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Data centers trigger voter backlash

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Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#61

Post by jplusequalt »

echelon wrote: post #53
jplusequalt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stop grandpa-ing and shaking your fist at clouds. God forbid people have concerns over companies out in the open talking about replacing their jobs with AI.

China is going to mow us over because we're shooting ourselves in the face. We frankly deserve it. You won't have any jobs in that scenario either.

>China is going to mow us over because we're shooting ourselves in the face.

The difference is that I have more faith in China to prevent mass unemployment than I do in the US.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#62

Post by simonw »

munificent wrote: post #33
echelon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The keyboard gave everyone a "bicycle of the mind", now everyone can visually express themselves if they try. Right, everyone can. So now your film-making vision is simply one infinitesimally small slice of the pie that every viewer is eating. Yes, you can make a movie by yourself. Likely no one will watch it because they're too busy watching other movies made just as cheaply but by companies with marketing budgets…

> Hopefully you can find parking.

One of the supposed benefits of true self driving cars is that you never have to find parking near where you're going ever again. Get out, send your car off to park somewhere 5 miles away.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#63

Post by toomuchtodo »

Ethee wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, the productivity increases with existing models are meh (ie not 0 but certainly not worth what is being spent) based on the data. Enjoy the tulips while they bloom. https://www.bok.or.kr/eng/bbs/B0000354/view.do?nttId=1009840... https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/9/ai-intensifies-work/ AI Doesn't Reduce Work–It Intensifies It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46955703 - February 2026 (306 comments) http…

Productivity is typically a broader scale measure against the economy. I 100% agree that the shoehorned adoption of AI into general company processes is more of a negative than a positive. Most people here would agree that AI has only really affected productivity positively in the past 6 months-1 year. So obviously there wont be much general uplift across all industries yet, and obviously that would mean there's not…

With the most politeness I can muster, show me the data. “In God we trust. All others must bring data.” If the data doesn't exist supporting the productivity improvement assertion, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#64

Post by whalesalad »

yardie wrote: post #6

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they…

> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage

the environmental impacts is the only thing people actually care about, you are quite off base here. noise, proximity to housing, water usage, energy prices going up in the area. this is the core issue. not "will ai replace my job"

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#66

Post by staticshock »

arjie wrote: post #46

Honestly, voter backlash occurs for every reason. Build more homes? Backlash. Build more wind? Backlash. Build more solar? Backlash. Build more geothermal? Backlash. Build more urban subway? Backlash. Build high-speed rail? Backlash. What I can conclude from this is that what is right to do and what voter backlash occurs in is orthogonal. I think it is right that we build all these things and more nuclear power, and…

Agreed. Change makes people uncomfortable. The nature of the change doesn't matter; the transition itself is the root of the discomfort.

When things are stagnant, we gradually optimize our lives towards a low energy state and overfit to our exact circumstances. When a change in circumstances reveals past optimizations to be wasted work, it kick-starts the four stages of grief over the loss of that low energy state.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#67

Post by Jtsummers »

jplusequalt wrote: post #61
echelon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is going to mow us over because we're shooting ourselves in the face. We frankly deserve it. You won't have any jobs in that scenario either.

>China is going to mow us over because we're shooting ourselves in the face. The difference is that I have more faith in China to prevent mass unemployment than I do in the US.

> The difference is that I have more faith in China to prevent mass unemployment than I do in the US.

I wouldn't. They'll just handle it differently than we would in the US.

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/unemployment-rate - It's around 5% per this (and some other sources I found, just linking the one). The population being around 1.4 billion people, that means around 70 million unemployed. That is already mass unemployment despite having a low rate of unemployment across their national population. And that's before getting to their youth unemployment rate which is around 15%, which sets them up poorly for the future.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#68

Post by Henchman21 »

cjfd wrote: post #42
yardie wrote: post #6

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they…

You can talk about UBI if you want to appear nice but people on UBI are also rather useless. Of course the real solution to the problem will be the change of carbon based life into silicon based life and the extermination of the former kind of life. Which is not the elected representatives problem if it happens to happen more than 4 years into the future.

I agree with your point broadly, even the cynicism, but the following sticks in my craw:

> people on UBI are also rather useless

The point of life is not “that you be useful to the wealthy”.

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#69

Post by xvedejas »

acdha wrote: post #59
xvedejas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to…

The problem is that we don’t correctly price pollution: it’d be one thing if this boom meant acres of solar panels and wind turbines getting greenlit but in practice it means keeping some dirty plants online and building out new pollution capacity, sometimes completely illegally like what happened in Memphis. All of this would go away overnight if we taxed carbon.

Isn't most new capacity solar these days?

Re: Data centers trigger voter backlash

#70

Post by godwinson__4-8 »

yardie wrote: post #6

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they…

[flagged]
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