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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

#211

Post by rickydroll »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #207
rickydroll wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think another argument for AI is that it can help pull out patterns and information that are normally hidden from human cognition because we can't encompass that information and keep it in mind. I think one place we should apply this is to the financial system. Use it to detect fraud, tax manipulation games and Other b**** pulled by the 1%ers. With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influenc…

"With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influence and power." If it started to look like that might happen, the ones with influence and power would adjust the AI behavior. They own and control them.

Maybe.. off grid local llms from multiple sources could be a bullwark against that.

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

#212

Post by gensym »

vmg12 wrote: post #195
gensym wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people worried about their livelihoods, there's value in slowing AI adoption to give our economy time to transition rather than just throwing a lot of people out of work all at the same time.

Did slowing down factory build-outs stop globalization from gutting the midwest? I think there are direct parallels here. We either automate ourselves or someone else will automate us and we will have no control.

I grew up in Illinois in the 80s and 90s, so I had a front-row seat to that gutting. Watching my dad move from factory to factory, go to night school to learn tool-and-die and then see all the tool-and-die jobs move overseas.

So no, it didn't stop it. But the fact that it didn't happen overnight did allow my dad to feed his family and make sure my brother and I had better opportunities. If that gutting had happened over a couple years rather than a couple decades, we would have starved, and the knowledge that we did it "ourselves" rather than have it forced upon us by globalization wouldn't have stocked our pantry.

So, yes, there are direct parallels here. I want to give US families a chance to adapt.

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

#213

Post by Dibby053 »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #206
TiredOfLife wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is currently a war (largest since WW2) in europe that is a direct result of nuclear disarmament.

I understand that the war between Russia and Ukraine, and now Iran and Israel/USA has set back the slow progress that was being made on nuclear disarmament. I don't understand your claim that nuclear disarmament caused a war, though.

I guess the argument is that if Ukraine hadn't willingly handed over the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in the world after its independence, Russia would have not started a war against them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

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

#215

Post by mancerayder »

They're fighting higher costs, and data centers use energy, increasing costs. There's no need to make simple things complex - people who aren't engineers or executives with a large equity stake or millions in FAANG money aren't invested in changing the world in the way SV dreams about it.

And it doesn't help that we are "low value capital" to these people.

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

#216

Post by NoGravitas »

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?

> The politics of anti-* is tiring. Where are the people and politicians with optimism and a vision?

China.

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

#217

Post by UtopiaPunk »

rickydroll wrote: post #211
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influence and power." If it started to look like that might happen, the ones with influence and power would adjust the AI behavior. They own and control them.

Maybe.. off grid local llms from multiple sources could be a bullwark against that.

Two points on that: 1. This would require hardware to be affordable by mere mortals. That hardware is not financially beyond our reach yet, but AI is making the cost of buying good computer parts very expensive. The big corporations are working against the goal of local LLMs in a major way just by soaking up most of the hardware on the market. And I don't even think that's intentional - they're just too hungry to consider otherwise. They can pay high prices where normal people cannot.

2.Local LLMs would have to be designed to be very convenient to use. As it stands, the big players are making their online models very convenient instead, and that let's them charge a subscription. It's a proven business model that our society has gotten used to (even if we grumble a bit). Even if the hardware were cheap, local LLMs are mostly for businesses, with a few hobbyists running it in their basement because they can.

It's extremely hard for me to imagine local LLMs being a threat to the powerful in any way.

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

#218

Post by Izkata »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #157
avidiax wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural power was always expensive, but now due to wildfire risk, it needs to be ruinously expensive. It's not for the benefit of the cities, and driven by corporate risk management.

>Rural power was always expensive, But not ruinously so? What changed? The rules (both public and private). > It's not for the benefit of the cities, and driven by corporate risk management. Which is driven by laws and courts and precedents and best practices and recommendations and beurocratic rules that come from where? Regardless this has nothing to do with city and everything to do with rich and out of touch. I'm…

Time. In addition to degrading infrastructure, bad forest management making the wildfires worse than they should be: https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-better-approach-to-forest-man...

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

#219

Post by chucksta »

Kye wrote: post #209
chucksta wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay - people like eating popcorn, beef, and driving too.

There's plenty of room for that, all the planned datacenters that will never be finished or started, and enough solar panels to power it in a small fraction of the space used for ethanol corn.

That's definitely a point but doesn't address mine. People like corn, people don't like AI.
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