I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.
These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating.
I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.
Usually the state gives tax breaks and the town gets double it's tax revenue. That's why the councils rush to vote yes, and $20-30M annually is a rounding error for the datacenter.
A meeting to get a lamp post change is exactly how progress stops. It is why we can't build anything in US and it costs a billion dollars per mile of high speed rail.
Communities passed and paid bonds to have water hookusp. Built infrastructure. They should have a say in who gets access and why. There are plenty of places datacenters could build without hassle, but they want access to readymade infra, and that comes with a reasonable tradeoff.
There are also traffic issues--likely less of an issue with datacenters or solar farms. But things like housing that put pressures on local schools are certainly issues--though again not really with datacenters which are more about power and water infrastructure.
Power and water infrastructure being strained can raise utility prices and require new infrastructure, which affect schools and tax rates by extension. It can also lead to new build stoppages until infrastructure is built, which affects hone prices and taxes. There are many knock-on effects.
If it's a brand new type of lamp post that's never been built in that area before and is likely to cause significant problems to the inhabitants (e.g. power blackouts) then that kind of progress should be stopped or at least discussed in an open fashion and not hidden behind NDAs.
In general yes, but a datacenter is to many people a categorically different kind of development because they oppose AI companies. The first datacenter should trigger a lengthy discussion and create rules that apply to all further datacenters.
Yes, rules are absolutely necessary. And community engagement is also essential. Community input might be tiring, frustrating, and the like but people get to speak as part of the process and because they have a right to.
in a lot of cases, the leaders of the communities are not following the rules. (see the ppl talking about ndas and such)
in any case, this isn't like "oh we don't want to build an apartment building because it might drop the value of a single family home halfway across town."
it isn't even like "we want to build this train line which will have some negative externalities but the positive effects (and externalities) are worth taking a hit in some areas"
the problems with the datacenters are that like (1) the service its providing (LLMs) has dubious societal value, (2) the direct negative effects such as noise pollution and such have been pretty well documented, (3) the indirect negative effects like massive strain on infra and (4) the people pushing them most heavily are effectively attempting to invade the communities, peddle conspiracy theories about "china" being behind the opposition, and demand to be specially treated because they were bankrolled by big tech, etc.
some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.
you need the thing being built to both (a) actually be a good that helps the community (or have a very very good reason why some damage to the community is justifiable (datacenter projects generally don't) and (b) need to contain negative externalities (which is why we don't put the chemical plant next to the elementary school even if it's the most economic option). people recognize these things on some level.
> some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.
Yes I think anyone opposed to data center construction is a NIMBY who hates societal progress. I want them to lose politically.
The two are often difficult to dissociate. My town had a fairly fractious town meeting around a rezoning proposal that was mostly for a fairly specific commercial purpose--that passed through a basically procedural mechanism in a second meeting.
> Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away.
This is also true for data centers. They tell you there will be new jobs, but what they don't tell you is the people working there will be employed by an established contractor and driving in from the nearest metro area, not the locals.
Not really. I was just born there and it wasn’t as touristy when I was a child. It blew up as touristy place when I was a teenager and in my twenties.
My parents had odd jobs, construction, chemical processing operations. There was some small scale industry running there as well but it went bust when people wanted fresh air for tourism. Even if the industry was really small scale for marketing sake local government got rid of all of it.
I also don’t live there anymore as I wrote „I was living in a touristy area”.
If I would stay there, there was no future for me there.
It ought to be illegal for a publicly elected official to enter an NDA like that. It goes against the same principles that are the reason why we have things like FOIA
Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.
I don't understand why people think they should be able to vote on things like this. Especially when they lack the necessary credentials to have an informed opinion on it.
So what are the topics people should be able to vote on? I don't think people have the necessary credentials to vote on immigration, drug price regulation, social media regulation? Why let people vote at all, they don't know anything apparently.
Using a nuclear strike first on the whim of an individual POTUS?
First use should be heavily debated and almost always avoided.
In response to {immediate pressing life threatening conditions at scale} .. they can be discussed and game planned well in advance and voted on - even if that vote is limited to a large pool with a breadth of military and diplomatic experience.
The current US practice of "POTUS can, like, do whatever" is pretty tragic.
You vote for people you can trust to build a knowledgeable team to make decisions for you. Direct democracy would be idiotic. Do you vote on every new business that gets created? Every building that gets erected?
Did you vote for the new McDonalds that got built? The new strip mall? The new apartment complex? The new water treatment plant that makes noise and stinks? The new metal shop? The new gas station? Let's start voting on everything and see how that goes. But we obviously don't because that's fucking stupid.
The McD, strip mall, metal shop, and gas station will all be going into places that were long ago zoned for that kind of business, had all the necessary infrastructure to support such business installed long ago, and won't bring any new significant quality of life issues to people who live or work nearby. They also generally aren't asking for special tax breaks.
The water treatment plant often will be voted on, because it will often be financed by a bond issue or levy that requires voter approval.
The apartment complex is the only one that doesn't fall into either of those types of projects, and this is one that gets exceptions because it is to solve a problem the local area is having by directly addressing that problem. They need more nearby housing, so they make exceptions for housing projects.
Not many towns have found their AI needs are hard to meet because of the latency over the internet to their AI provider's datacenter, and so need to get a local datacenter built.
I don’t think dismissing direct democracy as “fucking stupid” is the kind of constructive commentary this site is after. It’s a complex issue and I wouldn’t advocate for it claiming it would fix everything, but in the representative democracy that we (supposedly) have, and the representatives that we tend to get, often cowed or corrupted by huge corporate interests, is it surprising that people want to take some influence back into their own hands? I’m not ever going to be against that kind of democracy.
And, in fact, the town where I live in the northeast does have a lot of issues voted on in town meetings by the residents who attend. Not every little detail certainly. But zoning changes, budgets, etc. yes. (Not that our infrastructure would presumably support one but I'd expect a datacenter proposal would be voted down.)
> I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.
People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.
Why do people think that because they have a house somewhere they should get the ability to freeze an entire town in time and disallow anyone to build anything. Seriously, where did this mindset come from?
So many of these conversations come back to the problem of privatized gains and socialized losses.
Most things that create value have externalities. I kill the moss on my roof, then it rains and the chemicals go into the stream, then you try to go fishing and get skunked. I exerted my freedom as a private property owner and got the benefits; you paid for the drawbacks. We're all pulling from the same pile of resources, and the Earth doesn't care where your picket fence is.
Data centers incur expensive externalities and you're asking the general public to bear those costs -- or "pay those taxes," if that resonates more. I suppose NIMBYism is part of it, but we're not talking about ugly condos here, we're talking about towns running out of electricity: https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-....
This may come as a surprise to you, but people like living in pleasant surroundings.
Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school.
Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it.
The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.
This is false, they’re called “Land Use Zones” in Japan. It’s a national system, unlike in the west which is largely implemented piecemeal by municipality.
The next town over from where I live has basically no rules. No zoning, if you want to turn your property into a junkyard go right ahead! Even still, people are successfully fighting against a trash company putting in a landfill. I believe the levers they're pulling are a state wetlands permit and a state solid waste permit. The system is working.
Sure, and why not? And there's an even higher level of government above that one. And if we really start misbehaving, there's an international level above that one... I think computer nerds call that kind of thing "defense in depth".
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property
Yes, I believe that’s called “society” and while we are all very disappointed about your personal liberties I’m afraid some compromises had to be made to allow people other than you to have property rights too.
Your argument makes sense until you have a horrible neighbor. You can see it in action in a state like Montana which to my knowledge prohibits housing covenants. Want to park 12 cars that are rusting in your front yard? Do it! Neighbors can't do anything about it. But that does have the effect of lowering property value and degrading the neighborhood.
You may be confusing Montana with a much-worse place.
Or confusing with State law preventing homeowners' associations (HOAs) from enforcing new covenants that restrict the use of your property, compared to what was allowed when you originally purchased it.
you are the problem. your neighbor isnt doing anything illegal, they are just annoying you. why on earth would you think you should be able to do anything about it?
again, owning a piece of property doesnt give you influence over the people around you if they arent doing anything illegal.
NIMBYism has been popular for a long time. People really do want datacenters (or at least, the things that having datacenters enable).. they just want them somewhere else.
I'm not sure anyone but investors chasing yield feel a very strong need to see the planet covered in AI data centers, especially when the benefits seem to be rolling up, not down.
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.
Would you like me to buy the lot next to your house and set up a 3000W sound system pumping noise music 24 hours directly at your bedroom? Because that's what you're arguing for.
Taking GP's example further, let's say they have enough money to build their 3000W sound system AND maybe also build a cushy new building for the local police, who will then respond to your noise complaints by telling you it's really not that bad and maybe you should invest in some noise-canceling headphones.
Zoning is a promise from the government 'invest in a house (which is most people's largest investment in life) here and we guaranty we will work on our side to make sure it is fit for purpose (a good place to live/you won't lose money).'.
These private property owners you are concerned about normally bought the land with these difficulties you are worried about priced in to the land's value. Why should to government hand them free money in the form of not enforcing what has been priced into the land value?
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property
If the data center existed in a vaccum, with no inputs or outputs, this argument would hold some weight.
Instead, they stress limited water supplies, cause power shortages, increase GHG emissions (which we, the public ultimately have to pay for, either through mitigation or dealing with the damage after the fact).
Oh, and also they may well have negative externalities to employment. They definitely have negative externalities to communication, the internet has been flooded with AIshit.
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood
So... iron smeltery next door for you then? Acid rain?
Come on. There is reasonable concern for property rights and civil coexistence and then there's Randian Libertarian Claptrap, and you've hopped right into the deep end.
YES, government has a clear and obvious interest, as a matter of principle, in the regulation of land use and development. This doesn't change just because you think the government made a wrong decision in a particular instance. The solution is to fix the government. Go vote for datacenter candidates. Seems like no one else is.
im not suggesting the complete abolition of zoning, im saying
1. it should be controlled at the state or county level not locally
2. local communities/boards should have zero input in what is permitted if the project passes zoning laws.
so no, iron smeltery in a residential neighboorhood not allowed. but if someone is trying to build a datacenter in an industrial area you have zero say in the matter.
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 were the smartest people in the room.
BTW, no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage. They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area. So far Altman, Ellison, O'Leary, Amodei, Pichai, and Zuckerberg have refused to answer that question.
[0] All except Jensen who has been really trying to explain the benefits of AI and has said these massive layoffs are a huge mistake.
> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage.
They do when the knowledge of the resource consumption is paired with "Which will directly lead to your electric/gas bill going up."
People are also paying attention to the fact that the politicians aren't paying attention to the people. Nobody is even trying to sell the benefits of a datacenter in people's backyard. Instead, politicians are bending over backwards to eliminate any possible benefit by giving these datacenters permanent tax breaks.
When you have politicians clearly bought by businessmen who don't care about the communities that elected them. It's a bit of a no brainer that they'd be voted out.
I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.
* The lack of care of governments of the people's will: they're opposed nearly everywhere but city governments get them done anyway, oftentimes while ignoring more important local problems
* The intrusion of the wealthy/big tech into people's lives. Large tech companies tend to be like insurance companies: they just appear out of the ether of daily life, and make your life worse.
* The ongoing selling out of America to the wealthy: the rich can do, buy, or build whatever they want. Regular people have to just deal with it.
I'm just saying a lot of these I expect we're going to start seeing more direct opposition to from local activists. And a lot of these areas have high rates of gun ownership.
I think it's a fool's errand to believe populaces resist data centers, or take up issues in general, for any of the rational reasons you listed. It's propaganda using m
legacy/social media to fuel movements. The only question is who the propaganda is from. The boogeyman guess would be China but i honestly have no clue. Either way, when you engage most of those against data centers, their positions are generally baseless (not that the anti data center movement is without merit - its just most of the movement is not in it due to rationality or logic)
> I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.
I don't really agree with that. Like I agree with you that these things represent a lot of things people hate. But what they are also matters.
Amazon warehouses represent pretty much all the same things here, but people don't get mad at them because what they are is storage for products and jobs for the local community. They are things that get people their orders faster. While there are protests to Amazon warehouses, it's not to the level of data centers.
I'd argue that it's uniquely what these things are on top of what they represent. They are giant sucks of power/gas which raises local prices and spews out pollution. And their benefit to a local community is basically nothing. ChatGPT isn't appreciably better because of a gargantuan noisy pollution spewing data center next door. And that's assuming the residents use or appreciate ChatGPT.
Utah is looking at 3 gigawatts to start and 9GW when operating, the state uses 4 GW, and they are choosing to tell residents that their service will be shut off to support the datacenter.
It's a "no." Why does anyone expect an explicit, vocalized response? It's "no" until they provide proof and guarantees otherwise. You don't need to hear them say "there are no jobs" to act as if (rather, to know) there are no jobs.
It's the local v. federal thing. The US has been suffering from this for a while, as has Germany. The EU, too, is suffering from this.
The local politician's thinking is thusly:
- Datacenters are going to happen somewhere. And when this inevitably occurs, jobs everywhere, including here, will disappear. There is nothing I can do about that. It's as baked into my assumptions about the near future, as is the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow.
- If I allow the datacenter to happen here then while the builders are here they might buy some stuff locally for the build, and after they are done, the datacenter will employ literally a handful of people to guard and maintain the place. Not much of a gain, but, hey, the alternative is that I have nothing at all.
In other words, the 'competition' aspect between states / bundeslander / EU countries is causing these entities to race to the bottom together.
The solution is... not to do that. As somebody living in a country that doesn't suffer from this particular malady (The Netherlands, which does have provinces, and provinces work in reverse from states: The only rights they have are ones explicitly allotted to them by the state; The Netherlands is not a 'federation of provinces', whereas the US is a 'federation of states', Germany is a 'federation of bundleslander', and the EU is a federation of countries).
It means a province in The Netherlands cannot just offer a would be major company some ridiculous boon to come settle in their province at the cost of other provinces, because provinces in The Netherlands do not have the right to dictate e.g. tax rates, and even any infra project they would do requires permission (and funds) from the 'federal level' (the country).
It's been going on for ten years and there have been nada, zero, zilch solutions to the problem. Thus my stance remains: You have to put a stop to that. The problem is, of course, this requires an entity that currently has some power (namely: states / bundeslander / EU countries) to voluntarily give up power to the federated entity that sits 'above' them, and it's always difficult to convince an entity with power to voluntarily relinquish it.
Presumably Suzie also serves the people in her community who want tanned skin but don't like the sun. A data center offers nothing of value to the community it's embedded in - neither jobs nor any useful product or service. All the benefits accrue to the owners, and the very real costs are paid by the people breathing in the fumes from the gas turbines, or paying an extra hundred bucks a month for power.
If you don't understand why people don't want them, you're probably trying not to. It's not that hard.
A data center offers software development/infrastructure where people know it or not. Just because they aren't the first order users doesn't mean it's not beneficial. How is a machine shop beneficial to 65 year old Janet?
More electricity than water around here—rates going up gets everyone’s attention—but there’s nothing supposedly about the water use: data centers don’t consume the water permanently but they still put stress on systems which weren’t designed for the extra volume, pushing requests for expensive expansion projects, and there can be other problems: a colleague mentioned his family back home recently learned that the extra water circulation was spreading a groundwater pollution plume substantially faster, affecting well water users in the area. Since these things tend not to contribute many jobs, there isn’t much to balance out the bad news for communities.
Most people I know (in Utah) are predominantly concerned with the pollution and water use. Water is the most ubiquitous concern across politics in Utah. No matter what political ideology you adhere to, water rights and water conservation are a core topic. If you watch local news for more than an hour or two, you will see propaganda to "slow the flow". One of the most common criticisms of our Governor is that he publicly prays for rain, while using an incredible amount of water on his own alfalfa farms.
The sheer sense of scale on this particular project is mind-boggling.
> 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses
In a community where conservation is at the forefront of everyone's minds, planning something that big is like a slap in the face.
Why is water so inexpensive? Shouldn’t the price per gallon increase exponentially? It seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with curves so that typical households pay very little for water and the big users pay a lot for water.
Because you don't pay for the water, you buy the rights. Water is treated like an infinite source with a limited flow rate, and the source itself is sold as property.
The solution is not to price water as a commodity, either. If we priced water high enough to disincentivize waste, we would create an incredible burden for regular people. Water should be as cheap as possible, and at the same time regulated to guarantee an amount of conservation. People who can afford to more than double a state's power grid capacity, all for a single data center, can afford more water than the populace can afford.
What we need is to regulate water use generally so that the watersheds and ecosystems we rely on can be reasonably conserved.
I'm local-ish to Box Elder county in Utah, here people absolutely give a shit about the environmental burden to the region. It isn't just about water consumption, but other things. I think the "We need to win China is AI" narrative is (appropriately???) falling of deaf ears. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but even lay-people in my circles have asked how these alleged AI_driven benefits (fighting cancer, stopping climate change, and whatever) are really going to come to fruition, when what they really observe in their backyards are data centers being generated so we can fill our lives with AI slop.
Box elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.
I'll second this observation, as well as add that apart from AI slop most people around here associate the data center push with the sudden proliferation of Flock cameras at every major intersection and along every highway. Provo defeated a major data center project that was going into an empty industrial park, arguably the kind of place that would fit that sort of development. The actual cost-benefit calculation for most people is heavily weighted towards the negative and this should not continue to surprise people. The perceived downside with no upside is just going to get worse if the government gatekeeps the most useful models.
Plenty of people care about their power bill. Water in some regions is a hot political issue. Data centers don’t create jobs of course, we don’t need anyone to answer that.
"Some regions" being a a bit of an understatement, the US west and southwest are experiencing (or about to experience) severe water shortages and disruption due to the current water shortages.
Lake Mead is projected next year to be at its lowest level since it was filled by the creation of Hoover Dam. The states on the Colorado River have been fighting over the dwindling water for decades. Locals care about water.
Out here in the US southwest, we absolutely do care about water usage as well as the potential for higher electricity prices. We also care about jobs, which in the case of data centers are only going to be boosted temporarily until construction is finished.
I have zero faith in the current generation of gen AI. I think the claims are overblown and the odds of massive unemployment is near zero.
Even if the AI bubble pops, the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers. I don’t care if a data center developer/speculator loses their shirt. The data center will stand long after they fold and someone will operate it.
Build it here. Create the construction jobs. Collect the property taxes.
> 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"
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.
More of a lot of things. Universal healthcare (as opposed to employer-provided plans) encourages people to start their own businesses. UBI would be similar, but moreso.
We currently have a not-insignificant population living the UBI dream. No job, section 8 housing, food stamps, free healthcare via going to the emergency room for everything and not simply not paying, as well as other social programs.
What great art are these folks producing since they aren't burdened by having to work to survive? Mumble rap on Soundcloud? Shitty graffiti on every building?
It’s reaching the point of absurdity in my area. People are bringing “All data centers are flammable” signs to city meetings.
A plot of land that’s already zoned for the heaviest of industrial activities, is across the street from a dump, 3 miles from an airport, 16 miles from a nuclear generating station, and in a region with good climate, and no water crunch is a pretty good place for a data center.
Facts don’t matter, it’s a religious fight. Even if you provide numbers specific to the local area there’s no way to pierce the rhetoric.
Too much land? I added up lol the land used by the 10+ golf courses in the area. Dwarfs the proposal.
Too much water? I called the head of the parks department and asked them how much water the golf courses that they operate use each year. Massive.
Regional electricity costs going up? Our nuclear generating station already sells 80-85% of all power generated wholesale to other markets.
Data centers are loud? I measured the noise outside of my house. I live on a busy street. It was much louder than the viral videos going around Facebook with titles like “Data center noise from my porch SCARY MUST WATCH”.
I don’t know about all proposed data centers everywhere, but the one they’re eyeing to build in my backyard is fine by me.
I lived in Northern Virginia for years. Data centers are everywhere.
It’s really hard to explain that centers aren’t bad and are actually far more efficient than the alternatives. Just don’t run them on coal, natural gas, or the souls of orphans. And don’t rely exclusively on evaporative cooling if it’s in the desert.
They’re having fun treating tech people like villains. It was the same or worse with bankers back in 2008-2010. Anything I have to say, any data provided, any comparisons made, are biassed because I “use data centers”. When I explain that they use data centers as well, I get the finger.
When I talked to an anti data center family member who runs a local Facebook news group (5,000+ subscribers) they just kept sending me Google AI summaries as counter points… My god. I don’t even use gen AI.
People want to enjoy the benefits of progress and data centers while still being loudly “moral”. All of this on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. How many data centers are involved to get a post from poster to viewer? 2? 3? 8?
A bad data center project proposal somewhere should not mean opposition to data center projects everywhere.
> It’s really hard to explain that centers aren’t bad and are actually far more efficient than the alternatives.
This isn't about efficiency, power, water, or fire. AT ALL.
Massive amounts of people have their jobs and livelihood threatened. The datacenters, which are enabling that, are being deployed in their neighborhoods while everyone in that neighborhood goes jobless. There is no plan of relief in the form of better economic policy, UBI, less taxation of actual humans, or anything else. That is the real crux of what is being fought.
I’ve noticed that people conflate being anti data center with being anti AI.
I don’t have any faith in the current crop of gen AI. I think it’s junk. I don’t think it’s replacing humans in drives. I can barely get it to refactor Sass code into a mixin.
Even if the AI bubble pops the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers.
If a speculator wants to create a bunch of construction jobs, build a site in a region with the power, water, climate to do so responsibly, and give us a bunch of money in property taxes. I’m for it.
I don’t care if his company folds and he loses his shirt. Someone will operate the data center.
They can’t get back the money they injected into the community during construction.
It's junk for mission-critical software. But stock photographers, tutors, therapists, writers, translators, designers, and others are being replaced in droves. The snowball is starting.
Even plumbers. AI told me what to buy from Home Depot and I diagnosed and fixed my last 2 plumbing problems myself.
And lawyers. I fought some minor issues on my own with AI guidance.
What a bad idea AI therapy is and I don’t know too many people who are using AI art commercially. Translators, sure. But we’ve been using Google Translate for almost two decades now.
You didn’t need AI for your plumbing. My dad had a whole set of books on household chores that we used to fix everything.
I do more of the work around my house than most. I won’t touch tall trees to fuck with my breaker box. I do most of my own plumbing.
But, plumbers are fine. Most people don’t want to handle their own shit.
People will use it, because they don't have money for real therapists, because they also lost their own job. Maybe you can give them free therapy if you think it's a bad idea?
> I don’t know too many people who are using AI art commercially
I see AI stock images absolutely everywhere in the news now, AI portraits all over the place, AI relit product images absolutely everywhere.
> You didn’t need AI for your plumbing. My dad had a whole set of books on household chores
I don't have time to read books when I have a plumbing issue and other shit to do. Normally I'd have paid $200 for a plumber. But with AI I didn't have to read the books, and I was able to solve it myself for $30.
I think current gen AI is junk. I don’t use it. I also don’t see mass job losses over it. Scapegoated? Yes. Actual mass unemployment? No.
Commercially, I typically see AI used in what amount to scams. And no, I don’t believe that anyone should be using it for therapy.
You don’t have time to glance at a diagram in a book but you have time to ask AI and go to Home Depot and do it yourself?
If you’re worried about job loss, pay the plumber.
You could argue that you still put money into the local economy by shopping locally. The money you saved by doing it yourself could be spent locally on dinner and ice cream. Money is fungible.
If you’re concerned about the impacts of AI you could start to mitigate them by choosing not to use AI yourself.
It’s been a few hours. I’ve said all I have to say under this post. I’m going to stop replying now.
You don't have to read the entire book to figure out your one problem, that is what the index is for. Also you could of googled your problem 10 years ago and found the same answer with what, an extra 10 seconds?
You're not wrong that the position of many anti-datacenter people isn't entirely rational (in the sense of "backed by solid numbers"), but you're entirely missing the point of why they are angry.
Consider this:
- People are struggling more and more financially, with income that does not keep up with inflation
- People are seeing inequality rise with the ultra-rich getting ultra-richer
- People are seeing climate change quickly changing their environment for the worst: droughts, heatwaves, storms...
- People are expecting climate change to make their financial prospect worse, too
And now, they see a wave of building datacenters. Not only do these data centers have externalities for the climate, but their _purpose_ seems like a negative: putting their jobs at risk because AI, redirecting this wealth to the ultra-rich. There's nothing for them in this, it's lose-lose!
And they see their own government encouraging and subsidising these projects, how could they not feel betrayed?
> People want to enjoy the benefits of progress and data centers while still being loudly “moral”.
I don't think so. People would rather these benefits weren't there, but people exist in society and balance principle with practicality. You're allowed to criticise how AI is being brought into society while also using AI yourself, moral purity isn't a requirement to having opinions.
Hell, I don’t even use gen AI, I still think it’s unreliable junk.
However, most of the things that the people in my community are concerned about don’t apply to our region specifically. We’re actually in a position to benefit GREATLY. It’s useful to have that conversation.
Property taxes. Construction jobs. The land is unused and already had tax incentives. Remember, tax incentives don’t eliminate taxes, they just reduce them for a period of time to encourage development.
Many of these data centers are demanding tax breaks from the local governments, so taxes isn't a great excuse. The construction jobs are a one off deal, most of which will be done by non-local firms that specialize in large construction projects that don't exist in areas with "unused land". And then you also have to account for the higher power costs people in the area will be paying which is just another subsidy to big business on top of the stack of them that area already paid out to big business.
2008 is apples vs oranges. The proposed data center site is across the street from the dump, just south of the airport. It’s zoned for heavy industrial use.
Literally anything that they could build there other than a data center would have a greater negative impact on the environment and a far less positive economic impact.
> I’m sure you certainly did in 08, as people lost their homes.
It's funny that this is such a common takeaway from 2008. The bankers are bad because people lost their homes.
It's the right guilty party and the right victim but not the right crime.
The bad thing was bankers irresponsibly putting those people in homes in the first place. The people were always going to lose those homes because they couldn't afford them.
That’s not the core of the argument. You know that.
I’m putting things into perspective for people who are terrified that the last drops of their potable water and going to be used to generate a meme video.
One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes, and they’re using it for technology that disempowers and annoys people. It’s pretty obviously offensive.
Nobody's shutting off those 150 homes to take their electricity, though. They have to buy it themselves. Lots of industrial things take tons of energy, from metal smelting to food production.
Oh, and datacenters alone shouldn't even make electricity more expensive, because rates are regulated. The state regulators have to approve rate raises. Now, are the regulators a bunch of stooges captured by the utilities who always do their bidding? Probably! But that's a good reason to throw your corrupt state politicians out of office and hopefully run them out of town on a rail -- not to protest datacenters.
Pretty sure hackernews doesn't take a giant datacenter to run. Its a text-only website managed by nerds. If HN didn't care about redundancy they could probably host it out of somebody's basement.
> One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes
Is this supposed to scare me or something? I can't even fathom the actual point you are trying to make if it doesn't involve me having an emotional response to this statement.
Seems pretty obvious- that datacenters very measurably contribute to rising costs of electricity and climate change , and unlike aluminum processing or farming which makes things people want, is used for AI which a lot of people resent. It’s a lose-lose
> datacenters very measurably contribute to rising costs of electricity and climate change
the people who make this true are the same people who oppose the data centers. if they just let people build solar and data centers neither of those things would be true.
But in PJM they are almost entirely being powered by natural gas and coal? Even if you contract out power from a nuclear plant some other plant on the grid is now enjoying a higher capacity factor, at the margin natural gas.
The data center in question in Utah was marketed as a 9GW full build out natural gas facility more than twice the electrical generation of the entire state. Coal electrical production in the US increased 13% last year.
I don’t defend every data center everywhere. I’m talking about the proposed data center about 11 miles from my door.
In my area we have a nuclear generating station 16 miles from that site. It sells 80-85% of all power generate wholesale to other markets. We have the power infrastructure here.
The amount of nuclear generation is roughly fixed (minus the refurbishment of three mile) in that region. If you add additional large load to the grid and outbid other demand for that power you are just shifting the load you replaced to other sources, which in PJM region would be mostly gas (new or existing) and delaying the decommissioning of existing base load coal plants. Renewables in that region are unfortunately a small percent of electrical generation.
I do agree that other demands like water consumption are overblown and could be largely regulated to enforce best practices. What infrastructure we are building as a society to meet this load demand is going to be the lasting impact of this generational infrastructure investment and it's looking like that will be mostly fossil fuel based in the near to mid term.
It is much more than the Colossus sites, I would look at the capacity additions in the regional grids you are apart of and what is being funded to meet these increases in demand from data centers. The majority of it is natural gas generation and a sizeable but minority amount of battery storage. Just outbidding people for a relatively fixed amount of clean nuclear ignores the second order effects of adding large loads like these. What happens in your area does have larger impacts.
Again, I’m talking about my region. We have a nuclear generating station 16 miles from the proposed site of the data center. That station sells 80-85% of the power generated wholesale to other parts of the state and grids regionally.
The nuclear generating station is part of a larger system. Say you build enough data centers in your local area to use up all the station power so that 80% is no longer exported, what is getting built somewhere else to make up for that missing generation the data centers now use? Its not new nuclear. When you add data center load to a grid how the additional generation is supplied is really what matters in terms of impacts.
We should have been building additional nuclear capacity for the past 50 years. The kinds of anti data center activism we’re seeing now was directed at nuclear back then.
It would take decades to build enough data centers to use 100% of the station’s capacity.
We can build capacity as we build consumers. It’s all about balance.
I also don’t believe that we’re going to be building all of the 1200 proposed data centers in the US.
Being next to a nuclear power plant but attached to a regional grid is not that relevant in terms of total additive emissions from a data center build out. You have to look at the change in emissions of the grid as a whole. Companies are incentivized to care about disclosing a narrow boundary view of scope 1 & 2 emissions but we live in the real world not a spreadsheet.
US electrical emissions YOY increased in part due to data center build out and energy demand.
> In Utah on Wednesday, State Senate President J. Stuart Adams—one of the most powerful Republicans in the state—lost his primary election after supporting a major data center development near the Great Salt Lake, in one of the clearest signs yet of the growing political risks tied to the industry.
> At the local level, the fallout was just as direct. “Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,” former Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry said after conceding his primary race, after voting to advance the same project.
The Great Salt Lake is already disappearing and likely to create massive toxic winds because of all the toxic waste dumped into it. Using up that water faster is not a good thing.
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 consider them.
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.
New is heavily solar, yes, but there’s still too much natural gas and the administration is deeply committed to returning the investment fossil fuel companies made in the president’s campaign so I wouldn’t bet on that continuing.
What’s more of a concern is coal being kept online just for data centers. Even if the national average drops, that’s a regional health risk where it happens.
> Just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line sits dozens of unpermitted gas turbines that power xAI’s Colossus 2 data center while releasing smog-forming pollution, soot, and hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde. The tech company set up the de facto power plant with no permits, no public input, and no notice to nearby communities that will have to deal with the consequences.
being the key phrase. Until we get to that long term, the less price sensitve buyer can buy up all available goods.
for example, all of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity.
so it is impossible to invest in capacity for non-datacenter uses, because the raw ingredients have already been bought up by the data centers.
effectively, at current rate of investment, > 90% of investment into new power generation goes to data centers. That doesn't leave much for any kind of other economic growth, since all of our economic growth depends on electricity.
> 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.
The same should apply to memory and GPU manufacturers and yet I have seen no commitments from them to increase supply, so the end result is that consumer electronics are becoming ever more expensive compared to even just a year ago. That doesn't feel like a working economy to me.
This is an unusual comment to read because many manufacturers are public and therefore have released their expansion plans to shareholders (and therefore the public). Most recently, Micron is planning to build much more because their clients have made purchase agreements to 2030: https://www.aol.com/articles/micron-just-locked-100-billion-...
> The hyperscalers building AI infrastructure are willing to pre-commit to HBM and DDR5 capacity through the decade because they cannot afford a repeat of the 2024 shortage.
Unless I'm reading it wrong, the article makes it seem like all that new capacity will be reserved for AI infra, not consumer electronics or personal computing, which is what my comment was specifically about. Happy to be proven wrong if Micron has said anything about reviving the Crucial brand or Sony committing to lowering console pricing because they (or their memory supplier) secured capacity.
Don't all states have public utility commissions that regulate electricity provisioning? I don't know if the market has much to do with anything since it's all government regulation.
Data centers do more than AI. And you won’t defeat AI by killing data center proposals. The technology will succeed or fail on its own. We’ll find out in about 5 years.
Remember how “everyone” said all trucks will be self-driving in 10 years… 15 years ago?
There are something like 1200 data center proposals cross the US. How many of those will actually be built? How many are being proposed by speculators with no experience building or operating data centers? I have a feeling the number that will actually be built is significantly less that 1200.
It's already speeding up medical progress, so it'll probably take roughly however much time it takes for you to be personally affected by something that is currently incurable.
Thanks for the response, but unfortunately "common sense" is not a source.
And unfortunately, these aren't actual examples of medical progress being made. AI in some capacity is absolutely going to be helpful for medical research, but I'm still very skeptical LLMs are what is going to do it. I also do not think all the other BS coming with the current LLM wave outweighs the benefits. I think the reaction would be much different if these things weren't conflated, and if the focus of AI was towards things like medical research. As it stands, it comes off more as a coping mechanism / excuse that I do not think is convincing for most people when they see the majority of AI is used for garbage (to put it lightly).
They are literal proof of medical progress being made by LLMs. Luckily, your skepticism carries no weight. The applications of LLMs are incredibly wide because it is an incredibly important technology that has evolved its way to where it is from machine learning research that has been ongoing since the 1940's. That's why all of the robber barons are doing all of the typical robber baron things that they always do when a world-changing technology that everybody is going to be using comes along.
The thing is that YOU can actually choose what to focus on at any time. You have clearly chosen to not focus on the STEM work being bolstered by LLMs that will accelerate as the technology does, to a degree in which I literally linked you research papers that support my claim and you hand-waved them away because they are in direct conflict with your preconceived notions.
If it is your belief that AI isn't useful, then as an engineer using LLMs daily, your opinion is laughably uninformed or you perhaps haven't used LLMs since forming it. I also don't understand how anyone can use LLMs extensively and believe that their job is in jeopardy. They cannot reason like a human and they absolutely require a human to pilot them. If people are losing their jobs to LLMs, then blame the follow-the-leader CSuite morons who don't understand the technology as much as you don't, and not the technology.
Not everyone thinks they will or wants to live forever, and that is assuming they could even afford to get that care. I can't afford to get the best care there is available right now. Im certainly not going to get even better care when my costs go up and my wages go down.
Tech bros whether they realize it or not are living a philosophy of fear. They say: in order for YOU to be healthy and safe, we should be allowed to trample THEM (the undesirables), because trust us, the end result will be worth it.
Why not both? Why not both technological progress hand in hand with progress in human rights?
They tell us that any slowdown to progress is evil, that they are justified in their crimes because in "the future" all will be fine and dandy.
And what a beautiful future they are bringing us, with the destruction of post WW2 prosperity, increasing wealth inequality, etc etc.
The rhetoric around AI has been insane for years now. AI will kill us all. AI will take all our jobs. SaaS is dead. AI is too dangerous to even release.
It's really no surprise at all voters hate data centers, no matter how useful they think AI might be.
But I don't think the rhetoric will end any time soon. The people saying it seem to really believe it.
wow, that’s crazy that OpenAI is saying that negative opinion against them is actually a nefarious foreign conspiracy, and does not actually indicate people hate them
What the comments fail to point out (and I haven't read the article to find out if they address it): the number of data centers being built is based on speculation of need and is a dramatic over-estimate. It has to be. What, other than AI has happened in the last few years that would warrant that many new data centers? How do they know there will be customers for that capacity? There will not be advances in algorithms, etc that do AI much more efficiently? (We know China is making strides in that!)
It's complete speculation! It's the new gold rush and everyone wants a data center. Most of these data centers might not even be built! And the ones that are, might never make any profit.
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 more residential super towers, and more datacenters, and the other things for the same reason we climb the mountains, fly the Atlantic, and Rice plays Texas.
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.
defending the existing zoning and permitting regime will get your no where with me unfortunately. if we dismantled local control of those 2 things the majority of this countries problems would go away.
This is a pretty predictable reaction to the underhanded tactics being used to try to force these projects through either before citizens know they're happening and often, when citizens are aware, against their will.
As a side note, I wish we could muster this kind of vigor for just about any other type of public infrastructure project… nuclear/wind/solar power, fiberoptic internet, public high speed rail, new cities built around human-centric principles… you know, the things that the better part of the population stands to benefit from so at least the initial unrest is somewhat justified.
You get the same vigor against all of those project all the time. Windmills, solar, nuclear, rail, etc. There's a stronger will to oppose than to build.
We do muster this kind of vigor. The problem is that coverage decisions shaped by negativity bias ensure you're much more likely to hear about the projects people don't like. Did you hear about the huge New Mexico wind farm, largest in the US to date, that came online two weeks ago?
That's true, but I also see a lot of infrastructure projects that get gummed up or even canceled by NIMBYs, industry incumbents, and general obstructionism that would've happened had they been undertaken with the same bull-in-china-shop approach these datacenter projects tend to take.
Maybe we should charge data centers double the tax rate so that they can fund that universal welfare and healthcare all the ai ceos keep talking about when we all are out of work.
There no reason to give them tax breaks. They don’t do anything of substance to the local economy.
It's not really about AI, data centers, water consumption, or energy. Those are real issues. But I don't think that's what gets people so riled up.
Imagine if every AI company was a small local business run by middle class folks and there were thousands of these little companies. The total amount of data centers, water, and energy consumption is the same.
I don't think people would be anywhere near as mad then. There are still other societal externalities around AI to get mad about, sure.
But I think one of the biggest drivers of rage around AI is inequality. It's not about what is being consumed to produce AI, it's about the tiny fraction of soulless billionaire elites that benefit from it. It's about a small number of fantastically rich assholes who keep taking more and more and more while there is less and less left for everyone else.
The rage that Luigi Mangione felt is the same rage these voters feel and I believe has the same root cause. That rage won't go away if AI gets more energy efficient or stops using water.
My mother is fully aboard the "a datacenter ruins the local town" train. She is looking to sell her small farm and move, but she's literally asking AI if a datacenter is planned in every town she's looking into moving to.
Not "is there a datacenter within 500 feet of the home I'm looking to buy" - but anywhere in the county. She just does not have an inkling of the local impact but hoovers up all the doomerism on the topic.
She also doesn't like them due to "billionaires" but the idea that a datacenter makes the surrounding 10 mile area unlivable is front and center. The irresponsible reporting and social media environment has made her terrified of what amounts to glorified warehouses being located a few miles down the road she otherwise never would have known existed. No amount of showing her what they really are (having worked in datacenters my whole adult life) can change her mind.
Luigi is an interesting case because he is not who you think he is. He is definitely not a luddite or populist. I know this because I read a social deep dive on him. His interests, the books he read, the accounts he followed all point to a level of sophistication that indicates he was well above the simplistic "us vs them" Marxist framework.
I also disagree with your overall point here: its not (just) about inequality. AI benefits everyone while also benefitting the billionaires - even disproportionately. What one should definitely acknowledge is that AI is raising the floor and is not _taking_ something from poor people and giving it to the billionaires which is again applying the Marxist framework. What is true is that, even if people are overall benefitting from AI, they are feeling powerless and sense a lack of agency where they see a big societal change happening in front of their eyes and they don't have any say in it. Having no say is kinda the default so you see the backlash from the educated elites who always thought they had a voice - until the AI technology boom came.
> AI benefits everyone while also benefitting the billionaires - even disproportionately.
Source?
Also, you seem to be (probably intentionally) mixing up who's an elite and who's not. The people controlling and profiting from AI companies and their ilk are elites. The average person who's livelihood is at risk is not an elite, not matter how much you may try to spin it.
All the technological innovations since humanity has had this characteristic and I don't see why AI would be different.
> Also, you seem to be (probably intentionally) mixing up who's an elite and who's not
I think it is convenient to put oneself in the non-elite bucket to justify anger at the "true" elites - the ones just above you. This is actually a well studied phenomena and almost all revolutions followed the same pattern. As an example, Soviet revolution was largely coordinated by the intellectual elite by overthrowing the Tsar who was the literal elite.
> All the technological innovations since humanity has had this characteristic and I don't see why AI would be different.
Then you should have no problem pointing to concrete examples of how it's actually improved life for the average person.
> I think it is convenient to put oneself in the non-elite bucket to justify anger at the "true" elites - the ones just above you. This is actually a well studied phenomena and almost all revolutions followed the same pattern. As an example, Soviet revolution was largely coordinated by the intellectual elite by overthrowing the Tsar who was the literal elite.
If you want to describe anyone with any education as an "elite", go ahead, but it's not convincing and is pretty anti-intellectual.
I sure am glad I'm apparently an elite and didn't know it, though! Who knew being an elite means you're barely able to make rent, will never be able to afford having children, have to forgo medical care due to the costs involved, and would be homeless within a few months if you got laid off?
This goes to every LinkedIn brain idiot spouting recycled nonsense about the new Industrial Revolution and that white collar jobs are going away. These blabbering idiots never read a story book to understand the time period, that people displaced by industrialization were uneducated illiterate farm workers in a period in time before democracy.
Jump today most countries stable enough to build infrastructure are democracies and the white collar people you are demonizing do vote and that immense investment in infrastructure is not really easy to relocate.
even if datacenters aren't good for the communities there are in, it would be much worse if China advances in AI faster.
this is one of the core flaws in democracy, while the popularity contest generally curbs blatant abuse (also note how even that fails miserably when the electorate groups start to hate each other), the vast majority of people have no real way to judge the impacts of non-trivial decisions and judgement doesn't even need to come with certainty, just knowing which risks are worth it. voters will never get it right.
and in the information age, democratic sabotage is many times easier than informing a public that in most cases has no interest in being informed when the group think/herd instincts are triggered.
i suspect democracy only worked well thus far because it was never truly real. media was always concentrated and there were no non-democratic peers. this is no longer the case. when the media was concentrated democracy was just an emergent properly of media dynamics. now it's chaotic and subject to external targeted perturbation.
I think China "advancing" faster is better. Hoarding some magic numbers on a hard drive isn't a sound business plan, and shouldn't be what we're betting the farm (literally) on.
I know I’ll get downvoted into oblivion but I can’t help but think data center and ai backlash manufactured or is a psi-ops campaign by Russia or China
It doesn’t make any sense to me as the externalities are future not current and at no other point in time has the public cared about the future without first seeing concrete examples of harm. That hasn’t happened yet for data centers nor AI. It’s all “if, maybe, sometime in the future”
People will claim real harms but the connections are spotty at best. So it feels like people are stirring the pot. like if not Russia or China then just influencers doing it for rage bait for likes and subscribes
I’m not saying they are wrong, I can’t predict the future, I’m only saying it feels unusual for the reasons mentioned above
> People will claim real harms but the connections are spotty at best.
This is a wild claim because it's trivially provable. There's been tons of reporting around the effect they have on the immediate vicinity, and that's without even getting into the unknown long-term effects.
Is every single mad person doing investigative reporting and / or living next to a data center? No. But something doesn't have to personally affect me to know it's harmful.
Almost every major issue has bot networks from hostile countries playing both sides of any issue to intentionally cause chaos. I completely agree that russia, china, or some other country is fomenting anger here.
That and the other issues aside, I think AI companies have done this to themselves. They've gone around talking about replacing all human labor and becoming the companies that control robot god's that swallow the entire economy and put everyone out of work and might destroy man kind. Well saying that is gonna make people hate them and that will find an outlet somewhere
so what makes you think that you aren't responding to a bot intending to sway your opinion by giving a shape to your preconceived notions so that your position crystallizes further, right now?
From folks I've talked to in real life, it really does seem that way. They're getting their information from Facebook but it's mixed in with the "5G towers are killing all the bees" and the usual anti-vaccine rhetoric. Seeing that erin brockovich has jumped on the anti-data center bandwagon makes it even more suspicious to me.
Generally, I'm glad that "the people" appear to be pointed in the IMHO correct direction, even if for imprecise, or maybe even wrong, reasons.
Regardless of what they are used for, we do not need more "data centers." This is true even outside of AI.
Putting so much of us into "the cloud" is generally harmful; encouraging people to learn about, and to do more "computing" at home -- on local machines they, or someone who cares about them, control, is better.
You think this is reasonable? The person is just trying to conserve their job. It’s an act of self preservation and the opposite of virtue. And it’s not even historically accurate.
The US needs to build out energy infra like China, already >2x more total generation capacity (~1/3 of world total). Putting data centers aside, if America wants to bring manufacturing back, it will need energy to build things. RE: data centers, we do need to be more mindful of where they go and the resources they consume. We should force them to use water efficient cooling (more expensive for them) and support the buildout of the required energy gen. Utah does not seem an appropriate place for such a large data center.
The question is do we want to be a Petrostate or an Electrostate
All people (should) have the right to vote. If you don't like they way they vote, persuade them. This culture of political domination is at the core of our issues.
What is so objectionable about data centers anyway? That they consume utilities without employing a substantial amount of people? Compared to actual manufacturing like fabs the pollution concerns are laughable. The water use issue seems to be a wedge.
I live in an area built on paper mills. Our rivers are trashed from the paper mills. It smells bad in areas because of paper mills. Paper mills use a lot of electricity. But people are absolutely losing their minds over the pollution from proposed data centers. I'm not sure there's a cleaner industry in existence.
I've never seen the level of anti-scientific, straight misinformation as I have with data centers. I genuinely think it's to the point where the antivaxxers have a stronger scientific backing for their stance.
It did not feel organic at all. It's to the point now where that initial seeding of ideas has gained legitimate traction, but the initial burst of anti-datacenter content was wild to see in real time.
When I look at the total number of acres in a state and the number that may get taken up by a data center… not that we should even have to look at this spec but still not sure why people are so focused on data center construction as an issue unless it’s literally going to be next to your house, is there anything more than FUD going on here? And perhaps people taking advantage of it specifically as a talking point given election season.
You can't look at the total acreage of the state as a metric when 64.4% of the state is owned by the federal government.
The proposed site is twice the size of Manhattan, NY and sized for 9GW of energy which is more than the entire state uses yearly. We literally do not have the water to support a data center that huge.
They just enacted a fireworks ban because the weather people just had to create a whole new category for how dry and dangerous it is. Air quality is a constant problem because all the pollution from regions West of Utah collect right against the mountains. A few years ago we woke up to what looked like heavy fog, but it was smoke --from Siberia.
I think part of it is the perception that real environmental and public health damage is being done for totally trivial and indefensible causes. A data center is not like an airplane parts manufacturer, which has lots of ugly pollution but provides a necessary national service. Most people use generative AI recreationally, and the productivity gains among white-collar workers are awfully ephemeral. And if you're less pessimistic about the economics of generative AI... that makes it worse!
"We get a ton of money, you get increased natural gas emissions, increased unemployment, your electric bill is going up... oh and guess who's bailing us out when the bubble bursts?" Pretty rotten deal!
The problem is not the center per se. The problem is the power. And, all too often they make up for the lack of utility capacity by putting in their own noisy generators.
When people hear datacenter they think ai-almost universally subsidies by the many for the few. They drive up electrical costs, increase carbon emissions, and are designed to make money by stealing and repackaging the fruit of human labor and thought, with the goal of ultimately replacing it not for the benefit of all, but for the benefit of the owners of that datacenter.
> the Stratos development would have spanned tens of thousands of acres in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley. The project would ultimately require up to 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses
Did you even read the article? This is proposed to be larger than Manhattan. The amount of power will almost certainly burden Utahs grid in ways that locals will be on the hook for. So much of this build out will be the typical "privatize gains, socialize losses" playbook that yes it is an important political issue, and yes you have to "look at this spec" to understand just how insane some of these project proposals are.
This pretty much spells out exactly my big problem with datacenters.
I don't care if you build a huge datacenter several miles away from my home. What I do care about is utilities cranking up the price 3x because of "capacity issues" afterwards because said datacenter now uses more power than the entire district I live in
This is because there's a new political divide that makes the old left vs right obsolete: it is neo-luddites vs tech optimists. It cross-cuts against the old and outdated political compass.
Neo-luddites are usually the educated elite and genealogy is from old green or left politics but includes nationalists and social conservatives.
I think media is broadly failing to recognise this new clan.
The current far right government/movement (aka conservatives) is far more in favor of AI than people opposed to them. You seem to be labeling just about everything as the opposite of what it actually is. Are you invested in or working at an AI company?
I think your view is too simplistic and falls easily into the populist narrative so you end up mislabelling me as being invested.
You are again doing the thing I flagged in my original comment - the left right or progressive/conservative axis is not useful anymore. As an example: a lot of tech CEO's were originally against Trump but ended up caving precisely because the left became anti-technology broadly.
From experience and anecdotes, tech and AI optimism cross cuts into the old axis. Examples
1. third world countries are way more optimistic about AI than first world
2. many celebs (for the lack of better word) are pro AI - look at Redis, Django, NodeJS, Github
3. the existence of Effective Altruism itself should prove that this axis is useless - EA was largely leftist and support democrats while also being "pro" AI like Anthropic is mostly made from the EA cult
The nomenclature also doesn't make sense to me. Why would conservatives not conserve but rather push for progress? What are conservatives conserving instead? The academic consensus is that technology determines the societal culture and if conservatives wanted to conserve anything, they would conserve technology first wouldn't they?
None of this changes the fact that average people aren't elites, no matter how much you may try to spin it that way.
And ironically, your comment and views are themselves extremely simplistic. New technology is not inherently progress. Being opposed to specific applications or misuse or consequences of a type of technology is not the same as being broadly anti-technology. A "populist narrative" is an incredibly vague oversimplification, and an ironic thing to complain about in a comment that only serves to spread the pro-elite
and anti-human narrative the AI corporations are currently pushing.
You think there's a binary of elites vs non elites which is using a Marxist framework that I (and almost mainstream academic) would reject.
> And ironically, your comment and views are themselves extremely simplistic. New technology is not inherently progress. Being opposed to specific applications or misuse or consequences of a type of technology is not the same as being broadly anti-technology. A "populist narrative" is an incredibly vague oversimplification, and an ironic thing to complain about in a comment that only serves to spread the pro-elite and anti-human narrative the AI corporations are currently pushing.
Thanks for proving my point, you are emphasising the exact divide I was trying to show originally. You may try to twist the rhetoric to show that you are for slow and cautionary progress of tech. That's sensible and I don't mean to claim neo-luddites would outright deny progress itself.
> This is because there's a new political divide that makes the old left vs right obsolete: it is neo-luddites vs tech optimists.
No other technology gets as much hatred as AI is getting as the public see that as a threat to their own jobs.
Of course techies here are having trouble understanding this backlash. Maybe they should read up a bit on the Unabomber Manifesto to draw parallels on the motivations of the awful attacks against CEOs recently.
Just like crypto, you cannot use it to solve social problems with technical solutions. The same goes for AI as it still requires humans and trust to use it effectively.
The more AI data centers
get built, the more it is hated and the worse society gets with this loss of trust as more people read about more mass layoffs.
Datacenters are a hedge the investor class is pushing and it's not really needed.
Once you realize:
1) LLM = CPU
2) Session Context = L1, L2, L3, CPU Cache
the entire AI industry is operating within the CPU cache of the LLM provider this is why cost moves quadratically, increases noise - signal ration, regenerative feedback loop, it dilutes the user narration, and it actually creates an architectural induce hallucination.
We've literally solved this problem in the 1960's with a memory architecture:
the OS has a memory controller, tasked with taking data from persistant structure storage (HD) loading into CPU Cache and the CPU computers, the output is stored in RAM and then moved into HD.
this is required on all AI applications, what the industry has done, is supplement a RAG which is summarizing context, however the entire context summarized chain is still being processed by the LLM.
if you employ a well sustain memory architecture you can retrieve the context you only need to feed to the llm. reduce token cost and then reduce energy therefore less demand of datacenters.
I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.
I’m a voter who prefers we establish rules that be followed rather than encumber every project with a lengthy community dialogue.
These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating.
I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.
Usually the state gives tax breaks and the town gets double it's tax revenue. That's why the councils rush to vote yes, and $20-30M annually is a rounding error for the datacenter.
A meeting to get a lamp post change is exactly how progress stops. It is why we can't build anything in US and it costs a billion dollars per mile of high speed rail.
A data centre isn't a lamp post.
Communities passed and paid bonds to have water hookusp. Built infrastructure. They should have a say in who gets access and why. There are plenty of places datacenters could build without hassle, but they want access to readymade infra, and that comes with a reasonable tradeoff.
There are also traffic issues--likely less of an issue with datacenters or solar farms. But things like housing that put pressures on local schools are certainly issues--though again not really with datacenters which are more about power and water infrastructure.
Power and water infrastructure being strained can raise utility prices and require new infrastructure, which affect schools and tax rates by extension. It can also lead to new build stoppages until infrastructure is built, which affects hone prices and taxes. There are many knock-on effects.
If it's a brand new type of lamp post that's never been built in that area before and is likely to cause significant problems to the inhabitants (e.g. power blackouts) then that kind of progress should be stopped or at least discussed in an open fashion and not hidden behind NDAs.
In general yes, but a datacenter is to many people a categorically different kind of development because they oppose AI companies. The first datacenter should trigger a lengthy discussion and create rules that apply to all further datacenters.
It's likely the general public has very little in the way of an opinion about "AI companies."
Yes, rules are absolutely necessary. And community engagement is also essential. Community input might be tiring, frustrating, and the like but people get to speak as part of the process and because they have a right to.
Is this why you're in the minority?
"Lengthy community dialogue" is your assumption
in a lot of cases, the leaders of the communities are not following the rules. (see the ppl talking about ndas and such)
in any case, this isn't like "oh we don't want to build an apartment building because it might drop the value of a single family home halfway across town."
it isn't even like "we want to build this train line which will have some negative externalities but the positive effects (and externalities) are worth taking a hit in some areas"
the problems with the datacenters are that like (1) the service its providing (LLMs) has dubious societal value, (2) the direct negative effects such as noise pollution and such have been pretty well documented, (3) the indirect negative effects like massive strain on infra and (4) the people pushing them most heavily are effectively attempting to invade the communities, peddle conspiracy theories about "china" being behind the opposition, and demand to be specially treated because they were bankrolled by big tech, etc.
some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.
you need the thing being built to both (a) actually be a good that helps the community (or have a very very good reason why some damage to the community is justifiable (datacenter projects generally don't) and (b) need to contain negative externalities (which is why we don't put the chemical plant next to the elementary school even if it's the most economic option). people recognize these things on some level.
> some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.
Yes I think anyone opposed to data center construction is a NIMBY who hates societal progress. I want them to lose politically.
Thank you for volunteering to have a data center built in your neighborhood!
NIMBY YIMBY have no value when you apply them this indistinctly. You're for any AI data center?
That'd pretty much defeat the point of having local government. If politicians can't get their hand in the cookie jar, what's the point?
That's it right there. Rules, not deals.
The two are often difficult to dissociate. My town had a fairly fractious town meeting around a rezoning proposal that was mostly for a fairly specific commercial purpose--that passed through a basically procedural mechanism in a second meeting.
This devolves into NIMBY.
I was living in a touristic area.
Guess what was happening, local politicians were treating long term residents as trash in the face of big hotels/apartments who had loads of money.
Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away.
Bad deal all way round for locals but of course local government people would pocket their share one way or the other if not from outright bribery.
> Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away.
This is also true for data centers. They tell you there will be new jobs, but what they don't tell you is the people working there will be employed by an established contractor and driving in from the nearest metro area, not the locals.
And, in fact, after the initial construction datacenters employ very few people working on the premises.
You live in a touristy area because you have a tourism-related job, right?
Because where are the tourists supposed to stay if there's no hotels?
Not really. I was just born there and it wasn’t as touristy when I was a child. It blew up as touristy place when I was a teenager and in my twenties.
My parents had odd jobs, construction, chemical processing operations. There was some small scale industry running there as well but it went bust when people wanted fresh air for tourism. Even if the industry was really small scale for marketing sake local government got rid of all of it.
I also don’t live there anymore as I wrote „I was living in a touristy area”.
If I would stay there, there was no future for me there.
Or, he did something else and mived away, vecause this sucked.
There is never shortage of hotels. They pop up is actual econony supports it. No reason to take bribes
For anyone who was poor in that area it was better to move out.
It ought to be illegal for a publicly elected official to enter an NDA like that. It goes against the same principles that are the reason why we have things like FOIA
Are those NDAs enforceable? That’s a major governance gap and problem if so.
Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.
I don't understand why people think they should be able to vote on things like this. Especially when they lack the necessary credentials to have an informed opinion on it.
So what are the topics people should be able to vote on? I don't think people have the necessary credentials to vote on immigration, drug price regulation, social media regulation? Why let people vote at all, they don't know anything apparently.
How about the nuclear button?
I’m curious where you personally draw the line.
Using a nuclear strike first on the whim of an individual POTUS?
First use should be heavily debated and almost always avoided.
In response to {immediate pressing life threatening conditions at scale} .. they can be discussed and game planned well in advance and voted on - even if that vote is limited to a large pool with a breadth of military and diplomatic experience.
The current US practice of "POTUS can, like, do whatever" is pretty tragic.
You vote for people you can trust to build a knowledgeable team to make decisions for you. Direct democracy would be idiotic. Do you vote on every new business that gets created? Every building that gets erected?
In a way yes. We've had local elections with candidates main driver being getting areas rezoned. Or getting downtown redeveloped.
I mean, why do we let people without property vote in the first place? It's really only people with a vested interest who have something at stake.
Who said anything about property?
You are using the same logic as those who kept the franchise restricted to the property-owning class. Parent is rightly mocking you for it.
Did you vote for the new McDonalds that got built? The new strip mall? The new apartment complex? The new water treatment plant that makes noise and stinks? The new metal shop? The new gas station? Let's start voting on everything and see how that goes. But we obviously don't because that's fucking stupid.
The McD, strip mall, metal shop, and gas station will all be going into places that were long ago zoned for that kind of business, had all the necessary infrastructure to support such business installed long ago, and won't bring any new significant quality of life issues to people who live or work nearby. They also generally aren't asking for special tax breaks.
The water treatment plant often will be voted on, because it will often be financed by a bond issue or levy that requires voter approval.
The apartment complex is the only one that doesn't fall into either of those types of projects, and this is one that gets exceptions because it is to solve a problem the local area is having by directly addressing that problem. They need more nearby housing, so they make exceptions for housing projects.
Not many towns have found their AI needs are hard to meet because of the latency over the internet to their AI provider's datacenter, and so need to get a local datacenter built.
I don’t think dismissing direct democracy as “fucking stupid” is the kind of constructive commentary this site is after. It’s a complex issue and I wouldn’t advocate for it claiming it would fix everything, but in the representative democracy that we (supposedly) have, and the representatives that we tend to get, often cowed or corrupted by huge corporate interests, is it surprising that people want to take some influence back into their own hands? I’m not ever going to be against that kind of democracy.
And, in fact, the town where I live in the northeast does have a lot of issues voted on in town meetings by the residents who attend. Not every little detail certainly. But zoning changes, budgets, etc. yes. (Not that our infrastructure would presumably support one but I'd expect a datacenter proposal would be voted down.)
Glad to hear it!
> I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.
People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.
Why do people think that because they have a house somewhere they should get the ability to freeze an entire town in time and disallow anyone to build anything. Seriously, where did this mindset come from?
So many of these conversations come back to the problem of privatized gains and socialized losses.
Most things that create value have externalities. I kill the moss on my roof, then it rains and the chemicals go into the stream, then you try to go fishing and get skunked. I exerted my freedom as a private property owner and got the benefits; you paid for the drawbacks. We're all pulling from the same pile of resources, and the Earth doesn't care where your picket fence is.
Data centers incur expensive externalities and you're asking the general public to bear those costs -- or "pay those taxes," if that resonates more. I suppose NIMBYism is part of it, but we're not talking about ugly condos here, we're talking about towns running out of electricity: https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-....
This may come as a surprise to you, but people like living in pleasant surroundings.
Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school.
Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it.
The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.
Japan has essentially no local zoning laws and things work perfectly fine.
This is false, they’re called “Land Use Zones” in Japan. It’s a national system, unlike in the west which is largely implemented piecemeal by municipality.
The next town over from where I live has basically no rules. No zoning, if you want to turn your property into a junkyard go right ahead! Even still, people are successfully fighting against a trash company putting in a landfill. I believe the levers they're pulling are a state wetlands permit and a state solid waste permit. The system is working.
Isn't that just leveraging the benefit of having access to a higher level of government which does have rules?
Sure, and why not? And there's an even higher level of government above that one. And if we really start misbehaving, there's an international level above that one... I think computer nerds call that kind of thing "defense in depth".
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property
Yes, I believe that’s called “society” and while we are all very disappointed about your personal liberties I’m afraid some compromises had to be made to allow people other than you to have property rights too.
Your argument makes sense until you have a horrible neighbor. You can see it in action in a state like Montana which to my knowledge prohibits housing covenants. Want to park 12 cars that are rusting in your front yard? Do it! Neighbors can't do anything about it. But that does have the effect of lowering property value and degrading the neighborhood.
There is a WILD difference between commercial properties coming in to residential areas and a neighbor with rusty cars.
I'll happily live next to rusty car guy. I would rather eat glass than have to live near a data center.
You may be confusing Montana with a much-worse place.
Or confusing with State law preventing homeowners' associations (HOAs) from enforcing new covenants that restrict the use of your property, compared to what was allowed when you originally purchased it.
you are the problem. your neighbor isnt doing anything illegal, they are just annoying you. why on earth would you think you should be able to do anything about it?
again, owning a piece of property doesnt give you influence over the people around you if they arent doing anything illegal.
NIMBYism has been popular for a long time. People really do want datacenters (or at least, the things that having datacenters enable).. they just want them somewhere else.
I'm not sure anyone but investors chasing yield feel a very strong need to see the planet covered in AI data centers, especially when the benefits seem to be rolling up, not down.
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.
Would you like me to buy the lot next to your house and set up a 3000W sound system pumping noise music 24 hours directly at your bedroom? Because that's what you're arguing for.
Generally the law concerning this is called: “disturbing the peace” and is not tolerated.
But the noise from a data center is exempt. And if their water use exhausts the local aquifer, too bad for the locals.
And laws are only as good as their enforcement.
Taking GP's example further, let's say they have enough money to build their 3000W sound system AND maybe also build a cushy new building for the local police, who will then respond to your noise complaints by telling you it's really not that bad and maybe you should invest in some noise-canceling headphones.
Strong private property rights have to come with some protections against others' externalities - otherwise your property is harmed.
Amen, NIMBYs have ruined this country. Abolish zoning laws and nuke the suburbs, yeeclaw!
Zoning is a promise from the government 'invest in a house (which is most people's largest investment in life) here and we guaranty we will work on our side to make sure it is fit for purpose (a good place to live/you won't lose money).'.
These private property owners you are concerned about normally bought the land with these difficulties you are worried about priced in to the land's value. Why should to government hand them free money in the form of not enforcing what has been priced into the land value?
Are you from Texas? Because Texas is what you get with a policy like that.
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property
If the data center existed in a vaccum, with no inputs or outputs, this argument would hold some weight.
Instead, they stress limited water supplies, cause power shortages, increase GHG emissions (which we, the public ultimately have to pay for, either through mitigation or dealing with the damage after the fact).
Oh, and also they may well have negative externalities to employment. They definitely have negative externalities to communication, the internet has been flooded with AIshit.
> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood
So... iron smeltery next door for you then? Acid rain?
Come on. There is reasonable concern for property rights and civil coexistence and then there's Randian Libertarian Claptrap, and you've hopped right into the deep end.
YES, government has a clear and obvious interest, as a matter of principle, in the regulation of land use and development. This doesn't change just because you think the government made a wrong decision in a particular instance. The solution is to fix the government. Go vote for datacenter candidates. Seems like no one else is.
im not suggesting the complete abolition of zoning, im saying
1. it should be controlled at the state or county level not locally
2. local communities/boards should have zero input in what is permitted if the project passes zoning laws.
so no, iron smeltery in a residential neighboorhood not allowed. but if someone is trying to build a datacenter in an industrial area you have zero say in the matter.
Just tax acid rain byproduct
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 were the smartest people in the room.
BTW, no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage. They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area. So far Altman, Ellison, O'Leary, Amodei, Pichai, and Zuckerberg have refused to answer that question.
[0] All except Jensen who has been really trying to explain the benefits of AI and has said these massive layoffs are a huge mistake.
> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage.
They do when the knowledge of the resource consumption is paired with "Which will directly lead to your electric/gas bill going up."
People are also paying attention to the fact that the politicians aren't paying attention to the people. Nobody is even trying to sell the benefits of a datacenter in people's backyard. Instead, politicians are bending over backwards to eliminate any possible benefit by giving these datacenters permanent tax breaks.
When you have politicians clearly bought by businessmen who don't care about the communities that elected them. It's a bit of a no brainer that they'd be voted out.
I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.
* The lack of care of governments of the people's will: they're opposed nearly everywhere but city governments get them done anyway, oftentimes while ignoring more important local problems
* The intrusion of the wealthy/big tech into people's lives. Large tech companies tend to be like insurance companies: they just appear out of the ether of daily life, and make your life worse.
* The ongoing selling out of America to the wealthy: the rich can do, buy, or build whatever they want. Regular people have to just deal with it.
I'm just saying a lot of these I expect we're going to start seeing more direct opposition to from local activists. And a lot of these areas have high rates of gun ownership.
I think it's a fool's errand to believe populaces resist data centers, or take up issues in general, for any of the rational reasons you listed. It's propaganda using m legacy/social media to fuel movements. The only question is who the propaganda is from. The boogeyman guess would be China but i honestly have no clue. Either way, when you engage most of those against data centers, their positions are generally baseless (not that the anti data center movement is without merit - its just most of the movement is not in it due to rationality or logic)
What positions did you hear and conclude were baseless?
Anything having to do with water
> I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.
I don't really agree with that. Like I agree with you that these things represent a lot of things people hate. But what they are also matters.
Amazon warehouses represent pretty much all the same things here, but people don't get mad at them because what they are is storage for products and jobs for the local community. They are things that get people their orders faster. While there are protests to Amazon warehouses, it's not to the level of data centers.
I'd argue that it's uniquely what these things are on top of what they represent. They are giant sucks of power/gas which raises local prices and spews out pollution. And their benefit to a local community is basically nothing. ChatGPT isn't appreciably better because of a gargantuan noisy pollution spewing data center next door. And that's assuming the residents use or appreciate ChatGPT.
In smaller towns, many people absolutely do have an issue with distribution centers that will probably increase local traffic.
Utah is looking at 3 gigawatts to start and 9GW when operating, the state uses 4 GW, and they are choosing to tell residents that their service will be shut off to support the datacenter.
> ... refused to answer ...
It's a "no." Why does anyone expect an explicit, vocalized response? It's "no" until they provide proof and guarantees otherwise. You don't need to hear them say "there are no jobs" to act as if (rather, to know) there are no jobs.
> They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area.
The answer to that is so obviously "no" that I wonder how much attention they've been paying.
It's the local v. federal thing. The US has been suffering from this for a while, as has Germany. The EU, too, is suffering from this.
The local politician's thinking is thusly:
- Datacenters are going to happen somewhere. And when this inevitably occurs, jobs everywhere, including here, will disappear. There is nothing I can do about that. It's as baked into my assumptions about the near future, as is the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow.
- If I allow the datacenter to happen here then while the builders are here they might buy some stuff locally for the build, and after they are done, the datacenter will employ literally a handful of people to guard and maintain the place. Not much of a gain, but, hey, the alternative is that I have nothing at all.
In other words, the 'competition' aspect between states / bundeslander / EU countries is causing these entities to race to the bottom together.
The solution is... not to do that. As somebody living in a country that doesn't suffer from this particular malady (The Netherlands, which does have provinces, and provinces work in reverse from states: The only rights they have are ones explicitly allotted to them by the state; The Netherlands is not a 'federation of provinces', whereas the US is a 'federation of states', Germany is a 'federation of bundleslander', and the EU is a federation of countries).
It means a province in The Netherlands cannot just offer a would be major company some ridiculous boon to come settle in their province at the cost of other provinces, because provinces in The Netherlands do not have the right to dictate e.g. tax rates, and even any infra project they would do requires permission (and funds) from the 'federal level' (the country).
It's been going on for ten years and there have been nada, zero, zilch solutions to the problem. Thus my stance remains: You have to put a stop to that. The problem is, of course, this requires an entity that currently has some power (namely: states / bundeslander / EU countries) to voluntarily give up power to the federated entity that sits 'above' them, and it's always difficult to convince an entity with power to voluntarily relinquish it.
Still, that's the job.
Construction jobs, yes. After that, a skeleton crew and a bunch of people in far off places, possibly outside the country.
So? Since when is there a floor for the number of jobs a business has to create? Suzies Tanning Salon uses a lot of energy but only employs 3 people.
So maybe 50kW for 10 hours a day? Double it and call it 1Mwh a day.
A 1GW DC would have to employ 75,000 people if that’s an acceptable ratio.
So what's the ratio for malls? Or strip malls? Or metal refineries? Or auto plants? Or giant office buildings?
You’re the one that came up with a tanning salon being a high ratio of resource usage to local utility.
I'm the one saying it's a silly thing to measure. Shut down Main Street everyone, it's not efficient.
Presumably Suzie also serves the people in her community who want tanned skin but don't like the sun. A data center offers nothing of value to the community it's embedded in - neither jobs nor any useful product or service. All the benefits accrue to the owners, and the very real costs are paid by the people breathing in the fumes from the gas turbines, or paying an extra hundred bucks a month for power.
If you don't understand why people don't want them, you're probably trying not to. It's not that hard.
A data center offers software development/infrastructure where people know it or not. Just because they aren't the first order users doesn't mean it's not beneficial. How is a machine shop beneficial to 65 year old Janet?
Machine shop employs more local people per unit of resource. Far more.
Oh my god, no one measures this though. You'd have to be anti-bookstore if that's your metric.
By what metric?
The people doing the voting are mostly talking about how much water datacenters supposedly use.
More electricity than water around here—rates going up gets everyone’s attention—but there’s nothing supposedly about the water use: data centers don’t consume the water permanently but they still put stress on systems which weren’t designed for the extra volume, pushing requests for expensive expansion projects, and there can be other problems: a colleague mentioned his family back home recently learned that the extra water circulation was spreading a groundwater pollution plume substantially faster, affecting well water users in the area. Since these things tend not to contribute many jobs, there isn’t much to balance out the bad news for communities.
Most people I know (in Utah) are predominantly concerned with the pollution and water use. Water is the most ubiquitous concern across politics in Utah. No matter what political ideology you adhere to, water rights and water conservation are a core topic. If you watch local news for more than an hour or two, you will see propaganda to "slow the flow". One of the most common criticisms of our Governor is that he publicly prays for rain, while using an incredible amount of water on his own alfalfa farms.
The sheer sense of scale on this particular project is mind-boggling.
> 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses
In a community where conservation is at the forefront of everyone's minds, planning something that big is like a slap in the face.
Why is water so inexpensive? Shouldn’t the price per gallon increase exponentially? It seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with curves so that typical households pay very little for water and the big users pay a lot for water.
Because you don't pay for the water, you buy the rights. Water is treated like an infinite source with a limited flow rate, and the source itself is sold as property.
The solution is not to price water as a commodity, either. If we priced water high enough to disincentivize waste, we would create an incredible burden for regular people. Water should be as cheap as possible, and at the same time regulated to guarantee an amount of conservation. People who can afford to more than double a state's power grid capacity, all for a single data center, can afford more water than the populace can afford.
What we need is to regulate water use generally so that the watersheds and ecosystems we rely on can be reasonably conserved.
I'm local-ish to Box Elder county in Utah, here people absolutely give a shit about the environmental burden to the region. It isn't just about water consumption, but other things. I think the "We need to win China is AI" narrative is (appropriately???) falling of deaf ears. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but even lay-people in my circles have asked how these alleged AI_driven benefits (fighting cancer, stopping climate change, and whatever) are really going to come to fruition, when what they really observe in their backyards are data centers being generated so we can fill our lives with AI slop.
Box elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.
Indeed. Our air is so bad we can't afford to open up more smoke stacks. Of course Kevin doesn't care because he's in Canada.
(I'm also in Utah)
I'll second this observation, as well as add that apart from AI slop most people around here associate the data center push with the sudden proliferation of Flock cameras at every major intersection and along every highway. Provo defeated a major data center project that was going into an empty industrial park, arguably the kind of place that would fit that sort of development. The actual cost-benefit calculation for most people is heavily weighted towards the negative and this should not continue to surprise people. The perceived downside with no upside is just going to get worse if the government gatekeeps the most useful models.
Plenty of people care about their power bill. Water in some regions is a hot political issue. Data centers don’t create jobs of course, we don’t need anyone to answer that.
"Some regions" being a a bit of an understatement, the US west and southwest are experiencing (or about to experience) severe water shortages and disruption due to the current water shortages.
Lake Mead is projected next year to be at its lowest level since it was filled by the creation of Hoover Dam. The states on the Colorado River have been fighting over the dwindling water for decades. Locals care about water.
Out here in the US southwest, we absolutely do care about water usage as well as the potential for higher electricity prices. We also care about jobs, which in the case of data centers are only going to be boosted temporarily until construction is finished.
I have zero faith in the current generation of gen AI. I think the claims are overblown and the odds of massive unemployment is near zero.
Even if the AI bubble pops, the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers. I don’t care if a data center developer/speculator loses their shirt. The data center will stand long after they fold and someone will operate it.
Build it here. Create the construction jobs. Collect the property taxes.
Eat while there’s food.
When the AI bubble pops. It will, and it will be glorious.
laptops with tb of ram easy
> 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"
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.
You kid, but Bezos said practically the same thing. That human need for water shouldn't hold AI back.
A satire site said Bezos said this.[1]
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bezos-water-consumption-ai...
Thank god. It's so hard to tell these days.
> people on UBI are also rather useless
UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.
More of a lot of things. Universal healthcare (as opposed to employer-provided plans) encourages people to start their own businesses. UBI would be similar, but moreso.
We currently have a not-insignificant population living the UBI dream. No job, section 8 housing, food stamps, free healthcare via going to the emergency room for everything and not simply not paying, as well as other social programs.
What great art are these folks producing since they aren't burdened by having to work to survive? Mumble rap on Soundcloud? Shitty graffiti on every building?
This is a take about as detached from the actual situation as Reagan's "cadillac-driving welfare queen" was.
Wait until you learn how the rich avoid taxes. You will gain a greater perspective.
> UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.
I think the tech bros want to replace artists also
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”.
It’s reaching the point of absurdity in my area. People are bringing “All data centers are flammable” signs to city meetings.
A plot of land that’s already zoned for the heaviest of industrial activities, is across the street from a dump, 3 miles from an airport, 16 miles from a nuclear generating station, and in a region with good climate, and no water crunch is a pretty good place for a data center.
Facts don’t matter, it’s a religious fight. Even if you provide numbers specific to the local area there’s no way to pierce the rhetoric.
Too much land? I added up lol the land used by the 10+ golf courses in the area. Dwarfs the proposal.
Too much water? I called the head of the parks department and asked them how much water the golf courses that they operate use each year. Massive.
Regional electricity costs going up? Our nuclear generating station already sells 80-85% of all power generated wholesale to other markets.
Data centers are loud? I measured the noise outside of my house. I live on a busy street. It was much louder than the viral videos going around Facebook with titles like “Data center noise from my porch SCARY MUST WATCH”.
I don’t know about all proposed data centers everywhere, but the one they’re eyeing to build in my backyard is fine by me.
I lived in Northern Virginia for years. Data centers are everywhere.
It’s really hard to explain that centers aren’t bad and are actually far more efficient than the alternatives. Just don’t run them on coal, natural gas, or the souls of orphans. And don’t rely exclusively on evaporative cooling if it’s in the desert.
They’re having fun treating tech people like villains. It was the same or worse with bankers back in 2008-2010. Anything I have to say, any data provided, any comparisons made, are biassed because I “use data centers”. When I explain that they use data centers as well, I get the finger.
When I talked to an anti data center family member who runs a local Facebook news group (5,000+ subscribers) they just kept sending me Google AI summaries as counter points… My god. I don’t even use gen AI.
People want to enjoy the benefits of progress and data centers while still being loudly “moral”. All of this on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. How many data centers are involved to get a post from poster to viewer? 2? 3? 8?
A bad data center project proposal somewhere should not mean opposition to data center projects everywhere.
> It’s really hard to explain that centers aren’t bad and are actually far more efficient than the alternatives.
This isn't about efficiency, power, water, or fire. AT ALL.
Massive amounts of people have their jobs and livelihood threatened. The datacenters, which are enabling that, are being deployed in their neighborhoods while everyone in that neighborhood goes jobless. There is no plan of relief in the form of better economic policy, UBI, less taxation of actual humans, or anything else. That is the real crux of what is being fought.
“Everyone in that neighborhood goes jobless”?
The US unemployment rate is currently 4.3%.
That just means it has massive growth potential.
I’ve noticed that people conflate being anti data center with being anti AI.
I don’t have any faith in the current crop of gen AI. I think it’s junk. I don’t think it’s replacing humans in drives. I can barely get it to refactor Sass code into a mixin.
Even if the AI bubble pops the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers.
If a speculator wants to create a bunch of construction jobs, build a site in a region with the power, water, climate to do so responsibly, and give us a bunch of money in property taxes. I’m for it.
I don’t care if his company folds and he loses his shirt. Someone will operate the data center.
They can’t get back the money they injected into the community during construction.
Eat while there’s food.
It's junk for mission-critical software. But stock photographers, tutors, therapists, writers, translators, designers, and others are being replaced in droves. The snowball is starting.
Even plumbers. AI told me what to buy from Home Depot and I diagnosed and fixed my last 2 plumbing problems myself.
And lawyers. I fought some minor issues on my own with AI guidance.
What a bad idea AI therapy is and I don’t know too many people who are using AI art commercially. Translators, sure. But we’ve been using Google Translate for almost two decades now.
You didn’t need AI for your plumbing. My dad had a whole set of books on household chores that we used to fix everything.
I do more of the work around my house than most. I won’t touch tall trees to fuck with my breaker box. I do most of my own plumbing.
But, plumbers are fine. Most people don’t want to handle their own shit.
> What a bad idea AI therapy is
People will use it, because they don't have money for real therapists, because they also lost their own job. Maybe you can give them free therapy if you think it's a bad idea?
> I don’t know too many people who are using AI art commercially
I see AI stock images absolutely everywhere in the news now, AI portraits all over the place, AI relit product images absolutely everywhere.
> You didn’t need AI for your plumbing. My dad had a whole set of books on household chores
I don't have time to read books when I have a plumbing issue and other shit to do. Normally I'd have paid $200 for a plumber. But with AI I didn't have to read the books, and I was able to solve it myself for $30.
I think current gen AI is junk. I don’t use it. I also don’t see mass job losses over it. Scapegoated? Yes. Actual mass unemployment? No.
Commercially, I typically see AI used in what amount to scams. And no, I don’t believe that anyone should be using it for therapy.
You don’t have time to glance at a diagram in a book but you have time to ask AI and go to Home Depot and do it yourself?
If you’re worried about job loss, pay the plumber.
You could argue that you still put money into the local economy by shopping locally. The money you saved by doing it yourself could be spent locally on dinner and ice cream. Money is fungible.
If you’re concerned about the impacts of AI you could start to mitigate them by choosing not to use AI yourself.
It’s been a few hours. I’ve said all I have to say under this post. I’m going to stop replying now.
You don't have to read the entire book to figure out your one problem, that is what the index is for. Also you could of googled your problem 10 years ago and found the same answer with what, an extra 10 seconds?
You're not wrong that the position of many anti-datacenter people isn't entirely rational (in the sense of "backed by solid numbers"), but you're entirely missing the point of why they are angry.
Consider this:
And now, they see a wave of building datacenters. Not only do these data centers have externalities for the climate, but their _purpose_ seems like a negative: putting their jobs at risk because AI, redirecting this wealth to the ultra-rich. There's nothing for them in this, it's lose-lose!And they see their own government encouraging and subsidising these projects, how could they not feel betrayed?
> People want to enjoy the benefits of progress and data centers while still being loudly “moral”.
I don't think so. People would rather these benefits weren't there, but people exist in society and balance principle with practicality. You're allowed to criticise how AI is being brought into society while also using AI yourself, moral purity isn't a requirement to having opinions.
No, I know why they’re angry.
Hell, I don’t even use gen AI, I still think it’s unreliable junk.
However, most of the things that the people in my community are concerned about don’t apply to our region specifically. We’re actually in a position to benefit GREATLY. It’s useful to have that conversation.
What is the benefit? They provide no jobs and demand tax cuts.
Property taxes. Construction jobs. The land is unused and already had tax incentives. Remember, tax incentives don’t eliminate taxes, they just reduce them for a period of time to encourage development.
Many of these data centers are demanding tax breaks from the local governments, so taxes isn't a great excuse. The construction jobs are a one off deal, most of which will be done by non-local firms that specialize in large construction projects that don't exist in areas with "unused land". And then you also have to account for the higher power costs people in the area will be paying which is just another subsidy to big business on top of the stack of them that area already paid out to big business.
This is extremely misleading. They provide a lot of tax that pays for all the externalities.
Surely you have some measure of empathy for their position? I’m sure you certainly did in 08, as people lost their homes.
I think it’s a topic that’s scary to many and this datacenter-to-be, or the local banker, just happens to be what they can easily protest.
2008 is apples vs oranges. The proposed data center site is across the street from the dump, just south of the airport. It’s zoned for heavy industrial use.
Literally anything that they could build there other than a data center would have a greater negative impact on the environment and a far less positive economic impact.
I could build a concrete crushing plant there.
Most other things they could build there could create a lot more local jobs.
And create a lot more pollution while generating much, much less in property tax revenue.
You mean the other businesses (not the DCs) generate more pollution and don't bring in less property tax revenue?
Pollution, ok, regular industry generates more. But property tax revenue? Why would DCs provide more property tax revenue?
In Northern Virginia data centers are about 3% of land, but account for almost 50% of local property tax contributions.
> I’m sure you certainly did in 08, as people lost their homes.
It's funny that this is such a common takeaway from 2008. The bankers are bad because people lost their homes.
It's the right guilty party and the right victim but not the right crime.
The bad thing was bankers irresponsibly putting those people in homes in the first place. The people were always going to lose those homes because they couldn't afford them.
You realize that "golfs are even worse so why people complain" is not a serious argument?
That’s not the core of the argument. You know that.
I’m putting things into perspective for people who are terrified that the last drops of their potable water and going to be used to generate a meme video.
One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes, and they’re using it for technology that disempowers and annoys people. It’s pretty obviously offensive.
All for rezoning golf courses too
Nobody's shutting off those 150 homes to take their electricity, though. They have to buy it themselves. Lots of industrial things take tons of energy, from metal smelting to food production.
Oh, and datacenters alone shouldn't even make electricity more expensive, because rates are regulated. The state regulators have to approve rate raises. Now, are the regulators a bunch of stooges captured by the utilities who always do their bidding? Probably! But that's a good reason to throw your corrupt state politicians out of office and hopefully run them out of town on a rail -- not to protest datacenters.
Metal and food are useful, though.
the irony of making an implied point that data centers aren’t useful, by using data centers.
Pretty sure hackernews doesn't take a giant datacenter to run. Its a text-only website managed by nerds. If HN didn't care about redundancy they could probably host it out of somebody's basement.
And there are zero data centers in between facilitating anything?
The irony of suggesting that this site is useful.
> One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes
Is this supposed to scare me or something? I can't even fathom the actual point you are trying to make if it doesn't involve me having an emotional response to this statement.
Seems pretty obvious- that datacenters very measurably contribute to rising costs of electricity and climate change , and unlike aluminum processing or farming which makes things people want, is used for AI which a lot of people resent. It’s a lose-lose
> datacenters very measurably contribute to rising costs of electricity and climate change
the people who make this true are the same people who oppose the data centers. if they just let people build solar and data centers neither of those things would be true.
Who’s saying not to build solar?
Currently, it's the US government, who is very opposed to renewable energy sources and very in favor of data centers/AI.
There's plenty of opposition to solar farms at the local level.
Wild to see people pretend like this isn't true while we're still in the middle of seeing how badly this shit has already fucked up hardware prices.
in b4 the 'apples and oranges' cope
> One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes
Are you counting the externalized data center use of the people in that house?
But in PJM they are almost entirely being powered by natural gas and coal? Even if you contract out power from a nuclear plant some other plant on the grid is now enjoying a higher capacity factor, at the margin natural gas.
The data center in question in Utah was marketed as a 9GW full build out natural gas facility more than twice the electrical generation of the entire state. Coal electrical production in the US increased 13% last year.
I don’t defend every data center everywhere. I’m talking about the proposed data center about 11 miles from my door.
In my area we have a nuclear generating station 16 miles from that site. It sells 80-85% of all power generate wholesale to other markets. We have the power infrastructure here.
The amount of nuclear generation is roughly fixed (minus the refurbishment of three mile) in that region. If you add additional large load to the grid and outbid other demand for that power you are just shifting the load you replaced to other sources, which in PJM region would be mostly gas (new or existing) and delaying the decommissioning of existing base load coal plants. Renewables in that region are unfortunately a small percent of electrical generation.
I do agree that other demands like water consumption are overblown and could be largely regulated to enforce best practices. What infrastructure we are building as a society to meet this load demand is going to be the lasting impact of this generational infrastructure investment and it's looking like that will be mostly fossil fuel based in the near to mid term.
I’m only talking about my local area. I’m not defending the Colossus sites. I don’t live near them.
It is much more than the Colossus sites, I would look at the capacity additions in the regional grids you are apart of and what is being funded to meet these increases in demand from data centers. The majority of it is natural gas generation and a sizeable but minority amount of battery storage. Just outbidding people for a relatively fixed amount of clean nuclear ignores the second order effects of adding large loads like these. What happens in your area does have larger impacts.
Again, I’m talking about my region. We have a nuclear generating station 16 miles from the proposed site of the data center. That station sells 80-85% of the power generated wholesale to other parts of the state and grids regionally.
The nuclear generating station is part of a larger system. Say you build enough data centers in your local area to use up all the station power so that 80% is no longer exported, what is getting built somewhere else to make up for that missing generation the data centers now use? Its not new nuclear. When you add data center load to a grid how the additional generation is supplied is really what matters in terms of impacts.
We should have been building additional nuclear capacity for the past 50 years. The kinds of anti data center activism we’re seeing now was directed at nuclear back then.
It would take decades to build enough data centers to use 100% of the station’s capacity.
We can build capacity as we build consumers. It’s all about balance.
I also don’t believe that we’re going to be building all of the 1200 proposed data centers in the US.
Being next to a nuclear power plant but attached to a regional grid is not that relevant in terms of total additive emissions from a data center build out. You have to look at the change in emissions of the grid as a whole. Companies are incentivized to care about disclosing a narrow boundary view of scope 1 & 2 emissions but we live in the real world not a spreadsheet.
US electrical emissions YOY increased in part due to data center build out and energy demand.
I’ve made a few comments around this. I’m going to wind down my involvement in this thread.
> In Utah on Wednesday, State Senate President J. Stuart Adams—one of the most powerful Republicans in the state—lost his primary election after supporting a major data center development near the Great Salt Lake, in one of the clearest signs yet of the growing political risks tied to the industry.
> At the local level, the fallout was just as direct. “Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,” former Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry said after conceding his primary race, after voting to advance the same project.
The Great Salt Lake is already disappearing and likely to create massive toxic winds because of all the toxic waste dumped into it. Using up that water faster is not a good thing.
Nothing this technology offers is, to me, worth the noise pollution or increase in water and electricity rates.
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 consider them.
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?
New is heavily solar, yes, but there’s still too much natural gas and the administration is deeply committed to returning the investment fossil fuel companies made in the president’s campaign so I wouldn’t bet on that continuing.
What’s more of a concern is coal being kept online just for data centers. Even if the national average drops, that’s a regional health risk where it happens.
https://www.powermag.com/power-demand-from-data-centers-keep...
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
That we know of?
Do you trust these tech bros to be truthful?
> Just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line sits dozens of unpermitted gas turbines that power xAI’s Colossus 2 data center while releasing smog-forming pollution, soot, and hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde. The tech company set up the de facto power plant with no permits, no public input, and no notice to nearby communities that will have to deal with the consequences.
https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
Sounds like a slam-dunk case for SELC?
“So glad we found a home for all of the Claudes!”
> in the long term
being the key phrase. Until we get to that long term, the less price sensitve buyer can buy up all available goods.
for example, all of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity.
so it is impossible to invest in capacity for non-datacenter uses, because the raw ingredients have already been bought up by the data centers.
effectively, at current rate of investment, > 90% of investment into new power generation goes to data centers. That doesn't leave much for any kind of other economic growth, since all of our economic growth depends on electricity.
It's quite amusing how easily people fall into the trap of Malthusianism when talking about water/electricity consumption of certain industries.
> 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.
The same should apply to memory and GPU manufacturers and yet I have seen no commitments from them to increase supply, so the end result is that consumer electronics are becoming ever more expensive compared to even just a year ago. That doesn't feel like a working economy to me.
This is an unusual comment to read because many manufacturers are public and therefore have released their expansion plans to shareholders (and therefore the public). Most recently, Micron is planning to build much more because their clients have made purchase agreements to 2030: https://www.aol.com/articles/micron-just-locked-100-billion-...
> The hyperscalers building AI infrastructure are willing to pre-commit to HBM and DDR5 capacity through the decade because they cannot afford a repeat of the 2024 shortage.
Unless I'm reading it wrong, the article makes it seem like all that new capacity will be reserved for AI infra, not consumer electronics or personal computing, which is what my comment was specifically about. Happy to be proven wrong if Micron has said anything about reviving the Crucial brand or Sony committing to lowering console pricing because they (or their memory supplier) secured capacity.
Don't all states have public utility commissions that regulate electricity provisioning? I don't know if the market has much to do with anything since it's all government regulation.
I don’t think you’ve been near a data center if you think noise pollution is a problem.
Data centers do more than AI. And you won’t defeat AI by killing data center proposals. The technology will succeed or fail on its own. We’ll find out in about 5 years.
Remember how “everyone” said all trucks will be self-driving in 10 years… 15 years ago?
There are something like 1200 data center proposals cross the US. How many of those will actually be built? How many are being proposed by speculators with no experience building or operating data centers? I have a feeling the number that will actually be built is significantly less that 1200.
Technology evolves and your opinion will evolve with it.
You're right, but that doesn't mean opinions will evolve towards viewing the technology more positively. With AI, it's increasingly the opposite.
It's already speeding up medical progress, so it'll probably take roughly however much time it takes for you to be personally affected by something that is currently incurable.
Source?
And I suppose that depends on whether I die first from not having access to healthcare after AI takes my job.
Mostly common sense and an understanding of how technology evolves but, but also:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.06.25329104v...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11326321/
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.24047
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.24047
And more just a Google search away.
Thanks for the response, but unfortunately "common sense" is not a source.
And unfortunately, these aren't actual examples of medical progress being made. AI in some capacity is absolutely going to be helpful for medical research, but I'm still very skeptical LLMs are what is going to do it. I also do not think all the other BS coming with the current LLM wave outweighs the benefits. I think the reaction would be much different if these things weren't conflated, and if the focus of AI was towards things like medical research. As it stands, it comes off more as a coping mechanism / excuse that I do not think is convincing for most people when they see the majority of AI is used for garbage (to put it lightly).
They are literal proof of medical progress being made by LLMs. Luckily, your skepticism carries no weight. The applications of LLMs are incredibly wide because it is an incredibly important technology that has evolved its way to where it is from machine learning research that has been ongoing since the 1940's. That's why all of the robber barons are doing all of the typical robber baron things that they always do when a world-changing technology that everybody is going to be using comes along.
The thing is that YOU can actually choose what to focus on at any time. You have clearly chosen to not focus on the STEM work being bolstered by LLMs that will accelerate as the technology does, to a degree in which I literally linked you research papers that support my claim and you hand-waved them away because they are in direct conflict with your preconceived notions.
If it is your belief that AI isn't useful, then as an engineer using LLMs daily, your opinion is laughably uninformed or you perhaps haven't used LLMs since forming it. I also don't understand how anyone can use LLMs extensively and believe that their job is in jeopardy. They cannot reason like a human and they absolutely require a human to pilot them. If people are losing their jobs to LLMs, then blame the follow-the-leader CSuite morons who don't understand the technology as much as you don't, and not the technology.
It's like being mad at trains in the 1830's.
Not everyone thinks they will or wants to live forever, and that is assuming they could even afford to get that care. I can't afford to get the best care there is available right now. Im certainly not going to get even better care when my costs go up and my wages go down.
Tech bros whether they realize it or not are living a philosophy of fear. They say: in order for YOU to be healthy and safe, we should be allowed to trample THEM (the undesirables), because trust us, the end result will be worth it.
Why not both? Why not both technological progress hand in hand with progress in human rights?
They tell us that any slowdown to progress is evil, that they are justified in their crimes because in "the future" all will be fine and dandy.
And what a beautiful future they are bringing us, with the destruction of post WW2 prosperity, increasing wealth inequality, etc etc.
"The beatings will continue until opinions evolve."
Datacenters are needed regardless of whether or not AI -- "this technology" -- is what will be deployed there.
Not to mention the tax breaks they're given for no material benefit to the community.
Future Illinois data center tax breaks on hold - https://www.illinoistimes.com/news/future-data-center-tax-br... - June 25th, 2026
State Data Center Policy Shifts as Governors Impose New Restrictions - https://www.multistate.us/insider/2026/6/22/state-data-cente... - June 22nd, 2026
Gov. JB Pritzker suspends tax breaks for data centers, urges more discussion - https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/gov-jb-pritzker-to-susp... - June 5th, 2026
Which States Are Banning Data Centers? - https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/which-states-are-banning-data-ce... - June 2nd, 2026
US tax incentives for data centers by state - https://knowledge.sdialliance.org/8d367baa340046029912b1e04c...
Tax Incentives for Data Centers 50 State Survey - https://hbfiles.blob.core.windows.net/webfiles/TaxIncentives... [pdf]
Again misleading. they bring back more in tax than the subsidies.
Please provide citations to support this assertion.
Think of the corporate profit gains which won't benefit you at all bro. It's all about the value proposition.
The rhetoric around AI has been insane for years now. AI will kill us all. AI will take all our jobs. SaaS is dead. AI is too dangerous to even release.
It's really no surprise at all voters hate data centers, no matter how useful they think AI might be.
But I don't think the rhetoric will end any time soon. The people saying it seem to really believe it.
Ah the power of Social Media manipulation. https://www.axios.com/2026/06/05/china-fueling-us-data-cente...
Allegedly.
Another groups claims false flag operation. Ain't it great?
Ah, Axios. The same great outlet that has gotten the scoop on the Iran war ending numerous times.
you believe this?
I'm pointing out there are two groups blaming each other. I don't know which is right.
But I absolutely believe that social media's agenda is a directed agenda.
Even OpenAI believes it, and found concrete evidence: https://openai.com/index/prc-linked-influence-operations-ai-...
wow, that’s crazy that OpenAI is saying that negative opinion against them is actually a nefarious foreign conspiracy, and does not actually indicate people hate them
What the comments fail to point out (and I haven't read the article to find out if they address it): the number of data centers being built is based on speculation of need and is a dramatic over-estimate. It has to be. What, other than AI has happened in the last few years that would warrant that many new data centers? How do they know there will be customers for that capacity? There will not be advances in algorithms, etc that do AI much more efficiently? (We know China is making strides in that!)
It's complete speculation! It's the new gold rush and everyone wants a data center. Most of these data centers might not even be built! And the ones that are, might never make any profit.
It doesn’t “has to be”. You’re speculating just as much.
I don't think so. Look at these numbers:
2026 figures represent full-year capacity projections and annualized construction spending rates.There is absolutely no way that increase was planned due to precisely planned for capacity. It's speculation.
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 more residential super towers, and more datacenters, and the other things for the same reason we climb the mountains, fly the Atlantic, and Rice plays Texas.
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.
How does a new datacenter help the voters? All they see is that their electricity prices are going to go up.
why do we give a shit what voters think should happen on someone else's property again?
Because what your neighbors do on their property effects you on your property. That is why zoning and permitting exists.
defending the existing zoning and permitting regime will get your no where with me unfortunately. if we dismantled local control of those 2 things the majority of this countries problems would go away.
Because "we" want to get elected?
Their taxes and cost of living goes up, oh wait
This is a pretty predictable reaction to the underhanded tactics being used to try to force these projects through either before citizens know they're happening and often, when citizens are aware, against their will.
As a side note, I wish we could muster this kind of vigor for just about any other type of public infrastructure project… nuclear/wind/solar power, fiberoptic internet, public high speed rail, new cities built around human-centric principles… you know, the things that the better part of the population stands to benefit from so at least the initial unrest is somewhat justified.
You get the same vigor against all of those project all the time. Windmills, solar, nuclear, rail, etc. There's a stronger will to oppose than to build.
We do muster this kind of vigor. The problem is that coverage decisions shaped by negativity bias ensure you're much more likely to hear about the projects people don't like. Did you hear about the huge New Mexico wind farm, largest in the US to date, that came online two weeks ago?
That's true, but I also see a lot of infrastructure projects that get gummed up or even canceled by NIMBYs, industry incumbents, and general obstructionism that would've happened had they been undertaken with the same bull-in-china-shop approach these datacenter projects tend to take.
If data centres use gas turbine engines they would be far better off to not affect power in those areas of communities
Maybe we should charge data centers double the tax rate so that they can fund that universal welfare and healthcare all the ai ceos keep talking about when we all are out of work.
There no reason to give them tax breaks. They don’t do anything of substance to the local economy.
It's not really about AI, data centers, water consumption, or energy. Those are real issues. But I don't think that's what gets people so riled up.
Imagine if every AI company was a small local business run by middle class folks and there were thousands of these little companies. The total amount of data centers, water, and energy consumption is the same.
I don't think people would be anywhere near as mad then. There are still other societal externalities around AI to get mad about, sure.
But I think one of the biggest drivers of rage around AI is inequality. It's not about what is being consumed to produce AI, it's about the tiny fraction of soulless billionaire elites that benefit from it. It's about a small number of fantastically rich assholes who keep taking more and more and more while there is less and less left for everyone else.
The rage that Luigi Mangione felt is the same rage these voters feel and I believe has the same root cause. That rage won't go away if AI gets more energy efficient or stops using water.
It's about both.
My mother is fully aboard the "a datacenter ruins the local town" train. She is looking to sell her small farm and move, but she's literally asking AI if a datacenter is planned in every town she's looking into moving to.
Not "is there a datacenter within 500 feet of the home I'm looking to buy" - but anywhere in the county. She just does not have an inkling of the local impact but hoovers up all the doomerism on the topic.
She also doesn't like them due to "billionaires" but the idea that a datacenter makes the surrounding 10 mile area unlivable is front and center. The irresponsible reporting and social media environment has made her terrified of what amounts to glorified warehouses being located a few miles down the road she otherwise never would have known existed. No amount of showing her what they really are (having worked in datacenters my whole adult life) can change her mind.
> The rage that Luigi Mangione felt
Luigi is an interesting case because he is not who you think he is. He is definitely not a luddite or populist. I know this because I read a social deep dive on him. His interests, the books he read, the accounts he followed all point to a level of sophistication that indicates he was well above the simplistic "us vs them" Marxist framework.
I also disagree with your overall point here: its not (just) about inequality. AI benefits everyone while also benefitting the billionaires - even disproportionately. What one should definitely acknowledge is that AI is raising the floor and is not _taking_ something from poor people and giving it to the billionaires which is again applying the Marxist framework. What is true is that, even if people are overall benefitting from AI, they are feeling powerless and sense a lack of agency where they see a big societal change happening in front of their eyes and they don't have any say in it. Having no say is kinda the default so you see the backlash from the educated elites who always thought they had a voice - until the AI technology boom came.
> AI benefits everyone while also benefitting the billionaires - even disproportionately.
Source?
Also, you seem to be (probably intentionally) mixing up who's an elite and who's not. The people controlling and profiting from AI companies and their ilk are elites. The average person who's livelihood is at risk is not an elite, not matter how much you may try to spin it.
The average American is absolutely an elite. Globally and historically, we are both in the 1%.
> Source?
All the technological innovations since humanity has had this characteristic and I don't see why AI would be different.
> Also, you seem to be (probably intentionally) mixing up who's an elite and who's not
I think it is convenient to put oneself in the non-elite bucket to justify anger at the "true" elites - the ones just above you. This is actually a well studied phenomena and almost all revolutions followed the same pattern. As an example, Soviet revolution was largely coordinated by the intellectual elite by overthrowing the Tsar who was the literal elite.
> All the technological innovations since humanity has had this characteristic and I don't see why AI would be different.
Then you should have no problem pointing to concrete examples of how it's actually improved life for the average person.
> I think it is convenient to put oneself in the non-elite bucket to justify anger at the "true" elites - the ones just above you. This is actually a well studied phenomena and almost all revolutions followed the same pattern. As an example, Soviet revolution was largely coordinated by the intellectual elite by overthrowing the Tsar who was the literal elite.
If you want to describe anyone with any education as an "elite", go ahead, but it's not convincing and is pretty anti-intellectual.
I sure am glad I'm apparently an elite and didn't know it, though! Who knew being an elite means you're barely able to make rent, will never be able to afford having children, have to forgo medical care due to the costs involved, and would be homeless within a few months if you got laid off?
It’s so strange, we’ve been building data centers for ages without being a jerk about it…
This goes to every LinkedIn brain idiot spouting recycled nonsense about the new Industrial Revolution and that white collar jobs are going away. These blabbering idiots never read a story book to understand the time period, that people displaced by industrialization were uneducated illiterate farm workers in a period in time before democracy.
Jump today most countries stable enough to build infrastructure are democracies and the white collar people you are demonizing do vote and that immense investment in infrastructure is not really easy to relocate.
even if datacenters aren't good for the communities there are in, it would be much worse if China advances in AI faster.
this is one of the core flaws in democracy, while the popularity contest generally curbs blatant abuse (also note how even that fails miserably when the electorate groups start to hate each other), the vast majority of people have no real way to judge the impacts of non-trivial decisions and judgement doesn't even need to come with certainty, just knowing which risks are worth it. voters will never get it right.
and in the information age, democratic sabotage is many times easier than informing a public that in most cases has no interest in being informed when the group think/herd instincts are triggered.
i suspect democracy only worked well thus far because it was never truly real. media was always concentrated and there were no non-democratic peers. this is no longer the case. when the media was concentrated democracy was just an emergent properly of media dynamics. now it's chaotic and subject to external targeted perturbation.
I think China "advancing" faster is better. Hoarding some magic numbers on a hard drive isn't a sound business plan, and shouldn't be what we're betting the farm (literally) on.
they are only releasing open weight models to damage the closed off US AI corpos.
while the next GLM model may get a similar open release, I doubt the one after that will.
Or maybe they have different incentives and don't see providing an inference as a service for the entire world as a viable business model.
Open source isn't a zero-sum game.
Look at which models are getting open-weights vs. which ones aren't.
That tap can be shut off at any time and it's already being shut off for their biggest models.
I know I’ll get downvoted into oblivion but I can’t help but think data center and ai backlash manufactured or is a psi-ops campaign by Russia or China
It doesn’t make any sense to me as the externalities are future not current and at no other point in time has the public cared about the future without first seeing concrete examples of harm. That hasn’t happened yet for data centers nor AI. It’s all “if, maybe, sometime in the future”
People will claim real harms but the connections are spotty at best. So it feels like people are stirring the pot. like if not Russia or China then just influencers doing it for rage bait for likes and subscribes
I’m not saying they are wrong, I can’t predict the future, I’m only saying it feels unusual for the reasons mentioned above
> People will claim real harms but the connections are spotty at best.
This is a wild claim because it's trivially provable. There's been tons of reporting around the effect they have on the immediate vicinity, and that's without even getting into the unknown long-term effects.
Here's a decent piece, but there's plenty more out there if you look at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8TDOFqkQA
Is every single mad person doing investigative reporting and / or living next to a data center? No. But something doesn't have to personally affect me to know it's harmful.
Almost every major issue has bot networks from hostile countries playing both sides of any issue to intentionally cause chaos. I completely agree that russia, china, or some other country is fomenting anger here.
That and the other issues aside, I think AI companies have done this to themselves. They've gone around talking about replacing all human labor and becoming the companies that control robot god's that swallow the entire economy and put everyone out of work and might destroy man kind. Well saying that is gonna make people hate them and that will find an outlet somewhere
so what makes you think that you aren't responding to a bot intending to sway your opinion by giving a shape to your preconceived notions so that your position crystallizes further, right now?
From folks I've talked to in real life, it really does seem that way. They're getting their information from Facebook but it's mixed in with the "5G towers are killing all the bees" and the usual anti-vaccine rhetoric. Seeing that erin brockovich has jumped on the anti-data center bandwagon makes it even more suspicious to me.
OpenAI literally found Chinese accounts trying to use ChatGPT to generate anti-datacenter propaganda: https://openai.com/index/prc-linked-influence-operations-ai-...
Generally, I'm glad that "the people" appear to be pointed in the IMHO correct direction, even if for imprecise, or maybe even wrong, reasons.
Regardless of what they are used for, we do not need more "data centers." This is true even outside of AI.
Putting so much of us into "the cloud" is generally harmful; encouraging people to learn about, and to do more "computing" at home -- on local machines they, or someone who cares about them, control, is better.
I'm happy to endure HN if it means I get to see hopeful, reasonable observations like yours.
You think this is reasonable? The person is just trying to conserve their job. It’s an act of self preservation and the opposite of virtue. And it’s not even historically accurate.
The US needs to build out energy infra like China, already >2x more total generation capacity (~1/3 of world total). Putting data centers aside, if America wants to bring manufacturing back, it will need energy to build things. RE: data centers, we do need to be more mindful of where they go and the resources they consume. We should force them to use water efficient cooling (more expensive for them) and support the buildout of the required energy gen. Utah does not seem an appropriate place for such a large data center.
The question is do we want to be a Petrostate or an Electrostate
https://youtu.be/gLnxzkiB-GI?is=CHj3J-ARp0iBq_NB (Adam Tooze prezi)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
Most US citizens want to be an electrostate. This current administration wants to go back in time and try to be a petrostate....
That may not be true for much longer given the (disappointing) trend
2020 - 79 : 20 (renewables : fossil fuel)
2026 - 57 : 42
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/04/03/americans-shi...
Which is why it was a mistake to let Republicans vote
We will vote when we want - nothing you are going to do will possibly stop it lol
All people (should) have the right to vote. If you don't like they way they vote, persuade them. This culture of political domination is at the core of our issues.
What is so objectionable about data centers anyway? That they consume utilities without employing a substantial amount of people? Compared to actual manufacturing like fabs the pollution concerns are laughable. The water use issue seems to be a wedge.
I live in an area built on paper mills. Our rivers are trashed from the paper mills. It smells bad in areas because of paper mills. Paper mills use a lot of electricity. But people are absolutely losing their minds over the pollution from proposed data centers. I'm not sure there's a cleaner industry in existence.
Data centers are where AI comes from.
"Voted backlash", nothing will change.
I've never seen the level of anti-scientific, straight misinformation as I have with data centers. I genuinely think it's to the point where the antivaxxers have a stronger scientific backing for their stance.
It did not feel organic at all. It's to the point now where that initial seeding of ideas has gained legitimate traction, but the initial burst of anti-datacenter content was wild to see in real time.
It's absolutely not organic: https://openai.com/index/prc-linked-influence-operations-ai-...
When I look at the total number of acres in a state and the number that may get taken up by a data center… not that we should even have to look at this spec but still not sure why people are so focused on data center construction as an issue unless it’s literally going to be next to your house, is there anything more than FUD going on here? And perhaps people taking advantage of it specifically as a talking point given election season.
You can't look at the total acreage of the state as a metric when 64.4% of the state is owned by the federal government.
The proposed site is twice the size of Manhattan, NY and sized for 9GW of energy which is more than the entire state uses yearly. We literally do not have the water to support a data center that huge.
They just enacted a fireworks ban because the weather people just had to create a whole new category for how dry and dangerous it is. Air quality is a constant problem because all the pollution from regions West of Utah collect right against the mountains. A few years ago we woke up to what looked like heavy fog, but it was smoke --from Siberia.
I think part of it is the perception that real environmental and public health damage is being done for totally trivial and indefensible causes. A data center is not like an airplane parts manufacturer, which has lots of ugly pollution but provides a necessary national service. Most people use generative AI recreationally, and the productivity gains among white-collar workers are awfully ephemeral. And if you're less pessimistic about the economics of generative AI... that makes it worse!
"We get a ton of money, you get increased natural gas emissions, increased unemployment, your electric bill is going up... oh and guess who's bailing us out when the bubble bursts?" Pretty rotten deal!
Misdirected outrage. DCs are an easy outlet for people's AI frustration.
Water usage concerns in a desert, perhaps?
The problem is not the center per se. The problem is the power. And, all too often they make up for the lack of utility capacity by putting in their own noisy generators.
When people hear datacenter they think ai-almost universally subsidies by the many for the few. They drive up electrical costs, increase carbon emissions, and are designed to make money by stealing and repackaging the fruit of human labor and thought, with the goal of ultimately replacing it not for the benefit of all, but for the benefit of the owners of that datacenter.
What's not to like?
> the Stratos development would have spanned tens of thousands of acres in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley. The project would ultimately require up to 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses
Did you even read the article? This is proposed to be larger than Manhattan. The amount of power will almost certainly burden Utahs grid in ways that locals will be on the hook for. So much of this build out will be the typical "privatize gains, socialize losses" playbook that yes it is an important political issue, and yes you have to "look at this spec" to understand just how insane some of these project proposals are.
"Privatize gains, socialize losses"
This pretty much spells out exactly my big problem with datacenters. I don't care if you build a huge datacenter several miles away from my home. What I do care about is utilities cranking up the price 3x because of "capacity issues" afterwards because said datacenter now uses more power than the entire district I live in
This is because there's a new political divide that makes the old left vs right obsolete: it is neo-luddites vs tech optimists. It cross-cuts against the old and outdated political compass.
Neo-luddites are usually the educated elite and genealogy is from old green or left politics but includes nationalists and social conservatives.
I think media is broadly failing to recognise this new clan.
The current far right government/movement (aka conservatives) is far more in favor of AI than people opposed to them. You seem to be labeling just about everything as the opposite of what it actually is. Are you invested in or working at an AI company?
I think your view is too simplistic and falls easily into the populist narrative so you end up mislabelling me as being invested.
You are again doing the thing I flagged in my original comment - the left right or progressive/conservative axis is not useful anymore. As an example: a lot of tech CEO's were originally against Trump but ended up caving precisely because the left became anti-technology broadly.
From experience and anecdotes, tech and AI optimism cross cuts into the old axis. Examples
1. third world countries are way more optimistic about AI than first world
2. many celebs (for the lack of better word) are pro AI - look at Redis, Django, NodeJS, Github
3. the existence of Effective Altruism itself should prove that this axis is useless - EA was largely leftist and support democrats while also being "pro" AI like Anthropic is mostly made from the EA cult
The nomenclature also doesn't make sense to me. Why would conservatives not conserve but rather push for progress? What are conservatives conserving instead? The academic consensus is that technology determines the societal culture and if conservatives wanted to conserve anything, they would conserve technology first wouldn't they?
None of this changes the fact that average people aren't elites, no matter how much you may try to spin it that way.
And ironically, your comment and views are themselves extremely simplistic. New technology is not inherently progress. Being opposed to specific applications or misuse or consequences of a type of technology is not the same as being broadly anti-technology. A "populist narrative" is an incredibly vague oversimplification, and an ironic thing to complain about in a comment that only serves to spread the pro-elite and anti-human narrative the AI corporations are currently pushing.
You think there's a binary of elites vs non elites which is using a Marxist framework that I (and almost mainstream academic) would reject.
> And ironically, your comment and views are themselves extremely simplistic. New technology is not inherently progress. Being opposed to specific applications or misuse or consequences of a type of technology is not the same as being broadly anti-technology. A "populist narrative" is an incredibly vague oversimplification, and an ironic thing to complain about in a comment that only serves to spread the pro-elite and anti-human narrative the AI corporations are currently pushing.
Thanks for proving my point, you are emphasising the exact divide I was trying to show originally. You may try to twist the rhetoric to show that you are for slow and cautionary progress of tech. That's sensible and I don't mean to claim neo-luddites would outright deny progress itself.
> This is because there's a new political divide that makes the old left vs right obsolete: it is neo-luddites vs tech optimists.
You have multiple comments calling anyone opposed to AI in any way an "educated elite". If you don't accept that framework, stop using it.
AI is hated far more than crypto.
No other technology gets as much hatred as AI is getting as the public see that as a threat to their own jobs.
Of course techies here are having trouble understanding this backlash. Maybe they should read up a bit on the Unabomber Manifesto to draw parallels on the motivations of the awful attacks against CEOs recently.
Just like crypto, you cannot use it to solve social problems with technical solutions. The same goes for AI as it still requires humans and trust to use it effectively.
The more AI data centers get built, the more it is hated and the worse society gets with this loss of trust as more people read about more mass layoffs.
Datacenters are a hedge the investor class is pushing and it's not really needed.
Once you realize:
1) LLM = CPU 2) Session Context = L1, L2, L3, CPU Cache
the entire AI industry is operating within the CPU cache of the LLM provider this is why cost moves quadratically, increases noise - signal ration, regenerative feedback loop, it dilutes the user narration, and it actually creates an architectural induce hallucination.
We've literally solved this problem in the 1960's with a memory architecture:
the OS has a memory controller, tasked with taking data from persistant structure storage (HD) loading into CPU Cache and the CPU computers, the output is stored in RAM and then moved into HD.
this is required on all AI applications, what the industry has done, is supplement a RAG which is summarizing context, however the entire context summarized chain is still being processed by the LLM.
if you employ a well sustain memory architecture you can retrieve the context you only need to feed to the llm. reduce token cost and then reduce energy therefore less demand of datacenters.
checkout my article and what i built metaop.ai it's a humble promotion but no one cares about ai memory. https://x.com/metaopai/status/2070187664192524528