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Data centers trigger voter backlash

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Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#151

Post by pesus »

logicchains wrote: post #139
thewillowcat wrote: post #93

I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.

[flagged]

OpenAI isn't a convincing source. Of course they're going to blame everything on someone else. They don't want to acknowledge the very real hate for AI that people have. It's also extremely likely that they themselves are involved in the very same thing but to push AI instead.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#152

Post by enoint »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #146
thewillowcat wrote: post #93

I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.

Are those NDAs enforceable? That’s a major governance gap and problem if so.

Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#153

Post by teravor »

even if datacenters aren't good for the communities there are in, it would be much worse if China advances in AI faster.

this is one of the core flaws in democracy, while the popularity contest generally curbs blatant abuse (also note how even that fails miserably when the electorate groups start to hate each other), the vast majority of people have no real way to judge the impacts of non-trivial decisions and judgement doesn't even need to come with certainty, just knowing which risks are worth it. voters will never get it right.

and in the information age, democratic sabotage is many times easier than informing a public that in most cases has no interest in being informed when the group think/herd instincts are triggered.

i suspect democracy only worked well thus far because it was never truly real. media was always concentrated and there were no non-democratic peers. this is no longer the case. when the media was concentrated democracy was just an emergent properly of media dynamics. now it's chaotic and subject to external targeted perturbation.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#154

Post by miiiiiike »

It’s reaching the point of absurdity in my area. People are bringing “All data centers are flammable” signs to city meetings.

A plot of land that’s already zoned for the heaviest of industrial activities, is across the street from a dump, 3 miles from an airport, 16 miles from a nuclear generating station, and in a region with good climate, and no water crunch is a pretty good place for a data center.

Facts don’t matter, it’s a religious fight. Even if you provide numbers specific to the local area there’s no way to pierce the rhetoric.

Too much land? I added up lol the land used by the 10+ golf courses in the area. Dwarfs the proposal.

Too much water? I called the head of the parks department and asked them how much water the golf courses that they operate use each year. Massive.

Regional electricity costs going up? Our nuclear generating station already sells 80-85% of all power generated wholesale to other markets.

Data centers are loud? I measured the noise outside of my house. I live on a busy street. It was much louder than the viral videos going around Facebook with titles like “Data center noise from my porch SCARY MUST WATCH”.

I don’t know about all proposed data centers everywhere, but the one they’re eyeing to build in my backyard is fine by me.

I lived in Northern Virginia for years. Data centers are everywhere.

It’s really hard to explain that centers aren’t bad and are actually far more efficient than the alternatives. Just don’t run them on coal, natural gas, or the souls of orphans. And don’t rely exclusively on evaporative cooling if it’s in the desert.

They’re having fun treating tech people like villains. It was the same or worse with bankers back in 2008-2010. Anything I have to say, any data provided, any comparisons made, are biassed because I “use data centers”. When I explain that they use data centers as well, I get the finger.

When I talked to an anti data center family member who runs a local Facebook news group (5,000+ subscribers) they just kept sending me Google AI summaries as counter points… My god. I don’t even use gen AI.

People want to enjoy the benefits of progress and data centers while still being loudly “moral”. All of this on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. How many data centers are involved to get a post from poster to viewer? 2? 3? 8?

A bad data center project proposal somewhere should not mean opposition to data center projects everywhere.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#155

Post by irusensei »

This goes to every LinkedIn brain idiot spouting recycled nonsense about the new Industrial Revolution and that white collar jobs are going away. These blabbering idiots never read a story book to understand the time period, that people displaced by industrialization were uneducated illiterate farm workers in a period in time before democracy.

Jump today most countries stable enough to build infrastructure are democracies and the white collar people you are demonizing do vote and that immense investment in infrastructure is not really easy to relocate.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#156

Post by simianwords »

pesus wrote: post #143
simianwords wrote: post #96

This is because there's a new political divide that makes the old left vs right obsolete: it is neo-luddites vs tech optimists. It cross-cuts against the old and outdated political compass. Neo-luddites are usually the educated elite and genealogy is from old green or left politics but includes nationalists and social conservatives. I think media is broadly failing to recognise this new clan.

The current far right government/movement (aka conservatives) is far more in favor of AI than people opposed to them. You seem to be labeling just about everything as the opposite of what it actually is. Are you invested in or working at an AI company?

I think your view is too simplistic and falls easily into the populist narrative so you end up mislabelling me as being invested.

You are again doing the thing I flagged in my original comment - the left right or progressive/conservative axis is not useful anymore. As an example: a lot of tech CEO's were originally against Trump but ended up caving precisely because the left became anti-technology broadly.

From experience and anecdotes, tech and AI optimism cross cuts into the old axis. Examples

1. third world countries are way more optimistic about AI than first world

2. many celebs (for the lack of better word) are pro AI - look at Redis, Django, NodeJS, Github

3. the existence of Effective Altruism itself should prove that this axis is useless - EA was largely leftist and support democrats while also being "pro" AI like Anthropic is mostly made from the EA cult

The nomenclature also doesn't make sense to me. Why would conservatives not conserve but rather push for progress? What are conservatives conserving instead? The academic consensus is that technology determines the societal culture and if conservatives wanted to conserve anything, they would conserve technology first wouldn't they?

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#158

Post by pesus »

simianwords wrote: post #156
pesus wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current far right government/movement (aka conservatives) is far more in favor of AI than people opposed to them. You seem to be labeling just about everything as the opposite of what it actually is. Are you invested in or working at an AI company?

I think your view is too simplistic and falls easily into the populist narrative so you end up mislabelling me as being invested. You are again doing the thing I flagged in my original comment - the left right or progressive/conservative axis is not useful anymore. As an example: a lot of tech CEO's were originally against Trump but ended up caving precisely because the left became anti-technology broadly. From exper…

None of this changes the fact that average people aren't elites, no matter how much you may try to spin it that way.

And ironically, your comment and views are themselves extremely simplistic. New technology is not inherently progress. Being opposed to specific applications or misuse or consequences of a type of technology is not the same as being broadly anti-technology. A "populist narrative" is an incredibly vague oversimplification, and an ironic thing to complain about in a comment that only serves to spread the pro-elite and anti-human narrative the AI corporations are currently pushing.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#159

Post by spencerflem »

miiiiiike wrote: post #154

It’s reaching the point of absurdity in my area. People are bringing “All data centers are flammable” signs to city meetings. A plot of land that’s already zoned for the heaviest of industrial activities, is across the street from a dump, 3 miles from an airport, 16 miles from a nuclear generating station, and in a region with good climate, and no water crunch is a pretty good place for a data center. Facts don’t mat…

One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes, and they’re using it for technology that disempowers and annoys people. It’s pretty obviously offensive.

All for rezoning golf courses too

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#160

Post by jesse_dot_id »

pesus wrote: post #130
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already speeding up medical progress, so it'll probably take roughly however much time it takes for you to be personally affected by something that is currently incurable.

Source? And I suppose that depends on whether I die first from not having access to healthcare after AI takes my job.

Mostly common sense and an understanding of how technology evolves but, but also:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.06.25329104v...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11326321/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.24047

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.24047

And more just a Google search away.

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