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. streetfighter64 · 1790791550 · focus · HN ↗

      > the last few decades have shown we don't GAF about the environment

      And here you have people seemingly caring about the environment, even if it's only as you say a "green-washing" (that's not what that term means, normally) of AI fears. And you're telling them to stop it?

      Also, the claim of "people would misinterpret the information, so better not release the info at all" is just some sort of elitist "the average person is dumb" sentiment. If you take that to its logical conclusion, nobody should tell the public anything at all. Reminiscent of a lot of the public debate during the covid times.

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