Did they stop filling polls with AI generated answers or something?
If you build a factory someplace, the factory consumes a lot of resources and can be a nuisance. But in return, it provides jobs; at the very minimum. Going beyond that, usually someone in the corporate heirarchy is smart enough to realize that building good will with the neighbors is important and they encourage the employees to give back to the community to that end.
The actual impact may vary but if nothing else, symbolic gestures that say, “we know our presence here has an impact and we want to make sure it’s a positive impact as much as possible.” tend to go a long way in terms of winning support and acceptance from the community.
Data centers consume lots of resources and can be a nuisance. Unlike other operations, they provide very few long term jobs and give basically nothing back to their host community beyond that. They take far more than they give back. If the “geniuses” who run these tech firms spent less money lobbying politicians and instead offered to pay for the college tuition of every student who successfully graduated from the local high school, they would probably get a very different reaction from the public.
Factories also produce tangible products
If the “geniuses” who run these tech firms spent less money lobbying politicians and instead offered to pay for the college tuition of every student who successfully graduated from the local high school, they would probably get a very different reaction from the public.
Yeah , they could do a lot with their wealth. Unfortunately they are stupid and selfish. They’re playing a dangerous game and eventually they’ll roll for guillotines.
Well the people with money don’t care about people. They lobby the politics so they can fuck you over and you are ordered by law to like it
It’s a huge waste of money at this point, and the technology will become rapidly antiquated. The depreciation will be insanely high, while the software that’s requires it becomes much more efficient. At this point we already have enough data centers, we just need more efficient software and smarter usage.
I get the feeling the 3,000+ data centers aren’t being built so everyone can generate slop, but instead are going to end up being the infrastructure for the digital cage. AI won’t replace humans, but it can certainly spy on them quite effectively. Big tech and the U.S. government have been trending towards a fascist merger of state and corporate power for quite some time, and the FBI’s recent partnership with Flock and OpenAI becoming an official member of the military industrial complex are not good news. I fear we are headed towards a historically unprecedented ability for governments to track and control the populace. No matter what, these data centers are not for the benefit of the average citizen.
That is despite huge propaganda campaigns by tech giants and the government in favor of them mind you. Everyone who experienced what it‘s like living near one absolutely hates it for many reasons including health issues from the noise and vibration. Anyone who doesn‘t already got a taste of it when utility bills climbed up.
Not hard to figure out why. There‘s an oil crisis and these AI bro fucks keep constructing giant diesel engines to power the giant data centers. Everyone else loses.
There‘s an oil crisis and these
they are selling our strategic reserves overseas while Iran is not over and we running low every day.
I cant believe this.What’s even crazier: Only 20% of the world’s oil production is affected. That means 80% are still available.
It would be trivial to save 20% of oil, but we just don’t want to.
People are driving just as much. There’s no push to home office. No push to make people stop buying crap they don’t need. No push to decrease flying or anything at all.
Instead, offices are still uselessly illuminated all night. Useless ad screens are playing at any time of day, burning precious fuel for no purpose.
We still throw away 30-40% of the food we produce. We still don’t have a massive push to pivot to renewable energy.
Collectively, we don’t care about energy shortages, and politics and companies don’t either.
Instead, we just price the poorer nations out of competition. We can afford gas at €2/l, and we don’t care that entire nations are collapsing right now because they can’t afford fuel at all.
That’s the problem we have locally. No one wants these things, but local government keeps trying to push them through anyway because all they see is tax dollars.
Americans as a whole are really fucking slow. The slop factory “industry” should have been eighty-sixed for its waste of resources before they ever built the first data center. It’s not like the costs weren’t known from the start.
The CEOs of these companies boast constantly about these technologies replacing workers. Those same rich fucks support active efforts to cut social safety nets to increase their own tax cuts. So people don’t trust them or the future they are building and don’t want to support it. This, on top of the myriad other negative impacts of data centers - what exactly is in it for us?
The U.S. AI roll out is reckless and sloppy - prioritizing speed of development. Meanwhile China is focusing on efficient coding and development based on practical use and spending a fraction of the cost. American is creating an AI bubble unlike any bubble our economy has ever dealt with sitting on top of the greatest government debt in history. When it pops, the government will be too leveraged to bail us out. The rich will jump ship to their tax havens and the people will be saddled with multi-generational austerity. This is the end of a long road of corrupt business interests and billionaires strip mining the wealth of the USA.
Fuck capitalism.
Meanwhile China is focusing on efficient
codingmodelsChina coding is most often even worse than US coding.
I guess I phrased that wrong. I meant efficient coding as in coded to not be as processor intensive or bloated. Efficient models as you state. Thank you for pointing that out.
They increase the cost of consumer electricity and water; they increase the temperature of the local area; they generate (in some cases) heavy metal pollution and (in most cases) sound pollution.
What’s not to love? ;)
Not to mention some idiot decided to put these water-pollution factories in places that historically have limited access to water and right now are experiencing one of the worst droughts of all time (at least in the top-5). People are a little protective of their precious water at times like these.
We all knew that this century’s history would come to be dominated by the Water Wars. We just never realized that AI would be one of the major combatants in those wars.
And they raise the prices of consumer electronics.
Also air pollution because quite a few are gas-powered (mobile units). Elon Musk’s among them.
The 10 year almost complete lack of regulation for all things AI might have something to do with it.
I’m willing to bet it correlates with shortages and price increases.
Gotta admit, my strong feelings about them didn’t start til my power costs doubled out of the blue
What’s not being mentioned enough is they’re mainly being used to collect more data on people. It’s mass surveillance mascaraing as AI.
insider info here: many IT companies are using lobbyists to pressure state/local and federal governments on everything from zoning to power distribution.
these aren’t just AI companies, but hosting companies, saas/paas companies, any company with the requirement to build or expand a datacenter.
if you don’t like it, make sure you make it very clear to your representatives what your thoughts are on the subject and what you plan to do otherwise.
Representatives don’t give one fuck about their constituents and what they have to say. They only care about what corporation and billionaire paid them last. And given the 2 party system in the U.S., they don’t have to care about getting voted out either. If they are a Republican in a red district, they can do whatever they want and get voted back in and the same goes for the Democrats.
The ONLY peaceful thing that will save America is getting money out of politics. Until that happens, and good luck with that, your representative will continue to wipe their ass with your concerns.
Representatives don’t give a fuck what their constituents have to say on social media. It’s full of foreign trolls and bots.
But if you go in person to a town hall / public hearing on an agenda item, they know that you are:
- A real person
- An American
- Extremely likely to vote in the next election.
Source: I successfully killed a local zoning change by convincing my neighbors to go out and speak against it, despite lobbying from a large developer.
Wow, happy to hear that worked!
Agitating nonsense. We stopped data centers in my county by showing up to board meetings and letting them know what we thought. They absolutely cave to pressure, especially local politicians.
They still have to run for reelection and online propaganda bullshit isn’t nearly as effective for local politicians.
That I agree with. Local politicians are more likely to cave to pressure than the US house and Senate. I should have been more clear on my original post.
like I said
make sure you make it VERY CLEAR to your representatives what your thoughts are on the subject and
what you plan to do otherwise
I wish I knew. Don’t get me wrong, I have several times contacted both house and senators in my state. I’ve gotten one response out of probably 10 letters. I find the “contact your representative” method to be challenging when voters are up against massive amounts of bribery and a two party system that forces voters to vote either R or D.
I honestly can’t wait for the first people to set fire to these things. There’s no way the US people will stay complacent forever right? At one point someone will snap, no?
Sure, any day now
But it is America who enabled the tech companies getting to the point where they are
Americans don’t know how to fight AI so they’re fighting data centers instead. You’ll notice folks who don’t care about climate change or brown kids with cancer taking an interest in this fight.
Americans don’t know how to fight AI
Tell us then, o wise one. How do you fight AI?
Molten steel, usually.
Tell us then, o wise one. How do you fight AI?
probably with their smug sense of superiority.
Up until this weekend I leaned towards banning datacenters, but now I think we need to figure out how to let them get built. We’re going to be in trouble due to supply chain disruption, geopolitical instability, and population decline around the world and will need as much tech built as possible now.
How does building a bunch of datacenters fix anything?
Also that’s a quick 180 you’ve done, wonder what you’ll be thinking next weekend 🤔
We don’t need that shit. There’s no use for one.
They’re going to be used as automated surveillance centers anyway.
