this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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I contain multitudes. I can protest the mass growth of datacentres for other industries as well as for AI.
I hadn't mentioned water usage, but since you bring it up, AI datacentres are being plopped down willy nilly and sucking up all the water from their local area, causing drought. Thats one stark difference between it and agriculture, which isn't having the same kind of local effect.
However, the US (and other) agriculture+ industry (again, I contain multitudes) doesn't get a pass. Estimates vary, but it looks like about 30-50% of US agriculture water usage goes to feed which is destined for livestock for the meat industry. I'd say that a person can be both against AI and an outspoken vegan against the meat industry, wouldn't you?
AI datacenters do not cause drought. There is no evidence to support that claim. And if you think you do have evidence, I would love to see the source.
And you totally can contain multitudes. People should be like that. But they in practice aren't. They follow what is trending. For example, if you look through your comment history how many comments will be pertaining to the US meat industry? How many to datacenters?
I would argue that you care a great deal more about one than the other. Which, going back to my original point, why is that 1% more important than the remaining 99% (or specifically the 50% that you care so much about)?
I don't have evidence on hand, but I have read compelling scholarly articles previously on the matter. Feel free to disregard this discussion point if that's a dealbreaker.
Your argument would be incorrect, as I have been vegetarian for over 2 decades and vegan for the last 5 years. I've just found that trying to sway people online about the meat industry is a fool's errand, whereas I have had decent success in having constructive conversations about the harms of AI. My meat industry related efforts are focused primarily on face to face interactions.
My stance on AI isn't based on what's "trending", except for the fact that it, as a pretty existential threat in its current trajectory of resource usage, job displacement, and market "growth", is rapidly starting to infest every aspect of my life. So yes, the trend that AI is following is causing my stance on it to be pertinent to a growing number of conversations.
I'm curious though, what would I have to be doing for you to believe that I'm... I dont know, "allowed"? to talk about AI's water usage impact?
I would say you are starting to approach an opposing view as treating yours as "wrong thought" when confronted. That is an absolutest method that is only ever used to justify what you think is right and vilify all else. It isn't a matter of what is "allowed". There is no restriction to that. But if you put out an idea or belief that can be deconstructed and proven incorrect/incomplete, then people have the right to speak against it.
There are lots of points you can make that are completely valid and evidentiary by nature, but AI water usage isn't one of them. It has been debunked to point that I would bucket it into the same group that "vaccines cause autism" fit into.
EDIT: Actually I wanted to point out something about the trending mention. You say you don't try to sway opinion on the meat industry but you do for AI because you get more traction. That's called audience alignment and is part of shared identity signaling (used algorithmically to define what is currently trending).
Goodness this is exhausting. I was not talking about literally being allowed to do something, that's why it is in quotation marks. I was responding to you making assertions about my online "debate footprint" and how you attempted to use my relatively lower rate of discussing the impact of the meat industry online as a way to debunk my assertion. My (rhetorical) question was, how would my online behaviour have had to change for you to be satisfied upon trawling my posting history that I am not against AI for "trending" reasons?
Many claims may or may not have been debunked about AI water usage. My assertion is that its value provided to society is absolutely dwarfed by its footprint. Same can be said of the meat industry, fast fashion, etc. I maintain that stance even at your proposed value of 1% of the total water usage of the US. 1% is a lot when you are talking about the entire country's consumption vs a single industry.
Your edit is wild. I'm "following trends" because I am selective about where I spend my time and energy based on where I am making the most impact? Would my stance somehow be more valid if I were arguing with brick walls online about other matters and not contributing at all to the causes I care about with that time and energy expenditure? Even if that wasn't a wild take, its just a genetic fallacy and doesn't serve to actually move the discussion forward.
Anyway, speaking of spending my time and energy in places I feel I'm actually accomplishing something, we've been talking past one another for a while now, so I'm gonna stop replying now. Have a good life.
Before AI, people had been advocating against the meat industry, and had pushed for reduced water usage in agriculture and homes, which led to stricter rules against lawns in drought-prone areas. It being drowned out by the advocacy against AI doesn't mean those voices disappeared, just that there are louder voices now.
I do enjoy the classic "they're doing bad so I can too" fallacy, though.
"they're doing bad so I can too"
I don't think you understand that the "so I can" part implies you. By virtue of even posting, YOU are pushing datacenter demand. These comments don't just live in the ether. The whole point is you are cherry picking what you are upset about based on what is trending (as you even mentioned). The point being you are MORE upset about the lesser evil, not that one is justified evil and the other isn't.
If you enjoy the Two Wrongs Make Right fallacy, then I think you'll love the Special Pleading fallacy.
I write software for a living. There's an enormous difference between a text-based service that functionally runs as a primitive CRUD and a compute-heavy service like LLM inferencing. The latter runs on servers that individually consume multiple kilowatts while the former can run on a raspberry pi but gains efficiency by sharing a server that consumes maybe 1kW with dozens of other people. Heck, Lemmy doesn't even need to do video transcoding like all the toxic social media sites do.
No, people are upset about all the evils. Being more or less upset about one or the other is irrelevant. You're just choosing to cherry pick one thing that everyone who's upset should ignore.
Can run on a raspberry pi and does run on a raspberry pi are two different things. I don't think raspberry pis are the solution here. I'm not cherry picking either as both are clear evils. That is the point. Current non-AI datacenters are using more power in total than AI datacenters. That may (and likely will) change, but the argument that AI datacenters are destroying the environment when the other is destroying it even more (but let's ignore that one) is moronic by nature.
That by definition isn't cherry picking. It's pointing out the logical fallacy in popular thought.
I work in devops. There is little difference in current overall consumption rates.
Current non-AI datacenters run all of every other service on the internet.
Current AI datacenters run one class of services.
This is like comparing totals vs per capita.
I'm confused, it seems we agree with eachother - did you mean to reply to the person I replied to, or were you just adding on to my point? :D
Just adding to your comment lol.
I'm hesitant to jump in here, seeing how far off the rails this went, but AI Data Centers have a plethora of problems. Potable water depletion (The Dalles, OR, USA), Exhaust (Boxtown near Memphis, TN, USA), Noise and lowering water tables (Sydney, Australia). The issues they present over "old school" data centers are amplified because of the speed they arise in communities, resources they use, and power (as in influence) disparities that are part of the package.
They are being built rapidly, with little oversight or research, and suck up enormous resources that "old school" data centers did not. Toss in the ethical concerns as wide ranging as stealing art styles to destroying books; to be normative, that tends to piss people off.
To get us back on rails, all of that contributes to me using theater of the mind rather than Gemini to draw me a portrait for goblin Yipyip in my campaigns.