Thread

1. unglaublich · 1790770721 · focus · HN ↗

   They refuse it because if they would say "1 million liters a year!" the knee-jerk reaction will be completely predictable even though that's just tiny compared to a small swimming pool or industrial or agricultural site.

   The debate is completely based on emotion and anger right now, so sharing information will only give the emotional/angry folks more mud to throw with. The majority of people has no clue about how to put things like energy use and water use in perspective, and they're also not interested in doing that. Because they have decided to green-wash their AI-fears as environmental fears... which is a big fat joke because datacenters aren't significant polluters or consumers compared to almost all other industries.

   Look, I get it, many people are afraid of the societal impacts of AI, or distrust it in another way. But let's be honest and focus on _that_ instead of naively acting as if our anti-datacenter sentiment comes from environmental concerns (the last few decades have shown we don't GAF about the environment).

   1. vidarh · 1790774266 · focus · HN ↗

      I'm all for data centres.

      But they should be made to report this. AND their use of water should be regulated - they don't need to use any water at all, it's just cheaper for them - and they should be contributing enough to mitigate negative effects on energy prices.

      The problem isn't data centres. The problem is not pricing in and regulating externalities, whether caused by data centres or other things.

      It would also quickly show us who actually cares about the environmental effects and who are using it as an excuse.

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