I tend to default to "mistake theory", or blame good ol' cognitive bias, but this is clearly just incredibly deceitful on the part of MPU.
I'm sure some of it is clicks-driven, but I'm also getting a sense of otherwise intelligent people gradually drifting into a parallel reality - one where all of AI is completely useless, always wrong, always lying, only has negative impacts, is morally compromised in every aspect, and not worth any amount of money or power, let alone precious water. To them, it's all bad, it all needs to go, and everything needs to reset to 2022.
And then they act like that goal is almost within reach, if only they can find one more magic argument that puts them over the top. And for some reason, they've settled on water (which, where I'm from, is managed more as a nuisance than a scarce resource, so I'm doubly confused why they'd pick this as their spearpoint argument).
The part about data centers sometimes spurring upgrades to water delivery and infrastructure is especially interesting. Smaller problems sometimes don’t get solved until bigger ones — like how to provide for new industry — come along.
To try to leave with a better understanding, is the water issue (beyond construction) a completely made up thing, but electricity concerns are more legit? I can feel my brain wanting to round this off to "complaints about data centers are fake", but I sense that's wrong.
To give you an idea of what I'd guess (mostly based on trying to remember things from reading your posts) I'd say data centers:
- Use a lot of electricity, about ~25% of total usage
- Most of that is not AI, with AI only being 20% of data center usage.
- Streaming video is much, much more energy intensive than anything involving text.
- The biggest, scariest numbers for electricity usage are based on projections over the next 10 years from people who are predicting the AI will boom and automate most of the economy.
On the comparison to small craft breweries, I think you might have made a mistake. The source you link says the brewery uses 2,800 gallons/day, five days a week, which would equate to 730,000 gallons per year, not 7.3 million
So even increasing the water use by 10x here would still definitely qualify as small. It goes from 1/1000th to 1/100th of the maximum brewery size that can be considered small.
Youch, that twitter scruff, kind of knew they did not handle topics like this with nuance. Including IP laws, all the while steamrolling these issues with there videos playing to the crowd.
Yet moral panic pap like this, along with blind union character, leads to uncharitable strategys.
I'd guess it's been to politicized as twitterian political football. Only the experts will able to research through.
This tax revenue per gallons water thing doesn't sound right.
Biggest mistake is that data centers don't really have that much job creation, and industries like manufacturing have orders of magnitude more direct jobs, as well as stronger multiplier effects.
Not that the goal of policy should be to maximize tax revenue, but if you include income tax, which you might as well if you're going to make up statistics, I'm sure it paints a different picture
I am focusing on a specific claim they are repeatedly pushing and that's giving their viewers a radically incorrect understanding. I think factory farms are awful and harmful, but I shouldn't be allowed to make up lies about them either. If we can't look at claims about data centers individually, we can't analyze anything about them at all. This is all so obvious I don't understand why I even need to make the point.
Do you think that any of the locals in these videos believe that the question of data center water use is "short sighted"?
Can you point me to a single place where I’m being defamatory? Happy to change any unjustified language or incorrect claim. And yes I’m taking zero money from the tech sector and I’m very direct about that. I cite every claim I make here in the hyperlinks.
Thank you for standing up for sanity and honesty. I'm really sorry you have to deal with dishonest fanatics
I tend to default to "mistake theory", or blame good ol' cognitive bias, but this is clearly just incredibly deceitful on the part of MPU.
I'm sure some of it is clicks-driven, but I'm also getting a sense of otherwise intelligent people gradually drifting into a parallel reality - one where all of AI is completely useless, always wrong, always lying, only has negative impacts, is morally compromised in every aspect, and not worth any amount of money or power, let alone precious water. To them, it's all bad, it all needs to go, and everything needs to reset to 2022.
And then they act like that goal is almost within reach, if only they can find one more magic argument that puts them over the top. And for some reason, they've settled on water (which, where I'm from, is managed more as a nuisance than a scarce resource, so I'm doubly confused why they'd pick this as their spearpoint argument).
The part about data centers sometimes spurring upgrades to water delivery and infrastructure is especially interesting. Smaller problems sometimes don’t get solved until bigger ones — like how to provide for new industry — come along.
To try to leave with a better understanding, is the water issue (beyond construction) a completely made up thing, but electricity concerns are more legit? I can feel my brain wanting to round this off to "complaints about data centers are fake", but I sense that's wrong.
To give you an idea of what I'd guess (mostly based on trying to remember things from reading your posts) I'd say data centers:
- Use a lot of electricity, about ~25% of total usage
- Most of that is not AI, with AI only being 20% of data center usage.
- Streaming video is much, much more energy intensive than anything involving text.
- The biggest, scariest numbers for electricity usage are based on projections over the next 10 years from people who are predicting the AI will boom and automate most of the economy.
At this point text gen might’ve overtaken video, I’m really unsure. And a lot that happens in DCs is training. Everything else imo correct
I normally stick with Hanlon's razor but I might be convinced here
On the comparison to small craft breweries, I think you might have made a mistake. The source you link says the brewery uses 2,800 gallons/day, five days a week, which would equate to 730,000 gallons per year, not 7.3 million
Good catch. Beer'd can make about 6000 barrels of beer a year: https://www.exploremoregroton.com/doing-business/explore-more-success/p/item/2066/beerd-brewing-co
The Brewers Association (a leading trade organization in the U.S. craft beer space) defines a craft brewer as one that is “small, independent, and traditional,” where “small” means annual production of 6 million barrels or less. https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/craft-brewer-definition/
So even increasing the water use by 10x here would still definitely qualify as small. It goes from 1/1000th to 1/100th of the maximum brewery size that can be considered small.
Youch, that twitter scruff, kind of knew they did not handle topics like this with nuance. Including IP laws, all the while steamrolling these issues with there videos playing to the crowd.
Yet moral panic pap like this, along with blind union character, leads to uncharitable strategys.
I'd guess it's been to politicized as twitterian political football. Only the experts will able to research through.
MPU content is deceptive on… almost everything really
This tax revenue per gallons water thing doesn't sound right.
Biggest mistake is that data centers don't really have that much job creation, and industries like manufacturing have orders of magnitude more direct jobs, as well as stronger multiplier effects.
Not that the goal of policy should be to maximize tax revenue, but if you include income tax, which you might as well if you're going to make up statistics, I'm sure it paints a different picture
But income tax also has to be spent on the additional residents right?
Sure, not really sure how to evaluate that
“the central question of whether data centers have raised water prices at all, anywhere”
You are hyper-focused on a very narrow and short-sighted question.
I am focusing on a specific claim they are repeatedly pushing and that's giving their viewers a radically incorrect understanding. I think factory farms are awful and harmful, but I shouldn't be allowed to make up lies about them either. If we can't look at claims about data centers individually, we can't analyze anything about them at all. This is all so obvious I don't understand why I even need to make the point.
Do you think that any of the locals in these videos believe that the question of data center water use is "short sighted"?
Can you point me to a single place where I’m being defamatory? Happy to change any unjustified language or incorrect claim. And yes I’m taking zero money from the tech sector and I’m very direct about that. I cite every claim I make here in the hyperlinks.
lol you're clearly not commenting in good faith, try again