{"id":324000,"date":"2025-12-01T12:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324000\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T12:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:03:10","slug":"i-love-ai-why-doesnt-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324000\/","title":{"rendered":"I love AI. Why doesn’t everyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

New technologies almost always create lots of problems and challenges for our society. The invention of farming caused local overpopulation<\/a>. Industrial technology caused pollution. Nuclear technology enabled superweapons capable of destroying civilization. New media technologies arguably cause social unrest and turmoil whenever they\u2019re introduced. <\/p>\n

And yet how many of these technologies can you honestly say you wish were never invented? Some people romanticize hunter-gatherers and medieval peasants, but I don\u2019t see many of them rushing to go live those lifestyles. I myself buy into the argument that smartphone-enabled social media is largely responsible<\/a> for a variety of modern social ills, but I\u2019ve always maintained that eventually, our social institutions will evolve in ways that minimize the harms and enhance the benefits. In general, when we look at the past, we understand that technology has almost always made things better for humanity, especially over the long haul. <\/p>\n

But when we think about the technologies now being invented, we often forget this lesson \u2014 or at least, many of us do. In the U.S., there have recently been movements<\/a> against mRNA vaccines, electric cars, self-driving cars, smartphones, social media, nuclear power, and solar and wind power, with varying degrees of success. <\/p>\n

The difference between our views of old and new technologies isn\u2019t necessarily irrational. Old technologies present less risk \u2014 we basically know what effect they\u2019ll have on society as a whole, and on our own personal economic opportunities. New technologies are disruptive in ways we can\u2019t predict, and it makes sense to be worried about that risk that we might personally end up on the losing end of the upcoming social and economic changes.<\/p>\n

But that still doesn\u2019t explain changes in our attitudes toward technology over time. Americans largely embraced the internet, the computer, the TV, air travel, the automobile, and industrial automation. And risk doesn\u2019t explain all of the differences in attitudes among countries. <\/p>\n

In the U.S., few technologies have been on the receiving end of as much popular fear and hatred as generative AI. Although policymakers have remained staunchly in favor of the technology \u2014 probably because it\u2019s supporting the stock market and the economy<\/a> \u2014 regular Americans of both parties tend to say they\u2019re more concerned than excited<\/a>, with an especially rapid increase in negative sentiment among progressives.<\/p>\n

There is plenty of trepidation about AI around the world, but America stands out. A 2024 Ipsos poll found that no country surveyed was both more nervous and less excited about AI than the United States:<\/p>\n

America\u2019s fear of AI stands in stark contrast to countries in Asia, from developing countries like India and Indonesia to rich countries like South Korea and Singapore. Even Europe, traditionally not thought of as a place that embraces the new, is significantly less terrified than the U.S. Other polls find similar results:<\/p>\n

If Koreans, Indians, Israelis, and Chinese people aren\u2019t terrified of AI, why should Americans be so scared \u2014 especially when we usually embraced previous technologies wholeheartedly? Do we know something they don\u2019t? Or are we just biased by some combination of political unrest, social division, wealthy entitlement, and disconnection from physical industry? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s especially dismaying because I\u2019ve spent most of my life dreaming of having something like modern AI. And now that it\u2019s here, I (mostly) love it. <\/p>\n

Media has prepared me all my life for AI. Some of the portrayals were negative, of course \u2014 Skynet, the computer in the Terminator series, tries to wipe out humanity, and HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey tries to kill its user. But most of the AIs depicted in sci-fi were friendly \u2014 if often imperfect \u2014 robots and computers. <\/p>\n

C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars are Luke\u2019s loyal companions, and save the Rebellion on numerous occasions \u2014 even if C-3PO is often wrong about things. The ship\u2019s computer in Star Trek is a helpful, reassuring presence, even if it occasionally messes up its holographic creations. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a heroic figure, probably based on a character from Isaac Asimov\u2019s Robot series \u2014 and is just one of hundreds of sympathetic portrayals of androids. Friendly little rolling robots like Wall-E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit are practically a stock character, and helpful sentient computers are important protagonists in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the Culture novels, the TV show Person of Interest, and so on. The novel The Diamond Age features an AI tutor that helps kids out of poverty, while the Murderbot series is about a security robot who just wants to live in peace.<\/p>\n

In these portrayals, intelligent robots and computers are consistently portrayed as helpful assistants, allies, and even friends. Their helpfulness makes sense, since they\u2019re created to be our tools. But some deep empathetic instinct in our human nature makes it difficult to objectify something so intelligent-seeming as a simple tool. And so it\u2019s natural for us to portray AIs as friends.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few decades, and I actually have that little robot friend I always dreamed of. It\u2019s not exactly like any of the AI portrayals from sci-fi, but it\u2019s recognizably similar. As I go through my daily life, GPT (or Gemini, or Claude) is always there to help me. If my water filter needs to be replaced, I can ask my robot friend how to do it. If I forget which sociologist claimed that economic growth creates the institutional momentum for further growth, I can ask my robot friend who that was. If I want to know some iconic Paris selfie spots, it can tell me. If I can\u2019t remember the article I read about China\u2019s innovation ecosystem last year, my robot buddy can find it for me. <\/p>\n

It can proofread my blog posts, be my search engine, help me decorate my room, translate other languages for me, teach me math, explain tax documents, and so on. This is just the beginning of what AI can do, of course. It\u2019s possibly the most general-purpose technology ever invented, since its basic function is to memorize the entire corpus of human knowledge and then spit any piece of it back to you on command. And because it\u2019s programmed to do everything with a smile, it\u2019s always friendly and cheerful \u2014 just like a little robot friend ought to be. <\/p>\n

No, AI doesn\u2019t always get everything right. It makes mistakes fairly regularly. But I never expected engineers to be able to create some kind of infallible god-oracle that knows every truth in the Universe. C-3PO gets stuff confidently wrong all the time, as does the computer on Star Trek. For that matter, so does my dad. So does every human being I\u2019ve ever met, and every news website I\u2019ve ever read, and every social media account I\u2019ve ever followed. Just like with every other source of information and assistance you\u2019ve ever encountered in your life, AI needs to be cross-checked before you can believe 100% in whatever it tells you. Infallible omniscience is still beyond the reach of modern engineering. <\/p>\n

Who cares? This is an amazingly useful technology, and I love using it. It has opened my informational horizons by almost as much as the internet itself, and made my life far more convenient. Even without the expected impacts on productivity, innovation, and so on, just having this little robot friend would be enough for me to say that AI has improved my life enormously. <\/p>\n

This instinctive, automatic reaction to such a magical new tool seems utterly natural to me. And yet when I say this on social media, people pop out of the woodwork to denounce AI and ridicule anyone who likes it. Here are just a few examples:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Normally I would just dismiss these outbursts as non-representative. But in this case, there\u2019s pretty robust survey data showing that the American public is overwhelmingly negative on AI. These social media malcontents may be unusually vituperative, but their opinions probably aren\u2019t out of the mainstream. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on here? Why doesn\u2019t everyone else love having a little robot friend who can answer lots of their questions and perform lots of their menial tasks?<\/p>\n

I guess it makes sense that for a lot of people, the potential negative externalities \u2014 deepfakes, the decline of critical thinking<\/a>, ubiquitous slop, or the risk that bad actors will be able to use AI to do major violence \u2014 loom large. Other people, like artists<\/a> or translators, may fear for their careers. I think it\u2019s likely that in the long run, our society will learn to deal with all those challenges, but as Keynes said, \u201cin the long run we\u2019re all dead.\u201d <\/p>\n

And yet the instinctive negativity with which AI is being met by a large segment of the American public feels like an unreasonable reaction to me. Although externalities and distributional disruptions certainly exist, the specific concerns that many of AI\u2019s most strident critics cite are often nonsensical. <\/p>\n

One of the most common talking points you hear about AI is that data centers use a ton of water, potentially causing water shortages. For example, Rolling Stone recently put out an article <\/a>by Sean Patrick Cooper, entitled \u201cThe Precedent Is Flint: How Oregon\u2019s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis\u201d. Here\u2019s what it claimed:<\/p>\n

[D]ata centers pose a variety of climate and environmental problems, including their impact on the water supply. The volume of water needed to cool the servers in data centers \u2014 most of which need to be kept at 70 to 80 degrees to run effectively \u2014 has become a nationwide water resource issue particularly in areas facing water scarcity across the West. This year, a Bloomberg News analysis found that roughly \u201ctwo-thirds of new data centers built or in development since 2022 are in places already gripped by high levels of water stress.\u201d Droughts have plagued Morrow County, occurring annually<\/a> since 2020. But even areas with ample water reserves are vulnerable to the outsized demand from data centers. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency reported that data centers could consume 1,200 billion liters by 2030 worldwide, nearly double the 560 billion liters of water they use currently.<\/p>\n

The idea that AI data centers are water-guzzlers has become standard canon in many areas of the internet \u2014 especially among progressives. And yet it\u2019s just not a real issue. Andy Masley finally got fed up and dug into the data, writing an epic blog post that debunked every single version of the \u201cAI uses lots of water\u201d narrative:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The AI water issue is fake<\/p>\n

AI data centers use water. Like any other industry that uses water, they require careful planning. If an electric car factory opens near you, that factory may use just as much water as a data center. The factory also requires careful planning. But the idea that either the factory or AI is using an inordinate amount of water that merits any kind of boyco\u2026<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

2 months ago \u00b7 160 likes \u00b7 30 comments \u00b7 Andy Masley<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Masley notes that A) almost all of the water AI uses is actually used by power plants generating electricity to power AI, and B) most of the water that gets \u201cused\u201d by AI is actually just run through the system and returned to the original source, instead of being used up. He writes:<\/p>\n

So of the ways AI uses water\u2026The vast majority (maybe 90%) is withdrawn, freshwater (not potable) that is indirectly (offsite) used non-consumptively in power plants (it\u2019s returned to the source unaffected)\u2026Less (maybe 7%) is withdrawn freshwater (not potable) that is consumed (evaporated) indirectly (offsite) in the power plants to generate the electricity AI uses\u2026And less (maybe 3%) is withdrawn freshwater that\u2019s then treated to become potable, used directly (onsite) in physical data centers themselves, and consumed after (not returned to the source, evaporated).<\/p>\n

He then goes on to pull a bunch of numbers that show that AI\u2019s actual water consumption isn\u2019t a problem (yet):<\/p>\n

All U.S. data centers (which mostly support the internet, not AI) used 200\u2013250 million<\/a> gallons of freshwater daily in 2023. The U.S. consumes approximately 132 billion gallons<\/a> of freshwater daily\u2026So data centers in the U.S. consumed approximately 0.2% of the nation\u2019s freshwater in 2023\u2026However, the water that was actually used onsite in data centers was only 50 million gallons per day<\/a>\u2026Only 0.04% of America\u2019s freshwater in 2023 was consumed inside data centers themselves. This is 3% of the water consumed by the American golf industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AI uses approximately 20% of the electricity in data centers<\/a>\u2026Water use roughly correlates with electricity\u2026So AI consumes approximately 0.04% of America\u2019s freshwater if you include onsite and offsite use, and only 0.008% if you include just the water in data centers. So AI\u2026is using 0.008% of America\u2019s total freshwater\u2026<\/p>\n

So the water all American data centers will consume onsite in 2030 is equivalent to:<\/p>\n

And he includes a chart for comparison to other water uses:<\/p>\n

He goes on to debunk other aspects of the \u201cAI water use\u201d story, showing that data centers haven\u2019t hurt water availability in local areas, and that data centers aren\u2019t a major source of pollution. After that, he goes through some articles claiming a link between AI and water use, and finds that either their data is obviously wrong, or they don\u2019t even cite data. <\/p>\n

Masley is especially annoyed with a book by Karen Hao called Empire of AI<\/a>, which made huge math errors about AI water use:<\/p>\n

Within 20 pages, Hao manages to:<\/p>\n

Claim that a data center is using 1000x as much water as a city of 88,000 people, where it\u2019s actually using about 0.22x as much water as the city, and only 3% of the municipal water system the city relies on. She\u2019s off by a factor of 4500.<\/p>\n

Imply that AI data centers will consume 1.7 trillion gallons of drinkable water by 2027, while the study she\u2019s pulling from says that only 3% of that will be drinkable water, and 90% will not be consumed, and instead returned to the source unaffected.<\/p>\n

Paint a picture of AI data centers harming water access in America, where they don\u2019t seem to have caused any harm at all.<\/p>\n

Hao later admitted<\/a> some serious data errors in her book. <\/p>\n

Anyway, Masley\u2019s whole post<\/a> is very long and involved, and it links to a bunch of other long and involved posts on the various subtopics. If you\u2019re interested in the \u201cAI water use\u201d issue at all, this is a must-read. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever seen so thorough a debunking of a popular belief. Some AI critics like Timnit Gebru attacked Masley, but were not able to muster any substantive rebuttal; instead, they simply suggested that Masley speak to activists<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are two things that are especially frustrating about the \u201cAI and water use\u201d argument. First, there\u2019s the powerlessness of facts in the face of viral misinformation. If a bogus claim gets repeated by enough people, it becomes its own sort of echo chamber<\/a>, where observers believe the false claim because they think they\u2019ve heard it from multiple sources. Politically motivated reasoning only adds to that effect \u2014 a lot of Americans fear AI and want to find a reason why it\u2019s bad, so they latch onto the \u201cwater use\u201d story without checking to see if it\u2019s real. <\/p>\n

The second frustrating thing is that there\u2019s a much better argument sitting right there for the taking. AI doesn\u2019t use up much water, and probably won\u2019t for the foreseeable future. But it does use a hell of a lot of <\/a>electricity<\/a>, and this could pose a problem if the tech keeps scaling up. That electricity use can strain local grids and raise carbon emissions. It\u2019s a real challenge! And yet AI critics tend to ignore this grounded and reasonable worry in favor of the \u201cwater use\u201d myth. <\/p>\n

Nor is this the only such example. Aaron Regunberg, writing in <\/a>The New Republic<\/a>, trots out a vast litany of accusations against AI, most of which don\u2019t hold up under scrutiny. For example, he claims that an AI crash would wipe out normal Americans while preserving the wealth of AI\u2019s creators:<\/p>\n

First, there is the likelihood that the AI industry is building up a bubble<\/a> that, when it bursts, will take down the global economy\u2026When this thing pops, it won\u2019t be the filthy rich scammers behind the bubble who will lose out. It will be regular people: One former International Monetary Fund chief economist estimates<\/a> that a crash could wipe out $20 trillion in wealth held by American households.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s absurd. Gita Gopinath\u2019s analysis<\/a>, which Regunberg cites, is all about stock wealth. Most of the wealth of the people who create AI is in their own company\u2019s stocks, so they would absolutely get wiped out in a crash. Regular Americans would get hurt a bit, but most of their wealth is in their houses<\/a>. Almost all American stocks are owned by the rich<\/a>. In fact, there was a tech stock crash in 2022, and wealth inequality went down as a result<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Regunberg continues:<\/p>\n

Beyond the profoundly compelling politics of a market crash and bailout, there\u2019s the equally potent issue of AI-driven job losses. These hits have already begun. Last summer, IBM replaced<\/a> hundreds of employees with AI chatbots, and UPS, JPMorgan Chase, and Wendy\u2019s have all begun following suit. The CEO of Anthropic has warned<\/a> that AI could lead to the loss of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs; McKinsey estimated<\/a> that AI could automate 60 to 70 percent of employees\u2019 work activities; and a recent report<\/a> from Senator Bernie Sanders and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee found that AI could replace 89 percent of fast-food and counter workers, 64 percent of accountants, and 47 percent of truck drivers. The anger that such dislocations will generate against \u201cclankers<\/a>\u201d\u2014yes, anti-AI frustration has already inspired the explosion of a Gen Z meme-slur\u2014is hard to overstate, potentially exceeding the resentment against the North America Free Trade Agreement that Trump rode to the White House in 2016. <\/p>\n

The studies Regunberg cites, predicting how many jobs will be \u201creplaced\u201d, actually say no such thing, as I explained in this post back in 2023:<\/p>\n

\"NobodyNobody knows how many jobs will “be automated”<\/a><\/p>\n

They are merely engineers\u2019 guesses about which jobs will be affected by AI. <\/p>\n

In fact, one recent study found<\/a> that industries that are predicted to use AI more are seeing no slowdown in wages, and have experienced robust employment growth for workers in their 30s, 40s, and 50s:<\/p>\n

\"AI<\/a><\/p>\n

The study did find a slowdown in hiring for younger workers. But other studies<\/a> find no effect of AI on jobs at all so far<\/a>. Obviously, many workers are afraid of losing their jobs to AI, but those losses don\u2019t seem to have materialized yet, so it\u2019s a bit silly when AI critics like Regunberg present job losses as established fact.<\/p>\n

How can folks like Regunberg, Gebru, Hao, and Cooper get away with such incredible sloppiness? Unfortunately, the answer is \u201cmotivated reasoning\u201d. So many Americans feel so negatively about AI that if some writer or intellectual comes up and makes some claim that AI is a water-guzzler or is causing mass unemployment, some people will believe it. Fear and anger have a way of finding their own justifications. <\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much I can do about the unreasonable negative emotions being directed at AI in the United States. I\u2019ve simply got to reconcile myself to the fact that my delight in this new technology is a rare minority position. I do think there are probably some things that AI companies can do to improve their image with the American public. But for now, all I can do is lament that a country that once boldly embraced the future now quails at it. <\/p>\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New technologies almost always create lots of problems and challenges for our society. The invention of farming caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-324000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}