Memes

Not only the pollution.

It has triggered an economic race to the bottom for any industry that can incorporate it. Employers will be forced to replace more workers with AI to keep prices competitive. And that is a lot of industries, especially if AI continues its growth.
The result is a lot of unemployment, which means an economic slowdown due to a lack of discretionary spending, which is a feedback loop.

There are only 3 outcomes I can imagine:

1. AI fizzles out. It can't maintain its advancement enough to impress execs.
2. An unimaginable wealth disparity and probably a return to something like feudalism.
3. social revolution where AI is taken out of the hands of owners and placed into the hands of workers. Would require changes that we'd consider radically socialist now, like UBI and strong af social safety nets.

The second seems more likely than the third, and I consider that more or less a destruction of humanity

The way it's done at this current moment is in no way sustainable. Once we start seeing better dedicated hardware for doing ai on client side hardware and remove the need to use massive GPU farms. AI is cool but it's like driving a tank to the grocery store. We need the Prius of ai.

Stupid AI will destroy humanity. But the important thing to remember is that for a brief, shining moment, profit will be made.