Ethical

AI tools aren’t inherently unethical, and even the ones that use models with data provenance concerns (e.g., a tool that uses Stable Diffusion models) aren’t any less ethical than many other things that we never think twice about. They certainly aren’t any less ethical than tools that use Google services (Google Analytics, Firebase, etc).

There are ethical concerns with many AI tools and with the creation of AI models. More importantly, there are ethical concerns with certain uses of AI tools. For example, I think that it is unethical for a company to reduce the number of artists they hire / commission because of AI. It’s unethical to create nonconsensual deepfakes, whether for pornography, propaganda, or fraud.

Environmentally sustainable

At least people are making efforts to improve sustainability. https://hbr.org/2024/07/the-uneven-distribution-of-ais-environmental-impacts

That said, while AI does have energy a lot of the comments I’ve read about AI’s energy usage are flat out wrong.

Great things

Depends on whom you ask, but “Great” is such a subjective adjective here that it doesn’t make sense to consider it one way or the other.

things that people want

Obviously people want the things that AI tools create. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t use them.

well-meaning

Excuse me, Sam Altman is a stand-up guy and I will not have you besmirching his name /s

Honestly my main complaint with this line is the implication that the people behind non-AI tools are any more well-meaning. I’m sure some are, but I can say the same with regard to AI. And in either case, the engineers and testers and project managers and everyone actually implementing the technology and trying to earn a paycheck? They’re well-meaning, for the most part.