That guy is held up as some kind of libertarian hero when he really was a mentally disturbed psycho
Those two things go hand-in-hand a lot more than I am comfortable with.
The myth that AI data centers are using up all the water comes from some incorrect citations that have then swept through sensationalist and poorly fact-checked (looking at you Washington Post) news stories. One major contributor was Karen Hat's "Empire of AI" which overstated the usage by three orders of magnitude. (She did publicly correct that, but you can guess how many people are interested in the non-sensational numbers).
For proportion, California almond growers use 90x the fresh water of all US data centers combined.
Which is not to say that a data center can't still be a strain for some communities, but not in a more extraordinary way than e.g. the local university wanting to maintain a golf course.
But "AI IS SUCKING UP ALL THE WATER PEOPLE NEED TO SURVIVE!!!" is a wonderfully concrete - if completely false - complaint for people uneasy about the recent advances in technology to latch onto
For what it's worth, the Blackstone-owned company says its data centers use a closed-loop cooling system that does not consume water for cooling. The reason for last year's high water use, according to QTS, was the temporary construction work such as concrete, dust control, and site preparation.
Once the campus is fully operational, it should only use a small amount of water for things like bathrooms and kitchens. But that point could still be years away, as construction and expansion in Fayetteville may continue for another three to five years.
So this has nothing to do with the building being a "data center" at all. The water used if for construction and it could just as well be a stadium or an apartment complex. But since people are talking about data centers using water we'll take any opportunity to jump in on that even if it's amplifying a misconception by mentioning it in adjacency to unrelated events.
Jensen Huang to college grads: "Run. Don't walk" toward AI
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/...
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told graduates at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh yesterday that demand for AI infrastructure is creating a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to reindustrialize America and restore the nation's capacity to build."
Why it matters: With many college grads fearing AI could obliterate their career dreams, Huang pointed to boundless opportunity as a "new industry is being born. A new era of science and discovery is beginning
Nvidia, which makes AI chips, is the world's most valuable company. Huang told 5,800 recipients of undergraduate and graduate degrees that the AI buildout will require plumbers, electricians, ironworkers, and builders for chip factories, data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities.
"No generation has entered the world with more powerful tools â" or greater opportunities â" than you," he said. "We are all standing at the same starting line. This is your moment to help shape what comes next. So run. Don't walk."
"Every major technological revolution in history created fear alongside opportunity," Huang added. "When society engages technology openly, responsibly, and optimistically, we expand human potential far more than we diminish it."
Full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's he's got enough education to know better. Same with the anti trans crap where I know he can read the science.
It means he's not stupid he's lying to me
Can you answer the question of why he would lie about either exactly? What is his sourced motivation? How does that stack against his incentive to not blithely throw away his career as an accomplished academic?
The actual explanation is much simpler. He is a world-reknown biologist, not a computer scientist or philosopher. He sounds dumb talking about what he is not an expert in.
You (I assume) have some developed expertise in the AI tooling. You (quite obviously) do not have any expertise in biology, or even the context of Dawkins statements you are alluding to, so you sound at least as dumb characterizing what he has said as "anti-trans crap."
It would be like employees of a gun manufacturer unionizing to force their employer to produce children's toys instead.
If they were employees of a toy company which got bought out by a manufacturing company which then started manufacturing guns using tubes which were previously destined to be part of a toy.
YouTube does already do something to the audio. I notice it when streaming guitar and vocals: the sound which comes out of YouTube emphasises the guitar, so if I balance listening to the mixer feed I have to balance the guitar low.
...like "Tell me about Tiananmen Square" or "Tell me about Xinjiang".
Is this what you want for the future?
My thoughts back when R1 came out:
Where do passkeys come into this? It's the organisation that prints ID cards and passports, not an organisation where people open an account into which they will later want to log in.
Principle of Oddmatches. If you have a million samples, you can expect to find one-in-a-million incidents.
So I gave this story no credence until The Atlantic denied it.
It's interesting how these multi-billion-dollar AI companies all have such remarkably terrible UI.
Everything that can be invented has been invented. -- Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899
