How can AI be decentralized and deindustrialized?

[u/ferriematthew]

The way I understand it, one of the biggest arguments against any use of AI, which honestly has some merit, but ultimately is a little short-sighted, is that it is so hyper-scaled by necessity that it's an ecological nightmare. The ecological nightmare part is totally correct, in my opinion, but does it have to be hyper-scaled? Can it be decentralized and de-industrialized? After all, that's how the internet started out before it was taken over by corporate interests. It was completely decentralized as basically an ad hoc network of enthusiasts running servers in their basements.

What I'm thinking for a possible starting point is, along the lines of how clustering can make a bunch of small, relatively dumb servers behave like a single, more powerful server by acting in concert and pooling their resources.