The cover of The Lancet, and their article on RFK Jr.

[highplainsdem]

80. AI slop just wastes water and electricity. And it isn't ususual for users of AI image generators to

have the AI vomit out dozens or even hundreds of images to get one that isn't too flawed to post. Those AI tools can generate a batch - typically 4 - of images in under 10 seconds. The free tier of Google's Gemini, the AI those images are from, allows, iirc, 100 images or maybe batches of images a day. The cheap $20/mo tier allows 1,000 images or batches a day. Each image wasting some water and electricity.

That slop is why they need data centers. It costs AI companies but gets people hooked on AI so they'll eventually pay more and more for it. And playing with AI and being told they're somehow creative having AI do something for them turns them into advocates for AI who will overlook intellectual property having been stolen to train the AI.

Editing to add that more data centers are also needed for more data-gathering and surveillance. But just generating all the AI slop out there takes a tremendous amount of compute.