Top all-time · #1419
Andy Masley
Personal blog · andymasley.substack.comaiscienceeconomics
Andy Masley's personal blog at andymasley.substack.com covers ai, science and economics. Since 2024, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 83 times, most often “A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 11 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Andy Masley's Substack for sourced arguments that AI's energy and water use is small, including per-prompt energy math and the claim that the AI water issue is overstated.
- Recommended for · 11 comments
- Called a good in-depth article and overview; sources well cited; goes into very detailed debunking with receipts; plenty of data and honest corrections, not Cha
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Crossing the river by touching the stones. Click to read Andy Masley, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2025-04-29
- The AI water issue is fake13 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2025-10-12
- Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2025-01-18
- Empire of AI is wildly misleading about AI water use5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-11-17
- A ton of AI images [he's] made that [he's] liked3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-08-19
- What a Data Center Is2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-08
- A Defense of AI Art2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-20
- More Perfect Union videos are wildly deceptive on data center water use2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-28
- For the climate, little things don't add up2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-15
What Hacker News says?
Assuming you've read https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... or the longer full essay/related works, could you elaborate on why you don't use Apple Intelligence? I totally understand why someone would refuse to use it due to environmental reasons (amongst others) but I'm curious to hear your opinions on it.
Comment linking /p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about
on “Apple M5 chip”Submitted Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment as a story · 255 points
HN discussionA good recent in-depth article about this: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b...
Comment linking /p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for
on “Claude can now search the web”Submitted My "Are you presuming most people are stupid?" test as a story · 39 points
HN discussionI dunno, look at these [0] I think they're quite nice! But I can imagine getting bombarded with them all day can eventually turn someone off. (I assume I'd feel the same if I saw 100 Monet's every day for 3 years) [0] https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-ton-of-ai-images-ive-mad...
Comment linking /p/a-ton-of-ai-images-ive-made-that
on “Sora 2”Submitted The AI water issue is fake as a story · 34 points
HN discussionMost of the energy for AI does not go into chatbots. Using Gemini is not remotely close to driving a car for 2 hours. If a prompt is 0.3 Wh ( https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur... , https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... ), each prompt is closer to using an e-bike for 50 metres. You could have your morning shower 1°C less hot and save enough energy for about 200 pro…
Comment linking /p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about
on “IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off”Submitted The AI water issue is fake as a story · 12 points
HN discussionAn update: there seems to be a critical error in the reporting of metrics in this book for the water issue. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/empire-of-ai-is-wildly-mis... . I do think the whole water issue as pointed out in the book is completely discredited with this call out. The author Karen Hao acknowledges this: https://x.com/_KarenHao/status/1990412118584144113
Comment linking /p/empire-of-ai-is-wildly-misleading
on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”Submitted Computing Is Efficient as a story · 8 points
HN discussionJust as an example, Loudoun County has the most data center concentration in the world by a wide margin, and also has significantly lower water prices than the Virginia average. Seems like they've been able to build out huge new water capacity for data centers and that hasn't raised househould prices, or even kept them low. https://andymasley.substack.com/i/171855599/the-county-with-...
Comment linking /i/171855599/the-county-with-the-most-data-centers-in-the-country
on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”Submitted A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment as a story · 8 points
HN discussionHere's his full argument: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake... There's a bunch in there but this bit caught my eye in particular: > The US public water supply uses ~40 billion gallons per day, all of this is potable. Data centers used 50 million gallons per day onsite in 2023. So their potable water usage was 0.13% of the public water supply.
Comment linking /p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”Submitted It's much easier to hold computers accountable than to hold humans accountable as a story · 7 points
HN discussionUpdate on the update: I asked Andy Masley (author of this piece https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake ) about the potable water issue and he dug into it, here's his initial take about it not being a big deal: https://bsky.app/profile/andymasley.bsky.social/post/3m5mqce... Key quote: > If any region has a lot of freshwater and little potable water, the best way to make potable water more availa…
Comment linking /p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”Submitted The AI water issue is fake as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe reported case about water wells running dry had to do with issues in construction rather than anything about the data center's regular operation: > But the reason their taps ran dry (which the article itself says) was entirely because of sediment buildup in groundwater from construction. It had nothing to do with the data center’s normal operations (it hadn’t begun operating yet, and doesn’t even draw from local…
Comment linking /p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”Submitted The AI water issue is fake as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis article goes into an ungodly amount of detail -- with receipts -- making the case that the AI water issue is fake: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
Comment linking /p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”Submitted The AI water issue is fake as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment — https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b... > What’s the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT? — https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-footprint-c...
Comment linking /p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for
on “The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela”Submitted For the climate, little things don't add up as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe idea that LLMs are uniquely bad for the environment has been debunked. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b...
Comment linking /p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for
on “The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela”Submitted A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe Copyright Office is not an authority in this context, it's just an opinion. They did not make any "finding". To a judge they may as well be any other amicus curiae . My opinion on the matter at hand is this: Artists who complain about GenAI use the hypothetical that you mentioned, where if you can accurately recreate a copyrighted work through specific model usage, then any distribution of the model is a copyrig…
Comment linking /p/a-defense-of-ai-art
on “US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired”Submitted Empire of AI is wildly misleading about AI water use as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is a good article on the subject. Make sure you read the linked articles as well. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/reactions-to-mit-technolog... It’s basically the same story as this article: people incorrectly believe they use a huge amount of energy (and water), but it’s actually pretty reasonable and not out of line with anything else we do.
Comment linking /p/reactions-to-mit-technology-reviews
on “LLMs are cheap”Submitted Empire of AI Is Wildly Misleading as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI enjoyed just about everything in here: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-ton-of-ai-images-ive-mad...
Comment linking /p/a-ton-of-ai-images-ive-made-that
on “Ovi: Twin backbone cross-modal fusion for audio-video generation”Submitted More Perfect Union videos are wildly deceptive on data center water use as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
