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Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

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Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#171

Post by estearum »

munk-a wrote: post #130
watwut wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed the same thing about effective altruism. Its fans are really good at convincing themselves the most self-serving action amd goals are noble pursuits.

It suffers from an ends-justify-the-means trap where bad actions in the short term with the long term goal of good actions are justified by the fact that you, the actor, know your philosophy is the best way to enact positive change. I'm happy to try and get already wealthy individuals on the train of effective altruism but it has been used to justify wealth concentration far too much and, to be honest, spreading mone…

Imagine thinking that EA could actually cause people to concentrate more wealth than they would've otherwise lmao

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#172

Post by estearum »

williamcotton wrote: post #165
vrganj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must be "effective" "altruists". The only way to do good is to first do all the bad and consolidate power, so you can then use all that power to do good, pinkie promise!

I've been to one EA meetup and it wasn't my thing but this seems nothing like the discussions I had. It's where I found out about GiveDirectly. The biggest issue for me was the AGI/ASI doomerism. But then again, fast-forward five or six years and we've got "unaligned" AI agents blindly following reward functions...

Hey buddy, you're up against people who've only "learned about EA" as a third- or fourth-hand vibecloud around FTX.

Don't bring any of that firsthand knowledge here. You're also not allowed to reference any of the actual writing or pledges or organizations actually in the EA ecosystem. It's Twitter vibes or nothing, mmkay?

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#173

Post by goatlover »

rayiner wrote: post #150
goatlover wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is opposing data center construction bad? People need housing, if there isn't enough affordable housing around, then opposing it can be bad. But also people who live there should have a say in what gets built near them, since they have to live with it.

People need infrastructure. Data centers are infrastructure.

Infrastructure for what? To push AI, crypto and gambling on everyone? How about build this "infrastructure" in the back yards of billionaires? They should have plenty of land.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#174

Post by strangeloops85 »

Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys?

I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is benefiting from xAI's Memphis data center that is violating (previous, not anymore!) EPA standards, causing disproportionate impacts to nearby African-American communities. All the while, Ants appear to be floating on some higher effective altruist / B-corp plane. The little people and their petty concerns are just bumps on the road to RSI and ASI after all.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#175

Post by platevoltage »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #129
alpha_squared wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest. If we're going to rebrand things to blur lines, I propose rebranding data centers to pedophile content hubs. The rest of your argument is full of similar cherry-picking for dishonest discourse.

Opposing new housing construction is bad in basically the same way that opposing data center construction is bad; and I'm happy to use the same word to describe both groups of people.

Just the worst take I've seen all day.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#176

Post by goatlover »

dyauspitr wrote: post #98
mminer237 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas leads the nation in raw renewable energy production. Solar, wind, and nuclear are hardly maligned there.

I’m pretty sure the GP knows that Texas does a lot of renewable energy. It’s just that you can’t talk about it or run on that platform as soon as you run on it people think you’re some woke liberal America destroyer.

Since the GOP is already trying to paint Talarico that way, he might as well add it to his campaign if he hasn't already. He can mix it in with God wanting humans to take care of the Earth religious message. It's crazy how much the right has co-opted religion in American politics.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#177

Post by goatlover »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #114

The main issue with wanting to block data centers in any specific location, is the hyperscalers will just move to building them wherever politics are most favorable. If protesters in your blue state block construction, they'll just build more in red states, giving the red states more leverage in how AI progress continues. If they are blocked across the board in the US, more will be build abroad, in countries that wou…

I'm guessing the people who successfully block construction will be happy the data centers are built elsewhere. I doubt they care that much about AI progress, given the goals of those building the data centers.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#178

Post by platevoltage »

andsoitis wrote: post #26
jnovek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.

> When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters. Are you arguing that the leaders of a state, who were elected by the constituents, should not experiment and try make things better? By definition, some experiments will fail.

Can you name a politician who's been elected based on their promise to put datacenter in their community?

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#179

Post by BobbyTables2 »

kdheiwns wrote: post #79
rstupek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to realize Texas has huge number clean energy build outs and has been for quite a few years. They lead in wind generation and commercial solar generation.

I very much realize it. I know companies are doing it. But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform. Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate and currently serves as attorney general, proudly announced cracking down on "solar scams": https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-... Plus his campaign site make…

I think he’s more like a broken clock that is still right twice a day…

I’ve seen too many solar panels installed on the north side of a house, under a tree.

Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

#180

Post by deepsquirrelnet »

elictronic wrote: post #143
ourmandave wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...provide air coverage for Texas leadership. The GOP runs Texas. The governor, sec of state, AG, and both houses are republican. Since when have they ever wanted or needed air coverage?

The 2018 Senate race had a Democratic candidate lose by 2.6% while the economy for everyday Americans was doing much better. O'Rourke wasn't as good of a candidate as Talarico, and Cruz is a much better candidate than Paxton. That's not saying Cruz is good, just Paxton has almost as much baggage as Trump without the TV personality to whitewash it away. Republican strategists are expecting over 150 million to be spent…

> Republican strategists are expecting over 150 million to be spent on this race

Imagine the assurances that are made to convince donors it's worth it. Who exactly bears the cost of unpopularity?...

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