[keeda]

My interpretation was "If an industry that actively works to harm the global health of humanity through their addictive and unhealthy food products is using way more water and we're OK with it, maybe we should give a pass to the industry using a fraction of that water to improve human productivity."

Ton of nuance in my characterizations of both industries, of course, but to a first approximation they are accurate.

[whilenot-dev]

> and we're OK with it

Are we? Is anybody? Criticism doesn't need to be directed towards one thing at a time.

[keeda]

Well, the food industry continues churning billions in profits at the expense of our health, so statistically speaking, looks like "we" are OK with!

Totally agreed that criticism should be directed where it's due. But what this thread is saying is that criticism of GenAI is misdirected. I haven't seen nearly as much consternation over e.g. the food industry as I'm seeing over AI -- an industry that increasingly looks like its utility exceeds its costs.

(If the last part sounds hypothetical, in past comments I've linked a number of reports, including government-affiliated sources, finding noticeable benefits from GenAI adoption.)

[dont__panic]

Have you considered that there is a difference between:

- food, a thing that literally every human needs every 24 hours (really 6-12) to continue to live

- GenAI, a new product with dubious value that contributes significantly to the systemic enshittification of the US and global economy?

FYI whataboutism is a well known (and honestly quite lazy) fallacy and propaganda strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

[keeda]

I should have been more precise with my terms, but there is a difference between "food" and the "food industry" indicated by the likes of Nestle. Yes, everybody needs food. No, nobody needs the ultraprocessed junk Nestle produces.

I didn't see the OP's point as whataboutism, but rather putting things into perspective. We are debating the water usage of a powerful new technology that a large fraction of the world is finding useful [1], which is a fraction of what other, much more frivolous (golf courses!) or even actively harmful (Nestle!) industries use.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45794907 -- Recent thread with very rough numbers which could well be wrong, but the productivity impact is becoming detectable at a national level.