I feel like we read two different articles. Both Nate and Jasmine think the outlook for AI looks grim. They both think that the locals are right to protest, they think that the concern about AI and its environmental impact is real, they both think that AI is politically toxic and SV is out of touch.
Meanwhile, your comment downplays all of the legitimate concerns that Jasmine discusses and worse, even invents concerns to downplay as if Jasmine had reported on them. In particular, you said that noise is a non-issue – that's not discussed at all in the interview (CMD+F "noise" – zero results).
You said that data centers "are not really driving electric costs up for residents," but Jasmine doesn't say that at all. Instead, she says that power and electricity are the most serious of everyone's environmental concerns, and that electricity rates going up is just one of the concerns that motivates opposition.
You said that the "they will take our jobs" argument is not on anybody's mind, which is literally false. Jasmine says job displacement wasn't the dominant explanation that people gave for opposing local data centers, but they both repeatedly discuss job displacement. Jasmine even quotes people she interviewed as saying "my boss keeps making me use AI, I have to say that I’m using AI or people won’t resource my project."
You said that NDAs prevented governments from clarifying "bluntly false" narratives, but that's, at best, cherry-picking what Jasmine was saying. You're right that NDAs were used and officials couldn't correct rumors about deals or water usage, but the interview does not say that the concerns people had were just straight up false. She notes that they had real concerns like grid strain, gas generation (from the power plants they're putting on data center property), ugly facilities, temporary jobs, subsidies, secrecy, and an unequal distribution of the benefits.
> Likewise, I am taken aback that you, having apparently read this lengthy interview to find it in disagreement with my summary, elected instead to quote Rachel's unsupported comment dismissing the whole thing. Why not just quote the journalist disagreeing with me instead of some rando disagreeing with her? Does Rachel have a reputation that I'm unaware of?
I find it strange that you're putting more stock in a substack journalist from the Bay area who went to Wisconsin to figure out why people are doing something, than the people who live there and are doing that thing. Do the people who live in the places where data centers are going up have no value to their opinions? Does Rachel need her own Substack before we can take her bonafides seriously?
I'm taken aback.