this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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the same can be said of gaming. criticizing LLMs for being resource intensive even for individual use would be hypocritical if you're not also criticising gamers for using their PCs to their full potential while gaming.
You must be literally trolling if you think that is a fair comparison.
It's absolutely a fair comparison. An LLM can't use any more than 100% of the system resources. neither can a video game. for an individual, there's no practical difference between being an avid gamer and someone who uses LLMs if you're comparing environmental impact.
if you don't agree, then perhaps you could explain to me how using 100% of my GPU for an LLM is different than using 100% of my GPU for Cyberpunk 2077? both use cases are using the same amount of power, so how is one use worse for the environment than the other? especially since I might use an LLM for a few minutes of work, whereas I've had many, many days where I spend 8 hours or more gaming. surely my gaming causes far more damage to the environment than my using LLMs does, but perhaps you're more educated on the matter than I am and can show me otherwise.
Are you talking about self hosted LLMs or commercial ones, like ChatGPT?
self hosted. I don't use anything from a corporation that I don't absolutely have to.