this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Okay. So, imagine I'm an indie game developer. I've got no artistic talent, no funds, and am just making a game that I want to play, not one I think will make any money.
With me so far? I download a free, open source, open weights model on my laptop. I install the open source tools to allow the LLM to read my project files, and I give it a thorough description of the game I'm designing. I work on some aspect in the foreground, while in the background my GPU is utilized to achieve some task I've assigned the AI. When it's done, I review the work, commit the changes, and assign it a new task.
What are the ethical aspects you can't ignore in my use case?
If you don't intend to sell or distribute that game, the only aspects left that I can think of are:
Even if I did intend to sell the game, what change is there? Everything created was something that did not exist prior my prompt to create it.
I'm making myself dumber in the same sense that learning to read & write weakens my memory skills, using a calculator weakens my math skills, or driving a car weakens my physical stamina. Everything is a trade off, and like in everything else, balance is the key consideration.
Correct, I personally have a solar array with a battery system. I typically have an overage, and feed my power back into the network. Even if I didn't, though, using my GPU for AI uses less electricity than playing a game with it, and even that is dwarfed by microwaving food, using a hair dryer, clothes dryer, etc. Power consumption is a common concern that is shared with everything, so there's no justification to make it an ethical one just for AI.
In my case, I'm using Qwen, and Kimi, which are both models trained by other models - essentially compressing the original training so a good analogy, if these were people, is my models were trained by professors who themselves trained themselves by reviewing the entirety of the Internet. It's important, though, to highlight the fact that as neural networks this training is not retention of data - it's simply adjusting the weights of simulated synapses based on the tagging of input.
So many people seem to think that training means the model has like a compressed database of source material, but that is not the case - even on the original models that trained using pirated data, at no point is the training data incorporated into the model. It informs the model, in the same way you are informed about art by watching a Disney movie. Sure, you might be able to recreate something you saw from memory if you focused on doing that, but it's not like you can make a perfect copy from your memory. The LLM are NOT idetic.
Power consumption for AI is way higher than for games…your gpu is rarely at full usage when running a game, only really if you’re one of the few people that tries to get every single bit out of your game with the highest level graphics and even then you’re not using the full amount because the game would stutter. It doesn’t matter if an llm stutters. They use the full power of your gpu no matter what you’re doing.
And the models being trained on other models mean that local LLMs use more energy than a model like Claude. You have all the energy of multiple data centers training one model and then you go and train a model off of that.
You keep making your case around a veeeeeeeeeryyyyy specific type of user. It's hard not to think it's actually a specific person you're talking about lol. Hardly a common scenario. 😆
Yes, it's me! I'm the very specific type of user, and I'm being swept up in the discrimination in the mad rush to hate everything AI.
You say you are being swept up like some sort of unrelated bystander but it doesn't look like your justification is too different from the typical ai user's justification.
Justification of what? Using the incredible technology created via the shared culmination of all human knowledge, on personally owned hardware, using clean, renewable energy? What needs to be justified in that?
A good amount without their consent yeah. You tried to justify it earlier in the comment chain by saying it's not an exact reproduction and that the cat's already out of the bag, which is what ai bros typically say to cope with that aspect.
That's not the scenario we're complaining about and you know it.