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This is a bit of a dead horse, but the magnitude of how off the public is on this continues to amaze me. Pete Buttigieg did a Tulsa town hall a week or so ago w

This is a bit of a dead horse, but the magnitude of how off the public is on this continues to amaze me. Pete Buttigieg did a Tulsa town hall a week or so ago where someone cited it taking "10,000 gallons of water just to generate one photo".[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY&t=1h5m43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY&t=1h5m43s

alephnerd 5mo ago
That's populism for ya, and it's sadly extremely effective. Meanwhile, both China and India are giving free electricity, providing dollar-for-dollar capex subsidizes, and 25 year tax exemptions to build data centers [0][1]. Love how HN wants to strangle the infrastructure that underlies our entire industry and why HNers get paid. It really highlights how much of the opposition to AI comes from the "chattering classes" and other white collar types as is constantly seen in polling [2][3]. It's funny seeing people who are also part of my party but told coal miners and autoworkers to "learn to code", treated blue collar workers derisively, and ignored concerns by employees in manufacturing and skilled trades which led them to shift to the right now act the exact same way. Edit: can't reply > AI Datacenters are not how all or probably even most HNers get paid Most data centers colo multiple types of compute, not just those dedicated to inference or model training. Additonally, strangling the economics of the infrastructure layer makes entire ecosystems move abroad. You saw similar opposition to semiconductors fabs back in the early 2010s in the US, and the entire ecosystem virtually out within a decade until the CHIPS act was signed and executed on. Same with nuclear power in Germany and GreenTech in much of the America. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-offers-tech-giants-cheap-power-boost-domestic-ai-chips-ft-reports-2025-11-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-offers-tech... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-gives-20-year-tax-holiday-foreign-firms-using-local-data-centres-2026-02-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-gives-20-year-tax-... [2] - https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/25/top-earners-are-more-afraid-for-their-employment-than-lower-income-as-ai-threat-increases.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/25/top-earners-are-more-afr... [3] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/which-u-s-workers-are-more-exposed-to-ai-on-their-jobs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/which-u...
- testfoobar 5mo ago
  Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. So whether populist outrage is expressed through fears of job losses, higher energy prices or concerns over water usage, IMHO, wealth inequality is the cause.
  - bluGill 5mo ago
    The economy is down, and the fad is blame AI so that is what everyone is doing. The last downturn there was a different fad that people blamed it on - but the real root cause was always the economy and not the fad.
    - teamonkey 5mo ago
      It’s understandable that people blame AI for economic issues when so may CEOs are publicly stating that “increased efficiencies due to AI” is the reason for laying off staff.
      - bluGill 5mo ago
        They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well. Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them. Of course in reality we cannot know if AI has really increased efficiency - we only have short term measures at best which we know from experience are often wrong. (most often because there are many ways you can make a shortcut today that will kill your long term)
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
msla 5mo ago
The other part of this problem is the idea that if you disagree with someone about the facts you're interpreted as disagreeing with them about the thing they're mad about: You disagree that AI somehow destroys fifty billion-trillion gallons of pure water every time someone asks Claude something, therefore you're fully in favor of Grok making nudes of underage girls. Some people get an Angry. They love their Angry, and nobody will take it from them.
gensym 5mo ago
Honestly, it's weird to me how fixated both sides are on water. People against data centers overestimate water usage, but people who think we should build as many as we can, as fast as we can seem the think that "actually they don't use that much water" somehow negates the more real issues with them.
- JuniperMesos 5mo ago
  What are the real issues with them in your estimation? Anti-data-center people bring up water use as a reason why the government should legally prevent data centers from being built, and pro-data-center people bring up water use to argue against the anti-data-center position. I agree that the anti-data-center people are overestimating water usage, as well as the degree to which the amount of water data centers do use is a problem; and that they're doing so because they have some other objection to data centers that doesn't sound as convincing. It would be better to talk about those issues.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago
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- conductr 5mo ago
  Water is pretty scarce in some of the places they want to build these things. I know people in West Texas that own ranches that have been approached by the datacenter people and it’s basically a desert, oil industry consumes a lot of their water, and the public water they get in the city smells toxic, the well water is flammable. So water use is concerning and I don’t think there’s any reliable or trustworthy source for them to use as a gauge for what to expect so they have to ask.
- anubistheta 5mo ago
  Because it is an easy concrete way to stir up reactionary sentiment. The real issues are debatable but complex. But the common folk can all visualize a gallon of water.

alephnerd 5mo ago

That's populism for ya, and it's sadly extremely effective. Meanwhile, both China and India are giving free electricity, providing dollar-for-dollar capex subsidizes, and 25 year tax exemptions to build data centers [0][1]. Love how HN wants to strangle the infrastructure that underlies our entire industry and why HNers get paid. It really highlights how much of the opposition to AI comes from the "chattering classes" and other white collar types as is constantly seen in polling [2][3]. It's funny seeing people who are also part of my party but told coal miners and autoworkers to "learn to code", treated blue collar workers derisively, and ignored concerns by employees in manufacturing and skilled trades which led them to shift to the right now act the exact same way. Edit: can't reply > AI Datacenters are not how all or probably even most HNers get paid Most data centers colo multiple types of compute, not just those dedicated to inference or model training. Additonally, strangling the economics of the infrastructure layer makes entire ecosystems move abroad. You saw similar opposition to semiconductors fabs back in the early 2010s in the US, and the entire ecosystem virtually out within a decade until the CHIPS act was signed and executed on. Same with nuclear power in Germany and GreenTech in much of the America. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-offers-tech-giants-cheap-power-boost-domestic-ai-chips-ft-reports-2025-11-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-offers-tech... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-gives-20-year-tax-holiday-foreign-firms-using-local-data-centres-2026-02-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-gives-20-year-tax-... [2] - https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/25/top-earners-are-more-afraid-for-their-employment-than-lower-income-as-ai-threat-increases.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/25/top-earners-are-more-afr... [3] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/which-u-s-workers-are-more-exposed-to-ai-on-their-jobs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/which-u...

testfoobar 5mo ago
Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. So whether populist outrage is expressed through fears of job losses, higher energy prices or concerns over water usage, IMHO, wealth inequality is the cause.
- bluGill 5mo ago
  The economy is down, and the fad is blame AI so that is what everyone is doing. The last downturn there was a different fad that people blamed it on - but the real root cause was always the economy and not the fad.
  - teamonkey 5mo ago
    It’s understandable that people blame AI for economic issues when so may CEOs are publicly stating that “increased efficiencies due to AI” is the reason for laying off staff.
    - bluGill 5mo ago
      They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well. Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them. Of course in reality we cannot know if AI has really increased efficiency - we only have short term measures at best which we know from experience are often wrong. (most often because there are many ways you can make a shortcut today that will kill your long term)
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]

msla 5mo ago

The other part of this problem is the idea that if you disagree with someone about the facts you're interpreted as disagreeing with them about the thing they're mad about: You disagree that AI somehow destroys fifty billion-trillion gallons of pure water every time someone asks Claude something, therefore you're fully in favor of Grok making nudes of underage girls. Some people get an Angry. They love their Angry, and nobody will take it from them.

gensym 5mo ago

Honestly, it's weird to me how fixated both sides are on water. People against data centers overestimate water usage, but people who think we should build as many as we can, as fast as we can seem the think that "actually they don't use that much water" somehow negates the more real issues with them.

JuniperMesos 5mo ago
What are the real issues with them in your estimation? Anti-data-center people bring up water use as a reason why the government should legally prevent data centers from being built, and pro-data-center people bring up water use to argue against the anti-data-center position. I agree that the anti-data-center people are overestimating water usage, as well as the degree to which the amount of water data centers do use is a problem; and that they're doing so because they have some other objection to data centers that doesn't sound as convincing. It would be better to talk about those issues.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
conductr 5mo ago
Water is pretty scarce in some of the places they want to build these things. I know people in West Texas that own ranches that have been approached by the datacenter people and it’s basically a desert, oil industry consumes a lot of their water, and the public water they get in the city smells toxic, the well water is flammable. So water use is concerning and I don’t think there’s any reliable or trustworthy source for them to use as a gauge for what to expect so they have to ask.
anubistheta 5mo ago
Because it is an easy concrete way to stir up reactionary sentiment. The real issues are debatable but complex. But the common folk can all visualize a gallon of water.