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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

#131

Post by xyzal »

headcanon wrote: post #66
atomic128 wrote: post #48

Poison Fountain on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoisonFountain/

Do you feel poison fountain is actually effective? To me it seems like free chaos engineering for ingestion platforms. Wouldn't it paradoxically harden data ingestion?

Not sure about flawed code logic, but it is embarassingly easy to plant false information into models. Make a few static sites with random info, crosslink them, reference them on reddit a few times, then plant the payload there.

I know it because i tried ...

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

#132

Post by Henchman21 »

goatlover wrote: post #89
gamerslexus wrote: post #41

If you fight either of those things in the US, you should do so carefully, as it may get you to be targeted by FBI and DHS as an extremist actor as per current government's policy as of approximately a week ago. This is a wall of text but genuinely worth skimming: https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti...

This is one way you know billionaires have too much sway over the government.

Only C-suite members and billionaires have political representation in the US.

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

#133

Post by 306bobby »

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.

Well the data centers around me certainly don't provide their own power and water, so your point seems moot

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

#134

Post by gamerslexus »

scythe wrote: post #108

Electricity costs make the headlines, but I have also heard that the datacenters apparently make a loud perpetual buzzing noise that is audible from a large distance. That sounds like reason enough to oppose one being built near me.

Data centers behave as acoustic weapons: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo

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

#135

Post by xnx »

sheikhnbake wrote: post #106
sailfast wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not have a eunuch congress - but we do have a Congress that believes their balls have been removed despite being there the whole time. This is a solvable problem, happily. It does, however, require some will and for folks to remember they actually have some power as elected representatives to the highest legislative body in the land.

The only power congress theoretically has to impact the administration is that of the purse. But the admin has repeatedly ignored such restrictions. This check on power also loses it's teeth when the oligarchs align themselves behind the executive branch.

They can also impeach

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

#136

Post by nancyminusone »

cratermoon wrote: post #54
pantsforbirds wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Even unprofitable farms can produce edible food. A datacenter is a machine that uses electricity to make heat and no other physical prouducts. That's a tough justification to make to people who live near one.

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

#137

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

andsoitis wrote: post #39
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

This article is bullshit. It downplays the real, valid concerns people have about data centers themselves as more "ahh, poor uniformed populace" BS: 1. Electricity costs in Maryland jumped 89% over the past year, much more than anywhere else, largely due to an AWS data center expansion: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-electricity-pr... 2. At their heart, data centers are extractive. Their boosters alway…

> The same thing happened in the 80s, 90s and early 00s when many economists painted those who lost their jobs due to globalization as Luddites who just didn't understand economics. Only decades later did many economists readily admit many of the huge downsides to many populations from globalization and that reskilling rarely works. The question is whether globalization is a net positive and whether people understand…

> The question is whether globalization is a net positive and whether people understand that, even if it comes at a cost to themselves personally.

That's moving the goalposts. While economists acknowledged there would be some disruptions, in the 90s the vast majority of them downplayed what turned out to be prolonged negative effects to huge populations in richer Western countries. And, ironically, it was those negative effects that led to the rise of nationalism and the dismantling of globalization that we see today. I understand folks' objections to some of the opinions and writings of Paul Krugman, but I give him credit for admitting he was wrong: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/inequa...

Sure, there aren't many people who deny that globalization lifted millions out of poverty in East Asia. That's not really comforting to folks in the Rust Belt whose communities have been hollowed out and devastated.

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

#138

Post by xnx »

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.

How is this different than a cornfield? A data center is probably a better neighbor because it doesn't kick up dirt, pesticides, and fertilizer into the air.

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

#139

Post by starkparker »

scythe wrote: post #108

Electricity costs make the headlines, but I have also heard that the datacenters apparently make a loud perpetual buzzing noise that is audible from a large distance. That sounds like reason enough to oppose one being built near me.

Data centre noise is a mix of low- and high-frequency intake and exhaust fan noise at the structure level, diesel or turbine generators for the centres supplementing their own power or running backups (sometimes with cooling towers), and no real investment in sound damping.

Combine them with the tendency to build them in open, flat rural areas that have few or no trees or other buildings to baffle the sound, then run them 24/7, and it becomes a chronic issue for people who live nearby (even miles away, if the acoustics are just right).

That shouldn't have been as much of a problem in the US as it's become, but data centre projects get built near where people live because the infrastructure is already there. That naturally raised it as an issue in the UK, where there's less unpopulated space, before data centres of that scale were built: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/31/data-centre-...

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

#140

Post by raincole »

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.

First of all I didn't say that we should ban datacenters. The point is that they should benefit the locals one way or another. Requiring them to invest in energy and other infra is a good first step.
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