Because some people have a tendency to question the validity of things that don’t make sense to them. I could see someone asking, “why even have physical money anymore when everyone uses banking or credit?”
The same deal with privacy, “why should I worry about internet privacy if I have done no wrong and have nothing to hide?” There are always people left out and harmed in pursuit of some form of purisim like those lines of thought.
The types of AI you mention at the start of your comment has been around for years and isn’t exactly the problem we’re facing as far as I have researched. The AI bubble is a result of the hype around transformer-based generative AI and not so much about AI itself. Neither datacenters nor AI are a new thing and up until 2020 they weren’t as much as a problem as they are today due to the hype and increasing demands by these large models.
The problem is literally a scaling issue for generative AI and those that decide to build new datacenters just for this usage are ignorant to the environmental and socioeconomic issues as being the limiters that they should be.
From what people say in red counties, I completely believe this theory. Culture supercedes logic and there are very few that can think critically and be socially included in those places. Silent ridicule for getting a vaccine is not uncommon because it’s seen as weak or letting the government do what it wants to you.
It’s just very ironic and sad.