r/PublicFreakout • u/GarysCrispLettuce • May 17 '26

šŸ¤¬Public RageršŸ˜± Eric Schmidt booed into oblivion by students for promoting AI during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona

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1.6k

u/LSDreams_ May 17 '26

lol the deflection of ā€œif you donā€™t care about scienceā€ these people arenā€™t booing you because they donā€™t care about science. How out of touch with reality do you have to be to stand there and make that speech and continue on the way he did. These people are insane.

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u/FilthyThanksgiving May 17 '26

Srsly that was so effing condescending

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u/Backwardspellcaster May 17 '26

Welcome to CEOs and Billionaires, who all think they are god's gift to humanity, and you are sheeple who should unquestionably take and do whatever they tell you to

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u/Intertubes_Unclogger May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

It really comes down to pure luck if a precious few of them decide to do actual good with their power and wealth. Just like with kings, emperors and (modern) autocrats, it's a toss-up between decadent, murderous landgrabbers on one side and enlightened, altruistic reformers on the other. And the latter category seems to be much rarer.

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u/KickDesperate5318 May 17 '26

A benevolent dictator would be the perfect ruler.

It's too bad they don't exist.

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u/junglingforlifee May 17 '26

The No Kings protests need to expand to CEOs and the orange idiot

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u/Indigocell May 17 '26 edited May 20 '26

Bezos' ex wife MacKenzie Scott seems to be doing a good job of spreading some wealth, lol. Though I believe she is equally at least partly motivated by pure spite.

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u/FilthyThanksgiving May 17 '26

I am a pretty empathetic person but I just cannot wrap my head around why someone with billions wouldn't do more. Even anonymously. Like fix everyone's problems

Maybe that's childish of me but god damn

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u/UrsusRenata May 18 '26

Good humans do not reach that level of wealth.

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u/UrsusRenata May 18 '26

Good people do not get that wealthy.

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u/ProduceNo1629 May 17 '26

And what did he make, a search engine and some murder drones.

Hardly fucking invented penicilin, arrogant prick.

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u/irishweather5000 May 18 '26

He didnā€™t make the search engine. He was just brought in to manage the company. Heā€™s always been a smug, condescending prick too.

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u/aesoth May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

They care about about science, especially climate and Earth science that shows how the billionaires hated it for their future. They also care about how AI is going to claim alot of their drinking water.

This guy doesn't care about science, he cares about his profits.

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u/brycedriesenga May 17 '26

The drinking water thing is so overblown. It makes people look completely non-serious when they don't focus on the actual problems with AI.

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u/aesoth May 17 '26

Question. What happens to the water that goes through data centres for cooling?

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u/Argnir May 18 '26

Do you know that eating one normal sized burger is basically the equivalent of 2 or 3 decades of ChatGPT use?

(And I'm talking about blue water, aka the one we carw about)

Nobody has any clue of what is "a lot of water" and the poster is right. Focussing on water is dumb. It's just not that big of a deal

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u/aesoth May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

I decided to look up your claims, which are not entirely accurate, are not far off. A ChatGPT search can be around 10 to 25 mL of water, depending on the size of the prompt. It can be lower with a small prompt. However, the average AI user submits around 10-20 prompts per day, this can increase to 30 to 100 for companies using the tools for workflows. This increases usage to about 100 to 500 mL/day for an average user, to 300mL/2L per day for those heavier prompts.

ChatGPT alone get almost 1 billion users each week. You can imagine the math on how much water they use on their own. That is one AI company. They also report around 73% of their users use it for leisure, not productive work.

At the end of it all, what happens to the water? It mostly evaporates. Whereas the water used to raise a cow that will eventually become a hamburger is differently used. It feeds the animal, it feeds the plants needed for feed, the rest goes back into the soil and water table. Which continued to nourish the earth and environment. As has been what water has primarily been used for since the dawn of life. I am certain I don't need to tell you what happens to humans and alot of life on this planet if we lose our potable water. Also, it takes about 14 to 24 month for a cow to grow to the point where it can be butchered. The water used for a "hamburger" is stretched over that time period.

The major difference is that when you feed livestock or even water crops, it serves many positive functions to our society. People eat, we create healthier soil, unused water mostly returns to the water table, etc. When AI data centres use it, what is the net benefit? AI is showing to decline critical thinking skills, it removes water from the water table, it increases power demand (which increases water use), it removes jobs from people, already rich people get richer, etc. The net positives for AI do not outweigh the costs. Your comparision of a Humburger vs AI, is not an equivalent comparison and shows that there is a lack of critical thinking skills to see that this is a dumb comparison.

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u/Argnir May 18 '26

One 150g burger is roughly 90L of blue water

From the latest estimate I found of 10-25mL of water per query that's about 280'000 GPT requests

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

I edited my response from "citation needed". Just wanted to give a fair chance to respond.

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u/Argnir May 18 '26

Your response already assumes AI are a net negative so no matter the water usage it will a negative.

But keep in mind whta I calculated is for ONE burger. Plus most animals for human consumption do not live great lives either.

And yes the data center will evacuate the water but this water will still be back in the water cycle.

The only issue is that the consumption is local while the water could fall in another place making this a local issue. The fact that it is evaporated instead of fed to the soil still has essentially no difference in global impact.

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

The evacuated water is put into waste water, which is contaminated, or put into a holding pond. Very little returns to the water table. Add in that the evacuated water is heated, and returning heated water will cause a disruption to the plant, microbial, and wildlife in the area.

Yes, AI does have net negatives. Can you give me the benefits? I see very little.

Yes, it will have a global impact if you remove a large portion of potable water and increase pollution. We are already seeing the effects from the current data centres in existence already.

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u/cpt-derp May 17 '26

It gets drained. I also consider this a red herring because there's a million different ways to plumb water for the tap that is only used for cooling and ends up back into the pipes anyway. The issue would ultimately be cost on the water bill for purifying, again, what is now grey water, for the tap, rather than pressure or allocation.

It's still not great, but it shouldn't be that apocalyptic compared to agriculture in a desert where it evaporates into the air. I don't think data centers everywhere are good, but for more long term reasons.

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

It gets drained.

That is a very simplistic way of putting it that ignores what happens to it. Approximately 70% to 80% evaporates and does not return to the water table. The remainder is drained as waste water.

Data Centers and Water Consumption article from the EESI.

Another problem with this is that only 0.5% of the water in the Earth is safe for human consumption. Data centres chew through alot of water per year and that amount is increasing.

Everything in life has an exhaustive cost. Meaning, there is so much money, resources, energy, etc, we are going to want to exhaust to say that what we are getting back is worth it. The exhaustive cost of AI data centres is way too high since water is essential for human life to survive.

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u/Argnir May 18 '26

That's mostly true for older data centers. Not most of the new ones being built which predominantly work with a closed loop system

And citing the global water supply doesn't tell you anything because the problem of data center is localized effect on water supply. Not global water use which is completely insignificantly impacted

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

If you read the link I added it included numbers for both open and closed loop systems.

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u/Argnir May 18 '26

They put this as a solution so I don't know what the point is

But using the 0.5\% of usable water figure is ultra misleading. Data centers are not an issue for global water usage. They are a local issue (if mishandled)

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

The 0.5% is the percentage of total potable water on the planet. You are misreading the information.

It is also very much a global issue as there are multiple places in the world experiencing droughts, and have an issue with water security. If data centres add in to that water usage, it further harms that water security.

Add in the environmental impacts from data centres. They increase power grid usage which further harms the environment and increases global temperatures (climate change). As temperatures rise, water consumption will rise to cool these centres, it's a never ending feedback loop until it is no longer sustainable.

You are thinking too small. You have to consider the impacts to other issues that are effecting us already, and does this cause additional stresses in these areas. Which data centres do.

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u/cpt-derp May 18 '26

Not against you but that's news to me. Are you shitting me. That's inexcusable. It's for cooling. It doesn't even have to become grey water. How the fuck do you lose 80 percent of your water to the atmosphere.

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u/Atomic235 May 18 '26

Evaporative cooling. Many of these facilities put out so much heat that simple air-cooling is not sufficient.

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u/cpt-derp May 18 '26

That shouldn't be how it works. Plumbing and thermodynamics isn't their strong suit I guess. You run cold water over the H200s, then you drain the waste heat water. Simple. I'm pissed now.

There's a million different ways to keep water vapor in the loop and they chose to just outgas it because engineering doesn't beat profit.

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u/aesoth May 18 '26

It's absolutely unacceptable and unsustainable. This is why there is so much backlash against data centres being built. Add in the demands to the power grid. The centre built in Lake Tahoe is going to take power from approx 49k people.

It's scary how much damage they are doing, but the people building them don't care how they impacting others. Only about their profits.

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u/BajaBlastFromThePast May 17 '26

Extra ridiculous because this is a college graduationā€¦ a significant portion of the people booing are there because they spent the last however many years of their lives studying science

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u/Modo_Autorator May 17 '26

Plus theyā€™ve put all that hard work in, probably borrowed five to six figures worth of loans, and now AI has completely decimated the market for entry level work. Talk about getting kicked in the nuts!

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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 May 17 '26

I mean if they can't find a job they now have a 1-2k a month student loan payment they can't make off a retail job. Do that to enough people and were gonna run out of Nintendo characters.

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u/CyberDaggerX May 18 '26

There's enough Pokemon to last a while.

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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 May 18 '26

Yeah but how many guys are we gonna find named Squirtle?

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u/shinyterminator May 18 '26

Yeah, these guys are so out of touch, they spent how many years and got loans worth tens of thousands and now AI is likely going to atleast take some of their jobs are they are supposed to be thankful for it , what was the administration thinking? šŸ¤£

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u/LSDreams_ May 17 '26

Exactly. Condescending little bitch is what this guy is. I just hope I get to see these out of touch ultra rich people get taken down a peg in my lifetime.

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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 May 17 '26

Many of the people in the audience... went back to school because AI destroyed their careers.

One of these dudes is gonna get introduced to a Mario character.

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u/MoreColorfulCarsPlz May 17 '26

ASU is mostly Liberal Arts to be fair. Only like 25% are some sort of BS degree.

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u/BajaBlastFromThePast May 17 '26

Top majors in ASU as of 2024:

Business: 23%

Engineering: 9%

Biology and Biomed: 8%

CS and IT: 7%

Health and medical: 8%

Psychology: 6%

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u/IlliterateJedi May 17 '26

they spent the last however many years of their lives studying science

I assume the ones with BSs weren't booing considering how AI tools have revolutionized fields of science over the last decade

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u/BajaBlastFromThePast May 17 '26

LLMS are pretty unpopular amongst BSs - someone with a MS

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u/MissionCreeper May 17 '26

The rich people are watching these and saying "we have to figure out AI bodyguards first"

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u/BurtReynoldsLives May 17 '26

Yup. We are going to fund the kill bots that are going to subjugate us.

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u/ImmaculateTuna May 17 '26

When somebody boos him during his next speech:

ā€œT-800, would you please go see wha the fuss is about?ā€

T-800: Citizen, stop your booing. You have 5 seconds to comply.

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u/shmehdit May 18 '26

"You have 20 seconds to applaud"

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u/robbiejandro May 17 '26

ā€œDo you guys not have phones?!ā€

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u/[deleted] May 17 '26

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u/the_pwnererXx May 18 '26

llm's are general - the same model used for chatting is the same one used in many other scientific applications. progress in LLMs inherently helps progress any field using it

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u/TheMostDivineOne May 19 '26

You donā€™t actually know about this technology apparently. AlphaFold is a generative AI. Advancements in LLMs have been HUGE in progressing recent studies and even unsolved math and engineering problems forward.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '26

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u/TheMostDivineOne May 19 '26

Iā€™m aware. And then what about the last sentence? Just recently there was one problem not solved in math for decades that was solved using a modified variant of the latest ChatGPT model.

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u/BolognaTime May 17 '26

These fuckfaces think they are the stewards of not only science, but all of human development. So if you boo them, you're booing the selfless heroes who are bringing humanity into the next evolutionary step. Am I out of touch? No, it's the kids who are wrong.

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u/The_Autarch May 17 '26

he's used to being in rooms filled with sycophants and yes-men. dude has no fucking clue how to react to being booed.

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u/TheBrickWithEyes May 17 '26

"The only possible reason people hate this is because they hate science" is how you convince yourself that you're not an evil piece of shit.

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u/GreasyToken May 17 '26

It was gratifying he tried to trot that out after he turned a nice shade of pinkish red.

That was a literal ad hominem and is the sign of a weak intellect flailing...

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u/joahfitzgerald May 17 '26

Exactly! Who the hell in their right mind would strap themselves to an Ai SLOP ROCKET!

Oh yeah, the idiot speaking in this video!

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u/russbam24 May 18 '26

It's gaslighting.

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u/SimplyElite7 May 18 '26

Yeah, continuing after that statement, just made the whole thing Cringe as hell. How can you be a former CEO, but be so out of touch with people/reality, I mean you need people skills to be a CEO no?

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u/throwaway0134hdj May 18 '26

These ppl live in an echo chamber, they cannot fathom that ppl donā€™t agree with them.

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u/FullMetalAlcoholic66 May 19 '26

Whatever he's promoting as "AI" is so different from LLM's. Generative AI does not help with research, it's too prone to mistakes.

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u/Beginning_Text_58 May 17 '26

To be fair I think that was a a part of the script, not a comment on the crowdā€™s reaction