New post andymasley.substack.com/p/slop-impli...

New post as a round-up of my last few on water, plus a few new national statistics andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-wat...

"The far-right authoritarian government is using powerful AI systems to surveil people!" "Yeah, and what makes it worse is that each time they use it, a few droplets of water are evaporated!" "...uh yeah sure that too I guess"

First part of a series I'll write on data centers and electricity: andymasley.substack.com/p/data-cente...

Every day I find a new way of trying to get across just how ridiculously fake the problem of AI water use is

New post! andymasley.substack.com/p/what-a-dat...

The two most common pieces of feedback on my blog posts are that they're way too long and they conveniently leave out a single random key detail that makes the reader take the rest less seriously, which seem to pull in opposite directions

From my recent TED Talk

During a government shutdown it's important to remember that the monopoly on violence has been lost and we need to build elaborate horizontal mutual aid networks and use illegibility as a tool to prevent local concentrations of power and the re-emergence of hierarchy

I'm pretty convinced that most confusion about data centers would be solved if we just started calling them "Big computers" because a lot of people seem to think they're something completely different from that.

Electricity price rises from data centers do in fact be real. I'm pretty worried that 1) The correct framing here is "We should be building out renewable infrastructure instead of limiting a new industry." 2) We're not actually building it out enough.

A lot of things to pull from this list to show how dishonestly More Perfect Union has presented the water issue, but my personal favorite is this section.

MPU has become one of the biggest sources of false ideas about data center water use on the internet andymasley.substack.com/p/more-perfe...

More Perfect Union videos on data centers are basically the most straight-up misinformation directed at people left-of-center that I can remember watching, it's really wild. They've getting huge audiences and seem to be influencing the conversation a lot.

This is the best AI music I've made I think, shoegaze depends more on cool overwhelming sounds which works well for Suno www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kefv...

The "Dissident right"? More like dis isn't right

You're definitely going to get accused of either anthropocentrism or anthropomorphism by 50% of the population, so you gotta just bite the bullet on one of them, and for me personally I wouldn't be caught dead getting called anthropocentric

If I could have everyone read exactly one of my climate posts this one would be it open.substack.com/pub/andymasl...

I can't think of any other place where "Defund X" would have communicated "Carefully reallocate resources to be maximally effective at solving the problem X is attempting to solve"

I took a moment to organize everything I've written about AI and the environment into a single clear landing page: andymasley.substack.com/p/ai-and-the...

Elon Musk and several of the largest accounts on Twitter are doing everything they possibly can in this moment to focus the violent retribution people are braying for right now towards trans people. It is IMPERATIVE to be loud ally right now and defend the trans community with our whole chest.

Goofy post andymasley.substack.com/p/ai-music-i...

"Many people support political violence, if by that you mean physical harm that is caused in literally any way by any political policy" is one of the absolute dumbest moves that gets respect online

Circled back on my OG using chatgpt isn't bad for the environment post to add a lot of updated data and arguments. It's even more comprehensive now andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sh...

Wheeee

Responding to some accusations that my ChatGPT numbers don't include the "real, hidden costs" of a prompt andymasley.substack.com/p/whats-the-...

The thing I find myself defending in AI debates, that feels the strangest to have to defend in the first place, is the idea that it's not fascist to generate mediocre art, and people have the right to slop if they so desire it.

Iron law: No one knows what a p-value is

the math/logic got so big, something new and fuzzy emerged at scale. i think that's beautiful. the same way natural life emerged from deterministic chemistry.

Every time I read about the Puritans I’m left thinking they were “my guys”

Was listening to Adam Conover interviewing on "Empire of AI" and there's a moment where the author says, like "Silicon Valley thinks they should be in control of AI, because some actors could be much worse" and Adam says "Who could possibly be worse than Silicon Valley?" Seems a little provincial.

Someone told me recently about a friend of theirs grimly announcing "I saw a statistic the other day that Taylor Swift is using as much energy as the United States"

Reading Edz's How to argue with an AI booster FAQ and, like, how is this an own of what boosters say? "Inference isn't what happens when you enter a query into ChatGPT, it's what the AI does to answer the prompt"... this whole thing seems pretty confused.

For my next trick, I convince everyone that Jevons' Paradox in AI is Good Actually andymasley.substack.com/p/jevons-par...

"We cannot pursue growth at any cost" and "AI companies aren't even making money!" Also a weird combo

Man I hadn't actually seen any Ed Z content before (think he name searches so want to avoid that). This was maybe some of the lowest strangest debate tactics I've seen on what should've been a pretty straightforward conversation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxyN...

I don't think it makes sense to believe both: "AI is such a terrible generic writer that it makes every document it touches worse to read" and "AI models are so compelling to talk to that they're driving people insane and are irresponsible to give to the public"

Worried I'm developing a mild bias against believing anyone who's a compelling speaker

I've always really hated being served in general. Feels like the person on the other end of the mic in a Taco Bell drive through could be living a better life somewhere else. I'd really prefer most food service jobs to be automated to free up people's time.

Median person who disagrees with my product recommendations:

Behold, the future (according to the IEA)

Love a friendly response 🤝

By this methodology, Elon Musk powering his data center with smog belching mobile turbines is the most water-friendly AI company in the business, whereas if he bought 0 carbon power from a nearby TVA dam it would be considered 40x worse than burning coal. www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wron...

The commonly cited AI water usage statistics are based on a methodology where, if your data center buys green energy from a hydroelectric dam (as lots do, including the hyperscalers), then “natural evaporation of the water from the lake behind the dam” is counted as that data center’s water use.

Finished this early actually andymasley.substack.com/p/mapping-th...

Post coming tomorrow morning. Why I'm unsure, but inclined to think AI is going to be net good for the climate.

Wrote a quick simple take on why I think AI (deep learning specifically) is valuable. The question comes up enough in conversations about AI and the environment that I wanted to make it clear why I'm excited about it andymasley.substack.com/p/the-core-s...