>Sure, great, but the two seem to be treated as one issue

I don't care. I'm responding on the topic of AI. I won't let you treat them as interchangeable just because you perceive them as treated that way.

>If you then hear about someone building a new road and you go "I hate roads and I resent these guys for building a new road" and then you go and use the new road too, I'm gonna be suspicious of your motivations because clearly you don't hate roads that much.

Cool, but you've specifically constructed a person that fits your narrative. What you said originally what the sheer number of users of AI means that some of them must be anti-AI. You went from a deduced existence of a broad kind of person to an asserted existence of a specific one, with no justification. I'm not sure your opponents are the only ones guilty of not thinking clearly.

>Yes, I suppose they could be thinking clearly on the topic and have internally consistent takes, but then why the hell can't they articulate complaints that make sense?

I don't know. Can't they? I don't even know who you're talking about because you're treating complaints about datacenters and about AI as equivalent. Myself, I don't think I've seen anyone be just anti-AI in the sense you said, of despising the existence and development of generative models, wholly and completely. Some people are concerned about the business practices of the AI industry; some resent the effect of AI on the hardware market; some are concerned about the labor market (even if they don't think they're in danger of being replaced); some look at it from the more physical aspect of it, as you've said the construction and operation of datacenters. If you treat these swaths of people as just one person, it's small wonder you'll think they flip-flop from one position to another.