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Data centers trigger voter backlash

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71–80 of 421 posts

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#71
The rhetoric around AI has been insane for years now. AI will kill us all. AI will take all our jobs. SaaS is dead. AI is too dangerous to even release.

It's really no surprise at all voters hate data centers, no matter how useful they think AI might be.

But I don't think the rhetoric will end any time soon. The people saying it seem to really believe it.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China is going to mow us over because we're shooting ourselves in the face. The difference is that I have more faith in China to prevent mass unemployment than I do in the US.

> The difference is that I have more faith in China to prevent mass unemployment than I do in the US. I wouldn't. They'll just handle it differently than we would in the US. https://tradingeconomics.com/china/unemployment-rate - It's around 5% per this (and some other sources I found, just linking the one). The population being around 1.4 billion people, that means around 70 million unemployed. That is already mass u…

"Mass unemployment" can't be based on raw numbers instead of rate, as otherwise no small country could have it.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#73
post #42
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.

> people on UBI are also rather useless

UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#74
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…

[flagged]

How confident are you that the UBI hand out is going to be anywhere near what you made while working?

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#75
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…

[flagged]

Which country do you live in that you have such a positive outlook about redistribution of wealth?

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#76
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…

> They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area.

The answer to that is so obviously "no" that I wonder how much attention they've been paying.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#77
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How confident are you that the UBI hand out is going to be anywhere near what you made while working?

/me looks at the history of wealth distribution following new labor saving innovations

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#78
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't most new capacity solar these days?

That we know of?

Do you trust these tech bros to be truthful?

> Just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line sits dozens of unpermitted gas turbines that power xAI’s Colossus 2 data center while releasing smog-forming pollution, soot, and hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde. The tech company set up the de facto power plant with no permits, no public input, and no notice to nearby communities that will have to deal with the consequences.

https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#79
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…

[flagged]

We have a higher chance of the world ending than getting UBI in America. This is a country that can't even get basic universal healthcare going. Even if we did somehow get UBI, with who's controlling the country, there's almost no chance it wouldn't be abused to control people.

Losing your job means losing your livelihood and often your life for the vast majority of people.

That's not even getting into any loss of purpose or identity it might cause people. For better or for worse, working and jobs are a major part of the social fabric of society, and it would take a non-insignificant amount of time for that to change. Trying to abruptly shift that would not go well.

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