Andy Masley

AI safety and the data center backlash

Planting a flag for AI safety as a place where we won’t abjectly bullshit you

Sep 1 • Andy Masley

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August 2026

I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers

It’s probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It’s about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities where they’re built…

Aug 25 • Andy Masley

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Thinking about other industries like we think about data centers shows how impoverished the debate is

Clumsy, arbitrary environmental ideas ignore the incredible complexity of the systems modern society depends on

Aug 18 • Andy Masley

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I'm very skeptical that China has played a meaningful role in the US data center backlash

The evidence we have is pretty weak

Aug 8 • Andy Masley

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July 2026

Toward liberal environmentalism

The underlying normative claim of my environmental writing

Jul 10 • Andy Masley

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A conversation with my city planner friend Curtis on a recent data center moratorium in Holyoke MA

I recorded a conversation with my friend Curtis who until a few years ago was a city planner in Holyoke MA and had a lot of thoughts on a recent data…

Jul 7 • Andy Masley

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AI art as curation

Asking whether AI art involves real creativity mostly misses what's interesting about it

Jul 3 • Andy Masley

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June 2026

What does it mean for AI to be democratic?

Some pushback on a specific fuzzy idea with some ominous implications

Jun 21 • Andy Masley

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A plug for a tool I made to show how little most current AI chatbots add to your emissions and water use, with citations

Take this and share it, you don't need to mention me

Jun 11 • Andy Masley

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A simple trick to fix the data center debate

Remove the status quo bias by asking "would we spend this much in tax revenue to avoid the externalities of the data center?"

Jun 6 • Andy Masley

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Why I think panic about local impacts of data centers is just a panic

A request for counterexamples

Jun 4 • Andy Masley

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May 2026

A history of the data center panic - part 1

The creation of common wisdom pre-ChatGPT

May 20 • Andy Masley

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