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

vox.com

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

#21

Post by sailfast »

everdrive wrote: post #5

Well realistically both are bad. Right now our government is purely dysfunctional, so I'm not sure anyone knows how to fight anything. We have a eunuch Congress, and in response each party just tries to push executive power as far as possible, never once considering that someone they dislike could get elected in the future and use that expanded power in a negative way. I'm sure that right at this moment at least some…

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.

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

#22

Post by raincole »

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.

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

#24

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

verdverm wrote: post #6

The politics of anti-* is tiring. Where are the people and politicians with optimism and a vision? The issues with data centers are manageable. It's quite hard to bring X back to America if Americans oppose the buildings we need (factories, power gen, data centers). I wonder how much of this is the powerful and adversarial poisoning the discourse so America continues to stumble and fall from hegemony?

We've heard a lot of optimism about Facebook, Google, etc. and now see all those companies having too much power over us and sucking worse eeach year. So we've evolved our thinking. Sorry it's tiring.

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

#25

Post by sailfast »

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…

This. 100% this. Data centers drive up our energy costs and are external to the local economy for the most part.

Blocking them should be a priority until rates are negotiated with your G&T / major provider (PJM and FERC in Maryland and many other states)

RE blaming the peon reader: you’re talking about Vox so that is expected unfortunately.

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

#26

Post by jsrozner »

> How can technology be used to make our society freer and more equal, and to augment human agency rather than diminish it?

The past 20 years of surveillance capitalism and the general deployment of technology against consumers should make everyone question whether this could ever be possible.

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

#27

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

t_sawyer wrote: post #3

This is paywalled. Without reading the article, I don't think Americans are fighting data centers because of AI. I think they're fighting data centers because many cities have already allowed new data center builds (even before AI exploded) and now realize these massive profit making companies are contaminating local water supplies, not providing any jobs outside of a temporary boom of construction jobs, and are caus…

The term "data center" was not even in the typical person's consciousness before the current AI era.

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

#28

Post by mattas »

jmyeet wrote: post #12

No, it's not a proxy fight about AI. The data centers are just bad, for several, easy-to-explain reasons: 1. They get massive tax breaks; 2. Everyone else pays for the electricity infrastructure that they need to suppor tthem; 3. They pollute water supplies; 4. Everybody's electricity prices go up while the DC has a sweetheart deal that, again, everyone else is paying for; 5. There are no jobs unlike, say, if someone…

In theory, let's say that a data center was proposed that:

1. got no tax breaks

2. self-generated electricity with greenest of green generation

3. did not pollute water supplies

4. made electricity prices go down somehow

5. (can't figure out a theoretical version where there are lots of jobs, sorry)

6. was extremely quiet

Would people still be mad about them?

I'm trying to figure out if the bad reasons are the _actual_ reason people are generally against data centers. Or if it's really more about "AI bad."

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

#30

Post by jsrozner »

t_sawyer wrote: post #3

This is paywalled. Without reading the article, I don't think Americans are fighting data centers because of AI. I think they're fighting data centers because many cities have already allowed new data center builds (even before AI exploded) and now realize these massive profit making companies are contaminating local water supplies, not providing any jobs outside of a temporary boom of construction jobs, and are caus…

https://archive.ph/DqPNZ
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