I've been doubting him myself (his recent articles just hedge on data centers more than anything else) but then I want to ask, are there any valid critics of AI? Not a "code is bad but it'll get better" but actual criticism in the nature of the financing, politics, etc. I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedging in one camp or the other in their takes.
Cal Newport has been interesting on the topic. But it’s also possible to read Zitron and skip his personal opinions and just follow the discussion of financing, that’s what I personally do. I don’t understand why anyone would take the commentary of an internet pundit as a set of predictions to evaluate as gospel
I enjoy Newport myself, he's probably the most level-headed take I've come across. Everyone else has some agenda (or product) they're trying to get at and very much ruins the messaging (ex the agent 'civilization' piece is extremely overblown especially since..that's how multi agent systems coordinate already. Nothing happened that is unprecedented and isn't how the system is designed to work.
Check out the writing of Baldur Bjarnason. There are a lot of blog posts and a book outlining the risks and tradeoffs.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2023/ai-position/ https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
To shamelessly shill a passion project: A friend of mine and I try to be skeptical-but-reasonable on our podcast https://kairos.fm/muckraikers/ we aggregate papers and reporting and try to contextualize it with our own (hopefully useful) perspectives and takes
> however most people are really hedging in one camp or the other in their takes.
As with most things, most people are somewhere in the middle, as the silent majority. You only see the comments of the strongly aligned, which are also the most emotionally motivated to comment.
The internet is not real life.
The data center growth questions he raised have been where I found him interesting. I could never find any other articles to corroborate his predictions though. My question is when will the AI bubble burst?
I didn't know he'd had a long history of mispredicting AI quality and growth of companies like Microsoft and Google.
I ended up on this comment after looking through the linked article and realizing the words "data center" never come up in it.
>I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedging in one camp or the other in their takes.
There are a myriad of people out there who have brought up genuine issues that AI presents, or preexisting issues that AI is exacerbating.
This series of articles is perhaps the best long form critique of AI as both a technology and an industry I've encountered [1].
[1] https://aphyr.com/posts/420-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...
Valid criticisms of AI
- safety critics who think AI can take over the world like Yud (I find this the least credible but still valid)
- Bernie type of critics who think AI can cause widespread job losses
- Ruxandra Teslo who thinks AI can remove meaning which I feel is the most serious one [1]
What are not valid
- environmental like emissions and water usage
- AI is useless and it will take the economy with it because it is a bubble
- AI spreads misinformation and causes societal damage
- AI is trained on copyright (are we really on this side of the debate ?!)
[1] https://substack.com/@ruxandrabio/p-213699661
> - environmental like emissions and water usage
Water usage, sure. But emissions has plenty of reasonable concern.
There are the various xAI data centers have/are running using mobile gas turbines.
In general, the extreme amount of power is going to put pressure on the grids. I hope this leads to the world doubling down on renewables to offset it all, but is that going to happen? Hell, the US actively paid [0] to stop a turbine project.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e1vg0gjl5o
Water usage may be a drop in the bucket nationally, but they tend to put datacenters in areas without much water (often because evaporative cooling is less expensive in arid regions) and the effects to those local water supplies can be extreme.
What is invalid about the environmental angle? (aside from the dubious water claims)
I personally see it as:
These companies subsidizing green energy expansion, because it's now the cheapest power to expand.
These companies are going to help "correct" the widespread problem with utility monopolies, in the US. Datacenters are deploying their own power generation, partly because power cost no longer aligns with power generation costs. This mismatch is motivating research into local nuclear power generation [1] (which is almost certainly an effort to force the monopolies, rather than actually deploy).
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/big-tech-puts-finan...
> These companies subsidizing green energy expansion, because it's now the cheapest power to expand.
Unless you consider natural gass green energy, it's quite the opposite for the moment. This is because the AI build-out is about speed, not cost-effectiveness. That is why xai's Colossus I & II were illegally running gas turbines, and Google recanted its pledge for data center renewables targets.
> it's quite the opposite for the moment
This point is about power generation companies accommodating the new power demand. It's true that the power companies are keeping coal and gas peaker plants running, that they planned to retire. But, actual additions are all green [1].
And, step functions are inefficient, always, so "for the moment" isn't so unreasonable. Dataceners are something like 100 million tonnes of CO2 per year, where cars are 1,800! So, this isn't some world ending emissions, within this moment. Everything is trending green. Why? Because it's cheaper (thank you China).
Xai using gas turbines is closer to my second point of side-stepping monopolies (improperly in that case), but is also just one example. See previous link for very long term, and all the datacenters using green energy, mid term.
Everyone will do what's cheapest. Luckily, China has made that solar power. We just need to get the monopolies off their asses, and put some of their record profits into actual power expansion. Lucky for them, everyone blames the data centers for all of this. Where I am, the single power company has already raised rates so much, in preparation for electric, that it's more expensive to fast charge an electric car at noon than to buy gas, with a planned 10% increase over the next few years. So, they're dodging criticism too!
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
That's wrong. US battery energy is growing faster than ever, not in small part thanks to the push by data centers.
https://www.siliconvalley.com/2026/09/01/us-battery-installs...
Here's what I find invalid about environment angle.
I fundamentally don't think it is wrong to increase emissions as long as you consider the tradeoffs and externalities. Every single action you do in life has externalities - if you start opposing all of them then what really is your point? You just hate people doing stuff.
If you think emissions are so harmful, try putting a number to it. I implore you to do the exercise and convince yourself or me or others and suggest that the pros don't outweigh the cons. I'm half predicting that the conversation will end in dubious claims about tail risks and world itself collapsing (I hope you don't do that).
I don't think AI is uniquely harmful for the environment given the value it provides. Hell, it can even contribute to accelerating renewable resources and increasing efficiencies overall. There's way more to lose by slowing down AI because of emission control than to gain by reducing emissions.
You are making claims for why you think the emissions are worth it but I don't see how this makes concerns about emissions invalid. Even water usage, while blown out of proportion, can be a rational concern if you have a fossil fuel power station.
You can just flip this around and ask why is slowing down AI to control emissions harmful? What numbers that don't make tail risk claims are you providing for this?
wait, please stick to the argument. Why is increasing emissions bad while considering tradeoffs?
>You can just flip this around and ask why is slowing down AI to control emissions harmful? What numbers that don't make tail risk claims are you providing for this?
Slowing down reduces the value it provides to humans, that's clear to me and you I hope.
Our current emissions level is causing climate change.
Ok so you are against any type of action whatsoever? No matter how useful it is?
>Why is increasing emissions bad while considering tradeoffs?
Because climate change stands to be the biggest market failure in history. You need to show that the rapid scale out of data centers is going to reasonably offset the current trajectory we're on.
> Because climate change stands to be the biggest market failure in history
Proof?
> There's way more to lose by slowing down AI because of emission control than to gain by reducing emissions.
If AI works out as proponents would make you believe, then either you'll see masses of people out of a job - for which society is unprepared. Or you'll see a big, society-wide productivity boost. Read: consuming non-renewable resources on this planet even faster (not just energy).
Society as a whole would benefit if rollout would slow down. Give us time to reflect on those 2nd-order effects & how to address them. But instead we have the opposite: a crazy race with big AI labs trying to out-spend & out-do the other guy, ignoring externalities everywhere.
Another one: data centers making electricity more expensive while not contributing much to the local economy.
I think the three valid criticisms you listed are valid, but there are other quite a few other IMO-valid criticisms of AI. Here are a few as I see them:
- AI centralizes power in the hands of capital, rendering those who can afford compute hardware vastly more capable than those who cannot and thus increasing social stratification
- AI is generally trained on the creative output of humanity without those who train it giving back proportionally (copyright "rules for thee, not for me")
- AI breaks social processes built around the idea that TRYING something is inherently a cost in time or effort, such as filing a legal claim or sending someone a threatening letter. We haven't made the social changes to punish or charge people for using every appeal/option/application, so this makes asymmetric-effort tasks like applying for a job really bad in the interim
- AI use makes it harder to develop the ability to critically think for yourself, especially among those who most need to develop that ability
- AI produces large amounts of mid-tier content, making it harder to discover exceptional human-created creative content produced after AI started to exist
- AI leads to distrust in remote communication, increasing cynicism and breaking social bonds generally. This is NOT your point about "AI spreads misinformation" - no matter whether it's true or not that AI can be used to produce misinformation, having people doubt each other is a harm
- AI demand crunches hardware and time availability for other adjacent markets, such as computer gaming, construction, 3D graphics production, etc. This harms both hobbies and professions in those fields having to cope with rising prices and lower availability of materials
- Everyone is using the same or similar AI, leading to a homogenization of culture and process across humanity. This is perhaps a mixed blessing, because humans are capricious, but less variety can be viewed as a harm
I will also say I personally hate seeing "job loss" said to mean "wealth loss" or "people starving". The goal of life isn't to have a job, it's to be well and happy. If you can be well and happy without a job, great, so it's really painful to me how people don't even see those things are not the same.
> - AI centralizes power in the hands of capital, rendering those who can afford compute hardware vastly more capable than those who cannot and thus increasing social stratification
Looks to me like I can run Claude Code without being able to afford my own datacenter.
> - AI produces large amounts of mid-tier content, making it harder to discover exceptional human-created creative content produced after AI started to exist
That it does, but I think the real social evil is bad recommender systems. eg YouTube is basically on a mission to drive me insane because it literally only recommends me a) reviews of espresso machines b) video essays by autistic people about Mario 64 c) PBS scienceslop about how quantum physics is super mysterious. None of these are even what I watch, but they're also not what I want to watch.
> Looks to me like I can run Claude Code without being able to afford my own datacenter.
Until Anthropic bans you from using their data centers, at which point you cannot run Claude Code at all. Welcome to being a have-not (at least in a world where only genAI-assisted coding is acceptable).
He who controls the GPUs controls the world.
Unlike GPT (I think?), Claude is served by all of AWS/GCP/Azure and you can go buy it from any of them.
Whether Claude is or is not available via AWS Bedrock is entirely decided by Anthropic, not by you and not by Amazon. And you can't buy the data sets (the REAL power...) from any AI company.
> - environmental like emissions and water usage
Those are two very different things, and the former should be a serious concern. If AI does indeed become a double-digit percentage of electricity usage as the AI labs themselves predict, then it becomes a significant contributor to emissions, full stop.
This sounds completely reasonable:
> - AI spreads misinformation and causes societal damage
Agreed. And so are the other two, if stated reasonably instead of as strawmen.
Basically, all criticism of issues that affect real people is invalid per you.
> environmental like emissions and water usage
There is real crisis with warming this year, yes the plan to consume staggering anounts of energy and make environment worst in the process is valid criticism.
> AI is useless and it will take the economy with it because it is a bubble
If it turns out to be true, a lot of innocent people get hurt. Valid.
> AI spreads misinformation and causes societal damage
As valid as criticism of facebook was valid the whole time. And yes, facebook made world into worst place.
> AI is trained on copyright (are we really on this side of the debate ?!)
100% valid.
> safety critics who think AI can take over the world
Not valid, that is bullshit. If you think the word is wrong suggest polite word that says the same.