The Wikipedia link I posted is not "me making shit up". That page is sourced from https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/ You, on the other hand, provided no sources. You claim to be quoting directly measured usage . But, unlike me, you provided no sources. It is clear who is the one making shit up here.

I've used less electricity on AI this entire year than you've spent on VRChat. Maybe worry about yourself.

Post by swed420 » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

hellisothers wrote: post #25

holyra wrote: post #3

"If you resist AI, it helps to ask why" I am not intrinsically opposed AI. I am opposed to its environmental and social impacts. I constantly see spamming AI bots that send zillions of useless or poor-quality PRs to OSS. I see PRs that add features, but are really huge, making maintenance even harder in the future without the help of AI. AI creates bloatware everywhere. I see AI trained on stolen data without respect…

I’m not discounting you feeling this way but this argument feels performative or virtue signaling in the same way I’ve had to deal with people making the same argument about “I don’t have kids because children ruin the planet, we all should have less kids”. There are so many “what about”s here that unless the person making the argument is living in tent sustainably growing their own food that it doesn’t feel like it’…