Look, I’m just gonna say it – Cyrus Beschloss is kind of a dick for being right about this.

The CEO of Verb (yeah, that’s really the company name) stood up at CNBC’s Trading the Midterms event this week and basically called out everyone who’s been complaining about AI data centers while simultaneously asking ChatGPT to write their emails. And honestly? He’s got a point. A really annoying, uncomfortably accurate point.

The Cognitive Dissonance Is Real

“All the people that are saying they’re anti-data center, that they’re anti-AI in general, they’re using it,” Beschloss said. Which, ouch. But also… yeah. I’ve watched this play out in real time over the past year and it’s wild how many people will tweet about the environmental costs of AI from their iPhone while ChatGPT is literally open in another tab.

The thing is, this isn’t just about being a hypocrite in the normal way we’re all hypocrites about stuff. This is different because the stakes are actually pretty high. Data centers use massive amounts of energy and water. They’re changing local infrastructure, driving up power costs in some areas, and yeah – contributing to climate change in measurable ways. These aren’t small concerns.

But Beschloss isn’t wrong when he says that if you actually forced people to choose – like, really choose between shutting down all the data centers or losing access to ChatGPT – a lot of those vocal critics would suddenly get real quiet. “There’s going to be a heck of a crossroads,” he said, which is probably the most diplomatic way to phrase “people are gonna have to put up or shut up.”

Why Does Beschloss Even Care?

Here’s where it gets interesting (and slightly gross, depending on your perspective). Verb isn’t just some random tech company – it’s a data marketplace. They literally let people sell their personal data to companies who want it for AI training and other uses. So yeah, Beschloss has a pretty big financial stake in making sure people keep using AI and that data centers keep humming along.

Does that make his argument invalid? Not really, but it does make it a lot less noble. This isn’t some philosophical truth-teller moment. This is a guy whose business model depends on AI adoption calling out the people who might slow that adoption down.

And I mean, let’s be real – of course the CEO of a company that profits from data sales is going to defend data centers. That’s not exactly shocking investigative journalism right there.

But He’s Still Not Wrong

The uncomfortable truth is that we’ve hit this weird moment where AI criticism has become kind of… performative? I know people who will spend twenty minutes complaining about how AI is ruining everything and then immediately use it to summarize a long article they don’t want to read. The disconnect is genuinely bizarre.

Part of the problem is that the conversation around AI has gotten so polarized that nuance basically doesn’t exist anymore. You’re either supposed to think AI is humanity’s salvation or you’re supposed to think it’s destroying the planet and stealing jobs and turning us all into mindless content sludge consumers. There’s not a lot of room for “this technology has serious problems AND it’s also really useful sometimes.”

“All the people that are saying they’re anti-data center, that they’re anti-AI in general, they’re using it.”

What kills me is that this didn’t have to be an either-or situation. We could be having conversations about making data centers more efficient, about regulating their environmental impact, about whether we actually need AI for every single use case companies are trying to shove it into. But instead we’ve somehow ended up in this place where you either have to defend everything about AI or pretend you’re not using it.

The Usage Numbers Don’t Lie

And the thing is, usage keeps going up. Like, way up. ChatGPT alone has hundreds of millions of users at this point. Claude, Gemini, all the others – they’re growing too. Meanwhile, the protests against data center construction are also increasing. Those two trends are happening simultaneously, which means at least some of the same people are involved in both. Even Anthropic, pulling in massive revenue, couldn't escape the debate – AI doomers turn on Anthropic despite the company's safety-focused reputation.

It’s the same energy as people who complain about Amazon’s labor practices while their porch is covered in Prime boxes. We’re all hypocrites about something, usually because the alternative is genuinely inconvenient and we’ve gotten used to the convenience.

What This Actually Means

I don’t think Beschloss is some kind of hero for pointing this out. Again, dude runs a data marketplace – his motives aren’t exactly pure here. But the question he’s raising is a real one that we’re gonna have to deal with eventually.

Are we actually willing to give up the benefits of AI to address its costs? Or are we just hoping someone else figures out how to make it more sustainable while we keep using it? Because right now it kind of seems like we want all the benefits with none of the tradeoffs, which isn’t how anything works.

The crossroads Beschloss is talking about is coming whether we’re ready for it or not. And when it gets here, a lot of people are gonna have to decide if their principles are stronger than their desire to have a chatbot write their cover letters. My money’s on the chatbot, but I guess we’ll see.