Maybe someone with the knowledge of hindsight in a few generations will say that, yes, we should stop and draw a line in the sand.
We are still used to the idea that we can treat externalities to the systems we build as infinite and boundless, while it is getting increasingly clear that they are not. I am not saying we should stop working on LLMs. I just say we probably should factor in (that means: assign economic value to) downstream consequences of said high energy consumption if we don't wanna destroy our own habitats. And that then would probably lead to a world where LLMs are used for actually important problems instead of furthering the goals of the few who truly profit from surveillance-capitalism.
But hey, let's continue wasting a years worth of energy on training LLMs on cat pictures, they are cute after all.
