Because this whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with pollution or water. It has to do with people hating AI and looking to portray it negatively. The proof is that if they actually cared, there's a million better places to put their efforts into.
It is not an honest issue and it deserves no attention. The vast, vast majority of people talking about how terrible this is for the environment deserve to be ignored first, scorned later.
Because we who actually care about this subject go through the effort of educating ourselves and tend to use our energy in ways that actually make a difference, that are effective. Because we care about making an impact, not about brownie points.
People are just embarrassed to admit they're scared they might lose their job. They shouldn't be but they are because they've attached their identity to their career and to the concept of it making them uniquely skilled and creative, in a way that a machine could never replace.
Please don't take this as saying they are replaceable by AI. Maybe it never will. That doesn't matter, what matters is that they're scared that it will, and they're too embarrassed to admit they're scared of it, so they point towards the environmental damage.
Oh yeah, excellent place to put effort, it's not entrenched, it's just straight up against technological giants in a race that is considered relevant for national security. That should be easy yeah, outstanding target to set.
>and you stop the other negative effects besides just the pollution and water use, and you can build a coalition with the people against the other negative effects of AI.
I'll just repeat myself here:
>Because this whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with pollution or water. It has to do with people hating AI and looking to portray it negatively.
Tom: "Well actually they're not nearly as bad as <other company> to said fluffy creature and if you actually cared about fluffy creature you'd only focus on them"
Great argument. Hate to be the one to tell you this but, two things can be true at once.
Because I don't have anywhere near enough brain damage to do that and I'm not sure I can get there in a medically safe manner.
If Bob made a huge deal about company's abuse of fluffy animal and never otherwise talked about fluffy animal, that would seen as inauthentic
I'd be on board if for every data center a farm gave up the amount of water to use in that data center. Instead of carbon offsets, we'll let them purchase water offsets. Of course that's not a serious answer.
Farmers grow alfalfa in the desert and drain the western US's aquifers and rivers because we have insane water rights doctrines that entitle them to trillions and trillions of gallons of free or almost-free water far in excess of what the watershed regions can bear.
If we don't change that system, data center water usage is a rounding error that is barely noticeable at the scale of the problem. If we do change that system, data center water usage isn't a problem at all.
Well, to me, this sounds basically like "Jeff Bezos already exists, this school does not. Increasing the government budget to build a school here is not going to help our finance, so that's where we will push back."
(I don't think Jeff Bezos should lose all his money, but he could definitely pay more tax.)
Scale matters, and you're completely ignoring it. A single hamburger takes about 2,500 liters of water to produce. The US eats a lot of them and produces a lot of them.
