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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

#71

Post by cratermoon »

mjr00 wrote: post #49
runtime_terror wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, tell how much energy an equal sized vineyard uses compared to a data center?

It takes 870 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of wine -- if people were genuinely protesting water waste it would be a good idea to start there. Almonds too.

I like wine and almonds. They are valuable commodities with a variety of uses and anyone can enjoy them for a modest price. They can be used and made into many additional valuable things, from sangria to baklava. What can LLMs do for me?

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

#72

Post by moffers »

antonvs wrote: post #59
woeirua wrote: post #31

Data centers are easy to fight against because there is no constituency really pulling for them. They create only a handful of jobs. Ultimately the entire thing is a waste of time, data centers can be built basically anywhere, and that's why a lot of them are moving to rural red states where they welcome the construction. The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage. We should also tax the hell out of…

> The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage. What about self-hosted models?

You would purchase an AI tax stamp! Just make sure you’re being honest about your token usage. Or maybe we can have AI licenses! Sky’s the limit when you can just make up policy on the internet for free.

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

#73

Post by nemomarx »

mattas wrote: post #28
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 _actua…

I think at least it would be hard to get a nimby protest movement going with those conditions. Maybe add in building it somewhere people can't see it?

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

#74

Post by venzaspa »

woeirua wrote: post #31

Data centers are easy to fight against because there is no constituency really pulling for them. They create only a handful of jobs. Ultimately the entire thing is a waste of time, data centers can be built basically anywhere, and that's why a lot of them are moving to rural red states where they welcome the construction. The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage. We should also tax the hell out of…

As far as I can work out, tokens aren't fungible which makes them a pretty poor thing to tax instead of just taxing the profits of the companies behind the models.

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

#76

Post by nemomarx »

verdverm wrote: post #56
8note wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issues with data centers are manageable. are they? whats been done to solve the infrasound pollution? governments haven't even managed to get datacenters to follow clean air regulation

Yes, a few issues / approaches, largely around politics and regulation. The discourse mainly focuses around the bad cases and extrapolates to all data centers (incorrectly). I run our company workloads in a data center that is 95% renewables (mainly wind). 1. About 25% of data centers use close water cycle systems [1]. This could be part of the approval process. It costs more, but these companies are flush with cash.…

You might remember the current president cutting renewable subsidies and adding regulation to slow down building them?

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

#77

Post by Ensorceled »

nemomarx wrote: post #19
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?

If you want people to support anything, show them how it benefits them. Do it as directly as possible - new jobs in their town, lower energy bills from a new plant, etc. People will generally follow the money. What won't work is something like "it'll be better for the economy in the entire country, so put up with some disruption for a while." No one likes higher electricity bills while a power plant is being construc…

Especially when the payoff is "AI will create exciting new jobs" and no one can come up with any jobs that are not just "AI Accountant" where the AI Accountant is just an existing Accountant replacing one of his colleagues.

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

#78

Post by verdverm »

nemomarx wrote: post #19
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?

If you want people to support anything, show them how it benefits them. Do it as directly as possible - new jobs in their town, lower energy bills from a new plant, etc. People will generally follow the money. What won't work is something like "it'll be better for the economy in the entire country, so put up with some disruption for a while." No one likes higher electricity bills while a power plant is being construc…

For sure, a couple of those arguments I've heard recently

1. The taxes can offset the federal cuts so local taxes do not need to be raised. Requires the local gov't officials signing onto the deal in this way, which seems more likely given the massive pushback nation wide.

2. The data centers should be forced to build the energy generation they require. Excess (during off peak) can be fed back into the local grid and lower prices. It's quite likely the energy deficit will be the primary limiting factor to build out. We can also force the data center to pay premium prices, this is within the capability of regulations.

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

#79

Post by mjr00 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #55
mjr00 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then there's the fact that many of those datacenter are being built over what would otherwise be usable farmland. I'm sure many will say "it's not that much land", but then tech billionaires would like to build datacenters the size of Manhattan. What for? To train a bigger LLM? Yay? Sure but you can say this about everything. Where are the protests about the wine industry in California? 500,000 acres of land for vi…

You could say this about anything, but it's being said about AI datacenters. People like wine! They don't like AI and the NSA. It's really not a mystery.

That's exactly my point! Everything has negative externalities, and focusing on them is the way to seem "rational" even though you don't actually care about them. It's the same as how people will protest high density residences "ruining the character of the neighborhood" when they really just don't want poor people living near them. You can't just outright say you don't want poor people in your neighborhood, so you talk about how these residences ruin neighborhood character, disrupt view cones, cause traffic problems, etc.

Here it's the same thing--the people protesting don't give a damn about water waste, electricity usage, or wasted land. If they did, there are tons of other offenders who are way worse. But they don't want to outright say they're protesting against AI because it makes them seem like luddites.

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

#80

Post by bayarearefugee »

everdrive wrote: post #35
hackeraccount wrote: post #29

Isn't "data centers are using all the electricity" the same as "we're not pricing electricity correctly"? Instead of a ban just make sure they pay what's needed to keep capacity where it needs to be.

On this note, I'm actually confused about why datacenters raise electric costs. Why doesn't the data center bear an extra cost for the added infrastructure? If I build a house on undeveloped land and the electric company needs to run lines, do I also (in a much smaller way than a data center) increase the costs for all other customers? Is everything always just spread evenly?

> Why doesn't the data center bear an extra cost for the added infrastructure?

In some states (like Oregon and Virginia) they do, but in a lot of states the regulations for rate structures are flat among all users so when there's a large surge in new demand the utility will build out new capacity and spread the cost of that new capacity to all rate payers with no regard for the fact that the new capacity would not have been needed without the new demand (from data centers). So everyone who was already using the electricity pays the new higher rates along with the new large-load user.

These companies building data centers will often make a lot of PR statements about how they are fine paying the extra cost for extra use while at the same time lobbying behind the scenes to actually avoid that happening and fighting against changes to utility rate structures that would raise their costs. By and large they can't be trusted.

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