On the r/F***AI subreddit, a user shared their unsuccessful attempts to get ChatGPT to generate an image of a left-handed man holding a pen.
The first image showed a man with six fingers, one of which seemed to merge with the pen, using his right hand. When the user tried to correct the prompt, the second image still showed a man holding a pen in his right hand, but at least he had the correct number of fingers.
Given the subreddit's name, the comments were predictably derisive.
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"It's a completely different image. Artificial 'Intelligence' my a**. I am a lefty and AI offends me now," said one commenter.
Another mocked the attempt to correct the error: "I like how after it was asked to make it left handed a second time it goes further right both with the hand and makes the head look right as well."
As humorous as pointing out generative AI's struggles with hands can be, those goofy images and sophomoric articles come with a hefty ecological cost. The data centers used by AI companies use vast amounts of energy and water. One data center consumes the equivalent of 50,000 homes, and there are nearly 3,000 in the United States alone, per The MIT Press Reader. AI's carbon footprint has already surpassed that of the airline industry and will only increase as more data centers are opened.
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AI's vast water consumption is another problem because data centers generate so much heat. One data center can use 3 million to 5 million gallons of water to cool itself in a single day, according to 8 Billion Trees. This is a particularly acute problem in areas affected by drought. Arizona's Maricopa County will have the second-largest concentration of data centers in the U.S. by 2028, The Washington Post reported, but it is currently experiencing a severe drought, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Another major problem is the social upheaval that jobs lost to AI will create, as Forbes outlined. History shows that humans will go to extreme lengths to protect their livelihoods.
One Redditor made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to curb AI's rise: "I think we should keep feeding it its own images and see how many fingers it'll keep generating. Maybe then we can all keep our jobs."
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