[mdorazio]

The uproar over AI data center resource use has been rather bizarre to see and feels vaguely luddite. As this article points out, frivolous things like golf courses are far worse users of fresh water (and land) than any amount of AI. And on the electricity side, forcing the US to actually build more power generating capacity and infrastructure is a good thing in my book. Once the AI hype dies down we can use that for BEVs and other useful things.

[shalmanese]

> And on the electricity side, forcing the US to actually build more power generating capacity and infrastructure is a good thing in my book.

Electricity use is fungible. Every extra TW-hr of marginal demand is one coal plant that is delayed an extra year from being mothballed, spewing one extra quantum of CO2 into the atmosphere, adding one increment to the greenhouse effect.

[ls612]

AI is becoming a partisan issue in the US with all of the attendant consequences.

[api]

It’s because a bunch of the tech elite backed Trump, therefore anything tech related must now be evil according to people left of center.

If they’d all opposed Trump you’d see MAGA people making up any reason for anything tech to be evil and calling for AI to be outlawed, and lefty puff pieces about how wonderful and liberating AI is.

Reality is now subordinate to political hyper partisanship. If Trump says the sky is blue, the left thinks it must be green. If Trump says it’s green, MAGA people will swear they see green and seeing blue would become “woke.”