The Curious Engineer

All blogs / AI / ML

Andy Masley

blog.andymasley.com

Crossing the river by touching the stones. Click to read Andy Masley, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

AI / MLSociety / politics / economyScience

’23’24’25’26
Posts
98 from 1 Sep 2023 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (39 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://blog.andymasley.com/feed

2026 29

  1. Some favorite lesser-known books
  2. 3 thoughts on effective altruist comms
  3. Thinking about the future of AI shouldn’t feel like choosing from a buffet
  4. The direction I’d like for effective altruism
  5. Why I believe current AI models can really think and understand - Part 2 of 3
  6. Why I believe current AI models can really think and understand - Part 1 of 3
  7. What I get out of effective altruism
  8. Don’t treat surface-level metaphors about AI as if they describe fundamental reality
  9. AI safety and the data center backlash
  10. I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers
  11. Thinking about other industries like we think about data centers shows how impoverished the debate is
  12. I'm very skeptical that China has played a meaningful role in the US data center backlash
  13. Toward liberal environmentalism
  14. A conversation with my city planner friend Curtis on a recent data center moratorium in Holyoke MA
  15. AI art as curation
  16. What does it mean for AI to be democratic?
  17. A plug for a tool I made to show how little most current AI chatbots add to your emissions and water use, with citations
  18. A simple trick to fix the data center debate
  19. Why I think panic about local impacts of data centers is just a panic
  20. A history of the data center panic - part 1
  21. A crash course on US air pollution
  22. Let's not compare data center heat exhaust to nuclear bombs
  23. Data center land use issues are fake
  24. To be clear, I do understand how sound works
  25. Contra Benn Jordan, data center (and all) sub-audible infrasound issues are fake
  26. Training AI models doesn't emit that much
  27. What's blocking Waymo in DC and how can we fix it?
  28. Data centers' heat exhaust is not raising the land temperature around where they're built
  29. A call for more specific and numerate climate communication

2025 56

  1. AI can obviously create new knowledge
  2. Empire of AI is wildly misleading about AI water use
  3. A short summary of my argument that using ChatGPT isn't bad for the environment
  4. The lump of cognition fallacy
  5. A list of other catastrophes that are probably fake
  6. It's much easier to hold computers accountable than it is to hold humans accountable
  7. Data centers and low social trust
  8. An armchair diagnosis of the chatbot moral panic
  9. AI Sessions #3: The Truth About AI and the Environment
  10. Always mask at airports
  11. A lot of arguments for legalizing autonomous vehicles in your city
  12. AI and Folk Cartesianism - Part 2: Problems for Cartesianism
  13. AI and Folk Cartesianism - Part 1: Defining the Problem
  14. Requests for journalists covering AI and the environment
  15. The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy
  16. A few meta points on my posts on AI and the environment
  17. Slop implies capability
  18. The AI water issue is fake
  19. Data centers & electricity - part 1: as of 2025 they haven't raised national prices
  20. What a data center is
  21. More Perfect Union videos are wildly deceptive on data center water use
  22. For the climate, little things don't add up
  23. What's the full "hidden" climate cost of a ChatGPT prompt?
  24. Do data centers only seem bad for the climate because we can see them?
  25. Jevons' Paradox is good sometimes
  26. Mapping the AI & environment debate
  27. The core simple reason I think AI is valuable
  28. An example of what I consider a misleading article about AI and the environment
  29. When making cuts for the climate, always consider the value you're getting per unit energy, not just the total energy used
  30. A ton of AI images I've made that I've liked
  31. Contra the UK government, please don't delete your old photos and emails to save water
  32. Egalitarianism requires quantification
  33. My can of soup example of bad climate communication
  34. Amazon deliveries are often better for the environment than driving to buy the stuff in a store
  35. All my (vegan) fitness advice - Part 3: Products, mindset, and motivation
  36. All my (vegan) fitness advice - Part 2: Diet, supplements, and optimization
  37. All my (vegan) fitness advice - Part 1: Exercise and etiquette
  38. AI can be bad without being useless
  39. My "Are you presuming most people are stupid?" test
  40. Computing is efficient
  41. Even with a perfect government, we'd still need a lot of private charity
  42. Resource recs on AI catastrophic risk
  43. All the ways I want the AI debate to be better
  44. Reactions to MIT Technology Review's report on AI and the environment
  45. Things I got wrong in my ChatGPT/environment posts
  46. Why goofy AI art almost never seems wasteful to me
  47. Replies to criticisms of my posts on ChatGPT & the environment
  48. Animal suffering isn't pretend
  49. Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment - a cheat sheet
  50. ChatGPT on the lives of factory farmed pigs
  51. Ideological moves that should be lower status
  52. Resource recs for energy literacy
  53. How I use AI
  54. A defense of AI art
  55. People's deeply held beliefs are surprisingly surface-level
  56. Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

2024 7

  1. Strategies for learning
  2. The core idea of liberalism
  3. Product recommendations
  4. DC vegan food recs
  5. Especially good audiobooks
  6. Productivity advice that's worked for me
  7. My favorite 80,000 Hours episodes

2023 6

  1. Thinking seriously about violence
  2. My foundational philosophy beliefs
  3. Electric cars are more massive, but not more dangerous to pedestrians
  4. Alcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking
  5. All my (vegan) fitness advice
  6. An intro to animal ethics