Where was the outrage - and where IS it still - about PCs and circuit manufacturing that allowed the computing revolution to occur? The negative externalities have always been kids getting cancer, growing up scavenging metals from landfills in other countries. Whole generations of people.
Just about everything we do has negative externalities like that. Plastic recycling, textile production, the labor used to build houses and harvest crops in the US.
I'm not trying to tu quoque anyone here, because we should be able to criticize things even though we participate in those or other problematic issues. But it seems like the AI hatred is so strong on this site, and it's absent any other hatred and outrage that could have long been a focal point up until now. We get it, you hate AI, which has been around for a few years in LLM form and hasn't been perfected yet, even though consumer electronics companies have still not managed to meet their environmental goals after decades, and you're certainly using those devices to your hearts content.
Sometimes I think Lemmy should just be renamed "We fucking hate AI and will never budge on that."