Andy Masley announces plans to publish a short historical overview of the data center panic to correct inaccuracies in emerging common narratives on AI water usage

The publisher of @_KarenHao’s book should be penalized with massive fines for not fact checking her lies about water usage and for not pulling the book from the market. Look at the chaos she’s caused:

@AndyMasley My apologies if it's already been answered in your many thousands of words of writing, but I was just the other day trying to understand (for something I'm working on) why exactly the data center revolt became SUCH a big deal and so ubiquitous

@AndyMasley The idea that the people TikToking about water use are up-to-date on 480-page nonfiction business books published in 2025, uh, stretches credulity.

@RyanRadia Futurism specifically has put out so many terrible articles on this

@AndyMasley I hear it all the time, that the book sparked the discussion, but it came out 2025? The whole "every ai prompt uses a bottle of water" thing was 2023

@kyliebytes The one making a rumor widespread need not be the first one to mention it?

Though i guess it may be impossible for us to settle what made the rumor widespread, so here we are (eg i don't remember encountering the one you link, but that doesn't mean it didn't circulate ofc)

@ndril I think people really want clear single bad guys

@AndyMasley to my memory it was the "uses a water bottle every query" articles that really got it going

@AndyMasley Looks like this April 2023 article and the linked paper might be associated with some of the earliest viral posts about AI, data centers, and water usage https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-ai-water-consumption

@AndyMasley Yeah I think a lot of the anti-anti-datacenter commentators only tuned in when you poked that hole in it and don't realize how it was surfing a wave already ascendant on tiktok etc.

@AndyMasley Really appreciate your work

@AndyMasley I think critical piece here is the (largely valid!) anti-pipeline protests and “water protector” demonstrations over the last decade or so. Extremely high-profile stuff!

Of course that was about water *pollution* not water *supply* but I’m convinced this is a major piece

btw any idea why that well still hasn't been fixed? is it fixable? surely Meta would wanna do that if their construction caused it. and was it preventable in the first place? coz if it was then in this case all that matters is that they caused the issue even if it's due to the construction and not the operation of the campus.

tbh this seems equal or worse than the xai air pollution problem bcoz it's water.

@AlanMCole @AndyMasley No it doesn’t. Because they don’t have to read the book themselves. It can be like a giant game of telephone. Starts with the book then goes to press coverage of the book and podcast appearances which then get picked up by Twitter and YouTube and clippers then to tiktokers

@mbolotnikova I'm hoping this new post will help!

@AndyMasley What people really should do is look into what Effective Altruism (EA) is and then ask yourself what the motive for this guy’s work really is. Check out Gebru’s Teacreal Bundle, it’s a great primer

@AndyMasley Been reading The Infinity Machine about Demis/DeepMind and it's surprising how worried they/Google were about things like public opinion of energy use per query, the effect of AI on climate, etc back in like 2014-2016.

I remember it now but definitely had memory-holed it.

@elaifresh Ooooh good point hadn't considered that

@AndyMasley @kyliebytes I think you’re right, datacenter and anti-tech adjacent sentiment was already there within the existing ~degrowth protest movement, and pointing to water use was an after the fact rationalization. Then young people care more about the economy and their job prospects and joined in

@shacrw_ I'm looking into it and should have an answer in a week or so