I believe there could be some valid uses for responsible use of them, but summarizing the best chocolate chip cookie recipes every time someone searches for a recipe certainly isnt that use.

Right. In theory ai datacenters came along at the perfect time, when renewables are the cheapest power source. We could be using them to trigger a massive increase in renewable energy generation. That’s a nice fantasy

It doesn’t. The process we have now kicked off is not going to change to any great degree whether we continue to build or stop building data centres.

Even if we immediately stopped all pollution and went back to a pre-industrial way of life, the damage is done, the ice caps will continue to melt and we will still have to deal with the consequences of our actions.

I’m not saying we should continue to abuse the environment, but AI wasn’t the catalyst for climate change and it isn’t the worst thing we are doing.

"AI data centers are ALSO bad" wasn't your initial statement, and you know it.

And even if it was, that's kind of beside the point. AI data centers are a relatively new (10 years) usage of the energy produced with the burning of hydrocarbons. The burning of hydrocarbons is the problem and has been for 150 years.

We can't focus on the real problem if you insist on redirection of people's ire towards your latest socio-political beef.