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. throwaway2037 · 1790806187 · focus · HN ↗

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

      Is this specific to data centers? If yes, no one complained about data centers for the last thirty years before the AI/LLM building boom (say, last 3-5 years).

      If more general, I completely disagree. All rich countries have much cleaner environments since the 1940s, thanks to a wave of environmentalism and new regulations that started in the 1960s and 1970s.

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