By Michael Glenn
Teen-Age Dirtbag
There’s an early-morning routine I’ve championed over the past few months that tries to get my day moving in the right direction. Starting at 6 or 6:30 a.m., I make a cup of tea and try to read a book or the news, or journal out how my day is going to be. If I’m feeling daring, I might try some yoga or stress-relieving stretches to get the blood moving.
Instead of just moving, though, I pulled up hutchtribune.com on March 18 to read the e-edition and almost spit my tea out (did I overbrew it again?).
I didn’t overbrew, thankfully, but instead found out Reno County might be home to a large-scale data center “in the near future” to fuel artificial intelligence’s needs.
To those who might see this as Hutchinson getting an upper-hand in the future technological advances in our society, you’re being misled. AI data centers routinely overpromise and underdeliver, especially in employment.
Local governments give incentives to business developers to stimulate the local economy through job creation and new revenues into local coffers. The problem with data centers is they do very little except leech off essential resources, like water.
If we are to believe slop churner Sergii Gerasymovych, better known as CEO of Ramiforn AI, that his large-scale data center can reduce its water intake by 70% in comparison to its competitors, that means we can expect it to consume around 900,000 gallons of water daily. Per the EPA, the average household of four uses 400 gallons a day. The new center would consume as much water as 2,250 Hutchinson households in a day.
Hutchinson’s city manager has negotiated water rights for the city to offer as incentives to companies. Slop centers are not right for the job, or anywhere in Reno County.
By now, you may be wondering why I keep using the term “slop.” The decisive majority of what generative AI produces is slop, meaning useless, random prompt responses that create nothing of value. AI slop is clearly noticeable, almost in an uncanny valley way that makes you want to gouge your eyes out. (I know I do!)
AI is simply stolen content, and developers are pushing it to make money for themselves, not for the benefit of any community. How many of you have noticed Google’s addition of Gemini, their slop churner, on every page you open? Or how Facebook and Instagram have AI features that are inescapable. The worst example is Grok, X’s bot that allowed anyone to alter a photo of a person and create near-pornographic images of non-consenting people.
Do we want that data stored in Hutchinson? Hell no!
This is coming from a college student who watches plenty of his fellow classmates use or even rely on AI to pass their classes. It’s depressing to see it happen because no education is taking place, only vomited responses from the slop churner to be copied and pasted into a Google Doc to turn in. Part of the fault is academia’s, but academic dishonesty has skyrocketed since the release of slop churners like ChatGPT. At least before AI, you had to cheat in school by writing your sneakily-hidden notes on your palm or on your water bottle, learning some of the content. AI skips all of that. Why waste your time learning when you can scroll AI-generated videos online? (71% of social media is now AI-generated, according to WIBW in August 2025.)
AI leeches on water like a blood-thirsty vampire, infringes on copyright like a lazy writer, and crushes young people’s minds by convincing them completing is learning. There’s also a negative side.
The impact AI will have on job creation is disgusting, almost criminal to think about. Companies are already using AI to replace entry-level workers in numerous industries across the country. The freshly graduated new hire was replaced by ChatGPT because ChatGPT doesn’t cost anything compared to a person. Why help someone out if you can make more money?
That last sentence is the mantra of tech proponents who give us a dog-and-pony show of their world to convince us they are right. Gerasymovych said communities might kick themselves and say “I threw away my lottery ticket.”
Perhaps Gerasymovych is right in that aspect, since lottery tickets have a one in four (if you’re lucky) chance of not losing, with any real financial gain being fractions of a percent. Do we like those odds?
We shouldn’t buy a lottery ticket because it probably won’t win. That’s how the lottery works. Gerasymovych should move on to another community and try to seduce them of their water.
This new online product is nothing more than stolen media from hard-working, thoughtful people. Reno County should take Sen. Michael Murphy’s suggestion of implementing a moratorium on data center development, and city officials should protect our water rights by saying “not no, but hell no!”
Michael Glenn is the founding publisher of The Hutchinson Tribune and a current student at the University of Kansas. He can be reached at mglenn@hutchtribune.com.