Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Data centers trigger voter backlash

newsweek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 421 posts

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#51

Post by hunter-gatherer »

cogman10 wrote: post #39
hunter-gatherer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm local-ish to Box Elder county in Utah, here people absolutely give a shit about the environmental burden to the region. It isn't just about water consumption, but other things. I think the "We need to win China is AI" narrative is (appropriately???) falling of deaf ears. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but even lay-people in my circles have asked how these alleged AI_driven benefits (fighting cancer, stopping…

Box elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.

Indeed. Our air is so bad we can't afford to open up more smoke stacks. Of course Kevin doesn't care because he's in Canada.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#52

Post by mcv »

cjfd wrote: post #42
yardie wrote: post #6

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they…

You can talk about UBI if you want to appear nice but people on UBI are also rather useless. Of course the real solution to the problem will be the change of carbon based life into silicon based life and the extermination of the former kind of life. Which is not the elected representatives problem if it happens to happen more than 4 years into the future.

You kid, but Bezos said practically the same thing. That human need for water shouldn't hold AI back.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#53

Post by echelon »

jplusequalt wrote: post #48
echelon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>Stop grandpa-ing and shaking your fist at clouds. God forbid people have concerns over companies out in the open talking about replacing their jobs with AI.

China is going to mow us over because we're shooting ourselves in the face.

We frankly deserve it.

You won't have any jobs in that scenario either.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#54

Post by Timon3 »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #49
munificent wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The keyboard gave everyone a "bicycle of the mind", now everyone can visually express themselves if they try. Right, everyone can. So now your film-making vision is simply one infinitesimally small slice of the pie that every viewer is eating. Yes, you can make a movie by yourself. Likely no one will watch it because they're too busy watching other movies made just as cheaply but by companies with marketing budgets…

discovery has always been the problem with art. many people are instrinsically motivated to create, that's why we have so much art AI is orthogonal to human connection. people like people

And now discovery is becoming exponentially harder, because every niche can get flooded with AI slop by companies trying to extract profits from real people's creativity.

Even if you use these tools to create something amazing, what keeps hundreds of variations "inspired by, but totally not copied" of your creative work from popping up? As these models get cheaper and more powerful, this issue will only get worse and worse.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#55

Post by amanaplanacanal »

xvedejas wrote: post #45
cdrnsf wrote: post #14

Nothing this technology offers is, to me, worth the noise pollution or increase in water and electricity rates.

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to…

Don't all states have public utility commissions that regulate electricity provisioning? I don't know if the market has much to do with anything since it's all government regulation.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#56

Post by acdha »

missingcolours wrote: post #26
yardie wrote: post #6

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they…

The people doing the voting are mostly talking about how much water datacenters supposedly use.

More electricity than water around here—rates going up gets everyone’s attention—but there’s nothing supposedly about the water use: data centers don’t consume the water permanently but they still put stress on systems which weren’t designed for the extra volume, pushing requests for expensive expansion projects, and there can be other problems: a colleague mentioned his family back home recently learned that the extra water circulation was spreading a groundwater pollution plume substantially faster, affecting well water users in the area. Since these things tend not to contribute many jobs, there isn’t much to balance out the bad news for communities.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#57

Post by amanaplanacanal »

arjie wrote: post #46

Honestly, voter backlash occurs for every reason. Build more homes? Backlash. Build more wind? Backlash. Build more solar? Backlash. Build more geothermal? Backlash. Build more urban subway? Backlash. Build high-speed rail? Backlash. What I can conclude from this is that what is right to do and what voter backlash occurs in is orthogonal. I think it is right that we build all these things and more nuclear power, and…

How does a new datacenter help the voters? All they see is that their electricity prices are going to go up.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#58

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

xvedejas wrote: post #45
cdrnsf wrote: post #14

Nothing this technology offers is, to me, worth the noise pollution or increase in water and electricity rates.

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to…

> in the long term

being the key phrase. Until we get to that long term, the less price sensitve buyer can buy up all available goods.

for example, all of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity.

so it is impossible to invest in capacity for non-datacenter uses, because the raw ingredients have already been bought up by the data centers.

effectively, at current rate of investment, > 90% of investment into new power generation goes to data centers. That doesn't leave much for any kind of other economic growth, since all of our economic growth depends on electricity.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#59

Post by acdha »

xvedejas wrote: post #45
cdrnsf wrote: post #14

Nothing this technology offers is, to me, worth the noise pollution or increase in water and electricity rates.

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to…

The problem is that we don’t correctly price pollution: it’d be one thing if this boom meant acres of solar panels and wind turbines getting greenlit but in practice it means keeping some dirty plants online and building out new pollution capacity, sometimes completely illegally like what happened in Memphis.

All of this would go away overnight if we taxed carbon.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#60

Post by spongebobstoes »

Timon3 wrote: post #54
spongebobstoes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

discovery has always been the problem with art. many people are instrinsically motivated to create, that's why we have so much art AI is orthogonal to human connection. people like people

And now discovery is becoming exponentially harder, because every niche can get flooded with AI slop by companies trying to extract profits from real people's creativity. Even if you use these tools to create something amazing, what keeps hundreds of variations "inspired by, but totally not copied" of your creative work from popping up? As these models get cheaper and more powerful, this issue will only get worse and…

this is the same argument against the printing press, photography, home printers, youtube, etc

it is a bad argument. more accessible tools consistently lead to more creation in a positive way

Post reply on HN