The usage of commercial AI’s hosted in data centers encourages the growth of that industry with the construction of more data centers, which are hazardous to the populations that live around them, encourage pretty severe water waste in areas with already dwindling groundwater, and collectively use a tremendous amount of particularly polluting electricity since the local grids cannot adequately supply them, meaning many resort to using inefficient portable power generation on-site, and in many cases is causing energy prices to spike.

While I personally think that AI use is virtually always detrimental (since there is growing evidence that AI usage appears to cause people to atrophy their critical thinking skills, and many deferring to incorrect answers), for those that still insist on using it, using a self-hosted local LLM is the most ethical option, as it does not encourage the construction of more data centers, and avoids feeding multinational fascist corporations with more data.