It's easy to forget tangible win-win examples like this[1] or this[2]. Speaking from my personal experience, it's improved my life by reducing tedium associated with writing code. Small wins, but there's lots of them spread over many people. They are not abstract and it's harder to write grand narratives about them.

  > Precipitated a new class of computationally intense and expensive systems at a time when we desperately need to be focused on sustainability and reducing power demands/increasing efficiency.

Microsoft are building over 10GW of firmed renewables which will partly power their AI datacenters. It is not all greenwashing and cynicism. As far as emissions go, GPT should not be put in the same basket as truly wasteful sectors like beef or crypto mining. Everything takes energy, including productivity tools like GPT. The focus should be on sustainable growth and scaling firmed renewables, which is the only politically realistic way out of the climate crisis. Degrowth can't work, either on a political level, or on a company level given the competitive capitalist system that they exist in. I find this[3] is a good discussion on that topic.

  > Flooded the internet with unverifiable noise that looks credible

I agree with you on this. It's not all rosy, but let's not let social media off the hook. LLMs have not made long-form journalism worse, for example. The problem is the interaction of LLMs with incentives created by SEO algorithms and social media.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/10463535/ontario-family-doctor-ar...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5478797/

[3] https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/is-green-growth-possib...