Andy Masley
Writes on effective altruism, energy and the arithmetic behind arguments people repeat — including how much electricity a chatbot query actually uses.
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Where they publish
Blog Andy Masley His blog, mostly working through the numbers behind a claim. Has a feed.
Recent
- Don’t treat surface-level metaphors about AI as if they describe fundamental reality 19 Sept 2026 Debates about whether AI is a “tool” or whether it’s wrong to “anthropomorphize” it often seem confused about what reality is made of
- AI safety and the data center backlash 1 Sept 2026 Planting a flag for AI safety as a place where we won’t abjectly bullshit you
- I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers 25 Aug 2026 It’s probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It’s about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities where they’re built, many of which are wrong.
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- Thinking about other industries like we think about data centers shows how impoverished the debate is 18 Aug 2026 Clumsy, arbitrary environmental ideas ignore the incredible complexity of the systems modern society depends on
- I'm very skeptical that China has played a meaningful role in the US data center backlash 8 Aug 2026 The evidence we have is pretty weak
- Toward liberal environmentalism 10 Jul 2026 The underlying normative claim of my environmental writing
- A conversation with my city planner friend Curtis on a recent data center moratorium in Holyoke MA 7 Jul 2026 I recorded a conversation with my friend Curtis who until a few years ago was a city planner in Holyoke MA and had a lot of thoughts on a recent data center moratorium there.
- AI art as curation 3 Jul 2026 Asking whether AI art involves real creativity mostly misses what's interesting about it
- What does it mean for AI to be democratic? 21 Jun 2026 Some pushback on a specific fuzzy idea with some ominous implications
- A plug for a tool I made to show how little most current AI chatbots add to your emissions and water use, with citations 11 Jun 2026 Take this and share it, you don't need to mention me
- A simple trick to fix the data center debate 6 Jun 2026 Remove the status quo bias by asking "would we spend this much in tax revenue to avoid the externalities of the data center?"
- Why I think panic about local impacts of data centers is just a panic 4 Jun 2026 A request for counter examples
- A history of the data center panic - part 1 20 May 2026 Pre-ChatGPT and the creation of common wisdom
- A crash course on US air pollution 19 May 2026 Data centers and air pollution - part 1
- Let's not compare data center heat exhaust to nuclear bombs 11 May 2026 Why dropping hundreds of nuclear bombs on Washington DC every day is pretty normal
- Data center land use issues are fake 2 May 2026 We have plenty of land, data centers provide more revenue per unit area than any other building, and we should have way less farmland
- To be clear, I do understand how sound works 24 Apr 2026 Replying to a criticism of my last post
- Contra Benn Jordan, data center (and all) sub-audible infrasound issues are fake 19 Apr 2026 One of the most popular videos made about data centers ever is a complete moment-by-moment disaster
- Training AI models doesn't emit that much 12 Apr 2026 If we just make reasonable comparisons instead of crazy ones
- What's blocking Waymo in DC and how can we fix it? 3 Apr 2026 The very late DDOT report is only part of the story
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 9 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The data-centre backlash is about the buildings themselves, not about what people think of AI.
All this combined with the survey data on Americans’ stated reasons for opposing data centers makes me think that attitudes toward AI are probably a meaningful factor for a minority of people opposed to data centers, but I don’t think the backlash overall is driven by people’s thoughts on AI.
I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers Said 25 Aug 2026
The American data-centre backlash is homegrown, not a foreign influence operation.
I have a long separate post here looking at the evidence we have, and I come away thinking the data center backlash is basically entirely homegrown.
I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers Said 25 Aug 2026
Data centres mostly take farmland, of which America has too much, rather than housing land, of which it has too little.
This post is about whether data centers waste the land they’re on relative to what they compete with, and my claim is that they mostly don’t compete with things we need more of (housing) and mostly compete with things we need less of (farmland).
Data center land use issues are fake Said 2 May 2026
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The water-use objection to AI does not survive arithmetic: skipping one burger a month covers a person's token footprint, and golf uses more water than every data centre together.
So AI consumes approximately 0.04% of America’s freshwater if you include onsite and offsite use, and only 0.008% if you include just the water in data centers.
The AI water issue is fake Said 11 Oct 2025
A data centre earns its county far more tax revenue per gallon of water than a golf course does.
Data centers are so much more efficient with their water that they generate 50x as much tax revenue per unit of water used than golf courses in the county:
The AI water issue is fake Said 11 Oct 2025
The claim that data centres poison the water around them is false.
It’s very common that I’m told that data centers poison the water around them.
The AI water issue is fake Said 11 Oct 2025
Data centres had not raised the average American household's electricity bill as of 2025; inflation and the gas-price shock did.
This is the first conclusion of my deep dive: Data centers have (so far) not affected national average household electricity bills.
Data centers & electricity - part 1: as of 2025 they haven't raised national prices Said 10 Oct 2025
The American states with the fastest electricity load growth saw prices fall rather than rise.
A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study found that state-level load growth from 2019 to 2024 — including growth driven by data centers, manufacturing, and electrification — was associated with lower average retail electricity prices, not higher ones.
Data centers & electricity - part 1: as of 2025 they haven't raised national prices Said 10 Oct 2025
That data centres have not raised national electricity prices so far is no promise that they never will.
This is not to say that data centers won’t affect national prices in the future.
Data centers & electricity - part 1: as of 2025 they haven't raised national prices Said 10 Oct 2025
Beliefs others hold too
The water-use objection to AI does not survive arithmetic: skipping one burger a month covers a person's token footprint, and golf uses more water than every data centre together. 2 hold this
So AI consumes approximately 0.04% of America’s freshwater if you include onsite and offsite use, and only 0.008% if you include just the water in data centers.
The AI water issue is fake Said 11 Oct 2025
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Feed
As its own page →Hiding
19 September
1 September
25 August
From one piece I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers 2 beliefs · blog.andymasley.com
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Their words
I have a long separate post here looking at the evidence we have, and I come away thinking the data center backlash is basically entirely homegrown.
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korrents.com
The data-centre backlash is about the buildings themselves, not about what people think of AI.Their words
All this combined with the survey data on Americans’ stated reasons for opposing data centers makes me think that attitudes toward AI are probably a meaningful factor for a minority of people opposed to data centers, but I don’t think the backlash overall is driven by people’s thoughts on AI.
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Their words
This post is about whether data centers waste the land they’re on relative to what they compete with, and my claim is that they mostly don’t compete with things we need more of (housing) and mostly compete with things we need less of (farmland).
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Nothing matches.
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