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Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

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Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#61
The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and power needs. I believe them, they probably will do that, thats not even too expensive. They need to however recoup this investment somehow, which is the fundamental problem with a technology like AI.

The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.

Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.

But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer your question: Texas. Running on a platform of clean energy is political suicide in half of America, particularly in the south.

Texas leads the nation in raw renewable energy production. Solar, wind, and nuclear are hardly maligned there.

I'm not in the know on Texas politics, so I'm curious. Do Texas politicians publicly support clean energy? Or do they just keep their mouths shut and let it happen? Given that the current head of the Republican party seems completely against it and how rabid some of his followers are, I'm just wondering how they thread that needle?

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#63
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has no one heard of the concept of industrial zoning? When you live next to an industrial zone you get all the consequences. I love how literally all these projects are on shuttered sites of various plants that were presumably louder and more polluting than these new data centers.

This is not an excuse for residents to have lower quality of life for capital speculators "because it was industrial zoning". Try to make your case in a public hearing with a room full of residents, see how it goes. Long time politicians are getting fired over it, so natural consequences will help with this. Data Center Disputes Fuel 33 Recall Efforts, Ballotpedia Finds - https://ballotpedia.org/Press_release_Data_Ce…

I live in Utah and we have refineries a few blocks away from residential neighborhoods and a literal strip mine visible from half of the Salt Lake valley.

The datacenter controversy has nothing to do with caring about the environment and is a complete scam that preys on low-information voters. It is a product of outside Chinese money being funneled into US politics to hobble the US in Artificial Intelligence.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will run to point to the spate of new nuclear plans, but the point be made here is that nuclear regulation is so suffocating and costs so extreme that it's "effectively illegal" to build reactors.

Is it safety regulation that makes nuclear so hard, or is it just that we can't seem to do large projects of any kind any more?

Musk can. Everyone else? Not so much.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#65
post #11

If Virginia or Louisiana should profit by this then so be it. Californian land-use laws will have a net effect of -8 house seats against Texas. That is good. It should happen. If Texans will be poorer so Virginians will be richer, that is also good. May the American federal system reign forever. Allowing for states as experiments and letting them suffer their consequences is good. It is a machine for us to iterate on…

The problem is that the costs of Texas blowing natural gas carbon into the air are largely paid by wildfires in California, so we are going to need another mechanism to make sure that is felt in Texas as well.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an excuse for residents to have lower quality of life for capital speculators "because it was industrial zoning". Try to make your case in a public hearing with a room full of residents, see how it goes. Long time politicians are getting fired over it, so natural consequences will help with this. Data Center Disputes Fuel 33 Recall Efforts, Ballotpedia Finds - https://ballotpedia.org/Press_release_Data_Ce…

I live in Utah and we have refineries a few blocks away from residential neighborhoods and a literal strip mine visible from half of the Salt Lake valley. The datacenter controversy has nothing to do with caring about the environment and is a complete scam that preys on low-information voters. It is a product of outside Chinese money being funneled into US politics to hobble the US in Artificial Intelligence.

> It is a product of outside Chinese money being funneled into US politics to hobble the US in Artificial Intelligence.

Please provide citations and evidence for this assertion. As it stands, this is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#67

Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.

Honestly, that sounds kind of arbitrary. Why should companies that use electricity be required to also produce electricity? This is what the market is for, so other Companies can produce electricity for money and other Companies buy that electricity.

And to which companies would this apply? Only Datacenters? There are other energy intensive industries too, should this also apply to them? And what is the cutoff for that? Does every bigger 21st century company also need to be an electricity company?

It would be less arbitrary if all negative externalities would be taxed (for example, carbon tax or noise pollution tax) and maybe prioritize households on the public grid.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#68
post #11

If Virginia or Louisiana should profit by this then so be it. Californian land-use laws will have a net effect of -8 house seats against Texas. That is good. It should happen. If Texans will be poorer so Virginians will be richer, that is also good. May the American federal system reign forever. Allowing for states as experiments and letting them suffer their consequences is good. It is a machine for us to iterate on…

This letter says nothing about Louisiana or Virginia, what exactly are you talking about?

I believe they're implying that if the data centers don't get built in Texas they will be built in Louisiana and Virginia.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#69

Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.

Because up until recently all the big hyperscalars were already committed to buying or building renewables to meet their energy demand. Then AI happened and they all collectively realized they needed to build as many datacenters as possible to fit as many GPUs as possible to chase the bubble. All those clean energy commitments got tossed by the wayside. Hell, half the time these companies fire people just to free up cashflow to buy more GPUs!

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note: Now's a fantastic time get into industrial processes or oil & gas since all of the fake propaganda against buildings with computers in them has distracted people from facilities built on a daily basis that cause 1000x the pollution and noise of a datacenter.

You think the folks who are successfully organizing against datacenters can’t use the same techniques and support networks to do the same thing against other nuisance uses?

Not really - China doesn't care about other nuisance issues.

Look at how the TikTok kids (who went nuts for the Palestinians) don't give a crud about the Cubans.

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