As the technology improves, data centers that run AI will require significantly less cooling. GPUs aren't very power-efficient for doing AI stuff because they have to move a lot of data around from their memory to their processor cores. There are AI-specific cards being worked on that will allow the huge matrix multiplications to happen in place without that movement happening, which will mean drastically lower power and cooling requirements.
Also, these kinds of protestors are the same general group of people who stopped nuclear power from becoming a bigger player back in the 1960s and 70s. If we'd gone nuclear and replaced coal, we almost certainly wouldn't be sitting here at the beginning of what looks to be a major global warming event that's unlike anything we've ever seen before. It wouldn't have completely solved the problem, but it would have bought us time. An AI may be able to help us develop ideas to mitigate global warming, and it seems ridiculous to me to go all luddite and smash the machines over what will be a minuscule overall contribution to it given the possibility that it could help us solve the problem.
But let's be real here; these hypothetical people smashing the machines are doing it because they've bought into AI panic, not because they're afraid of global warming. If they really want to commit acts of ecoterrorism, there are much bigger targets.
You're not. I was talking about the thread parent: "Many things in life are a privilege for these groups. AI is no different." I should have been more specific.
At any rate, I personally feel that we have a moral responsibility to make it accessible to as many people as possible.