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Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

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Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#51

Post by Ensorceled »

mattas wrote: post #28
jmyeet wrote: post #12

No, it's not a proxy fight about AI. The data centers are just bad, for several, easy-to-explain reasons: 1. They get massive tax breaks; 2. Everyone else pays for the electricity infrastructure that they need to suppor tthem; 3. They pollute water supplies; 4. Everybody's electricity prices go up while the DC has a sweetheart deal that, again, everyone else is paying for; 5. There are no jobs unlike, say, if someone…

In theory, let's say that a data center was proposed that: 1. got no tax breaks 2. self-generated electricity with greenest of green generation 3. did not pollute water supplies 4. made electricity prices go down somehow 5. (can't figure out a theoretical version where there are lots of jobs, sorry) 6. was extremely quiet Would people still be mad about them? I'm trying to figure out if the bad reasons are the _actua…

> I'm trying to figure out if the bad reasons are the _actual_ reason people are generally against data centers.

The list is long and includes things like people not being able to afford AC anymore; why are you trying to figure this out?

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#52

Post by conartist6 »

vmg12 wrote: post #46

I think its a mistake to fight datacenters and AI. Taking a step back, if the US unilaterally stops producing AI will other countries stop? The answer is clearly no. Datacenters and ai can be built and trained anywhere. If you want control over AI you should want it to be built in your own country where you have political representation. All preventing datacenter buildout will do is ensure that the price remains high…

You could say the same of human intelligence and competence and social trust.

I think it's a mistake to stop producing those things.

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#53

Post by catigula »

vmg12 wrote: post #46

I think its a mistake to fight datacenters and AI. Taking a step back, if the US unilaterally stops producing AI will other countries stop? The answer is clearly no. Datacenters and ai can be built and trained anywhere. If you want control over AI you should want it to be built in your own country where you have political representation. All preventing datacenter buildout will do is ensure that the price remains high…

There's no such thing as 'control over AI'; that goes double for someone who is a complete nobody plebian with a little baby stock portfolio. You know, basically everyone except for a select few.

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#54

Post by cratermoon »

pantsforbirds wrote: post #36
raincole wrote: post #22

At the end it's a facility that costs the locals and benefits non-locals. Even if AI is the truly greatest productivity booster, the benefits are still distributed over all its customers, and the environmental impacts are mostly local. It's like if someone is building a landfill in your hometown to bury the whole country's waste. Or it's like a factory that creates zero job.

Except datacenters are actually very low environmental impact. As long as they provide their own power, they have MUCH lower impact than most farms would.

But the farms! is the new but her emails!

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#55

Post by ElevenLathe »

mjr00 wrote: post #17
snek_case wrote: post #8

I think people are also literally fighting datacenters. As others have said the increase in energy costs is a problem for the average person. Not only is AI potentially competing for your job, it's also competing for your access to energy to power your home or your vehicle. Energy costs also affect the price you pay for basically every good and service. Then there's the fact that many of those datacenter are being bu…

> Then there's the fact that many of those datacenter are being built over what would otherwise be usable farmland. I'm sure many will say "it's not that much land", but then tech billionaires would like to build datacenters the size of Manhattan. What for? To train a bigger LLM? Yay? Sure but you can say this about everything. Where are the protests about the wine industry in California? 500,000 acres of land for vi…

You could say this about anything, but it's being said about AI datacenters. People like wine! They don't like AI and the NSA. It's really not a mystery.

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#56

Post by verdverm »

8note wrote: post #18
verdverm wrote: post #6

The politics of anti-* is tiring. Where are the people and politicians with optimism and a vision? The issues with data centers are manageable. It's quite hard to bring X back to America if Americans oppose the buildings we need (factories, power gen, data centers). I wonder how much of this is the powerful and adversarial poisoning the discourse so America continues to stumble and fall from hegemony?

> The issues with data centers are manageable. are they? whats been done to solve the infrasound pollution? governments haven't even managed to get datacenters to follow clean air regulation

Yes, a few issues / approaches, largely around politics and regulation. The discourse mainly focuses around the bad cases and extrapolates to all data centers (incorrectly). I run our company workloads in a data center that is 95% renewables (mainly wind).

1. About 25% of data centers use close water cycle systems [1]. This could be part of the approval process. It costs more, but these companies are flush with cash.

2. Where they go matters for water table impact and energy generation mix, both geographically and per zoning laws. There are good and bad places to put data centers.

3. Energy shouldn't be a problem, but we have under/mis-invested. A world with limitless energy is possible, what happened to that vision for massive renewables to realize that?

4. A responsive government is required, which seems to be what is happening (as evidenced by the significant pushback). We should be more reasonable (the middle path), but that seems not within the politics of our times.

[1] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#57

Post by philipwhiuk »

catigula wrote: post #50
woeirua wrote: post #31

Data centers are easy to fight against because there is no constituency really pulling for them. They create only a handful of jobs. Ultimately the entire thing is a waste of time, data centers can be built basically anywhere, and that's why a lot of them are moving to rural red states where they welcome the construction. The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage. We should also tax the hell out of…

It should be illegal to lay workers off for AI like it is in China, where sensible policy exists.

You just lay them off for another reason

I mean if AI is really powerful the reason is "profitability as our competitor steals our contracts at a fraction of the price". Your competitor just doesn't hire in the first place of course.

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#58

Post by everdrive »

john_strinlai wrote: post #45
everdrive wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this note, I'm actually confused about why datacenters raise electric costs. Why doesn't the data center bear an extra cost for the added infrastructure? If I build a house on undeveloped land and the electric company needs to run lines, do I also (in a much smaller way than a data center) increase the costs for all other customers? Is everything always just spread evenly?

> I'm actually confused about why datacenters raise electric costs electrical supply is not infinite. datacenters have high electrical demand. more demand + same supply = increase prices. > Why doesn't the data center bear an extra cost for the added infrastructure? the problem is that added infrastructure is not built instantaneously. it lags behind. so costs will be high until more supply-side infrastructure is in…

Thanks, that's really useful. I guess in my head I had the impression that costs could potentially be static. eg: if you had 10 customers total, each needed to pay $1 to generate electricity to serve their needs. So when you scale up to 100 customers, you can still have everyone pay $1 and come out to the same place.

I totally get the general principle that not everything scales linearly like that. But, I also know very little about electricity generation, so I have no idea where the breakpoints are. (I would also guess that if the demand dips low enough, there could be a case where after decreasing costs for a while, costs actually start to rise again as there is some minimum infrastructure needed but fewer customers to bear the cost.)

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#59

Post by antonvs »

woeirua wrote: post #31

Data centers are easy to fight against because there is no constituency really pulling for them. They create only a handful of jobs. Ultimately the entire thing is a waste of time, data centers can be built basically anywhere, and that's why a lot of them are moving to rural red states where they welcome the construction. The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage. We should also tax the hell out of…

> The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage.

What about self-hosted models?

Re: Americans don't know how to fight AI so they're fighting data centers

#60

Post by bpodgursky »

conartist6 wrote: post #52
vmg12 wrote: post #46

I think its a mistake to fight datacenters and AI. Taking a step back, if the US unilaterally stops producing AI will other countries stop? The answer is clearly no. Datacenters and ai can be built and trained anywhere. If you want control over AI you should want it to be built in your own country where you have political representation. All preventing datacenter buildout will do is ensure that the price remains high…

You could say the same of human intelligence and competence and social trust. I think it's a mistake to stop producing those things.

Uh yes you could but what's your point. If we make ourselves dumber, it doesn't make China dumber, human intelligence will just leave us behind.
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