Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
> ...the site had gone through a long approval process, which required public notices and public-comment periods. However, when Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024
Is the "circumvention" the headline refers to that public commentary periods are time-boxed? But how could they not be time-boxed?
In fairness to the residents, the negative implications of data centers was probably not well known to them in 2024, but it seems to me that (at least based on the article) all the processes & rules were followed.
I hope one day Amazon or any AI company installs a data center next to your home. Then you will finally understand
[0] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...
I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M funding-focused growth-minded startup set here are throwing gasoline on the fire.
Nobody intelligent opposes data center construction.*
* There are weird places that daya centers, solar panels farms, adult stores, and all kind businesses have attempted to build. Opposing a prominent location for an undesirable business is not what we are talking about.
Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
This ain’t the culture war. The public at large is fairly united on one side of this across the typical US political divides. If you want to dismiss this with a cute label to pretend that there aren’t any real concerns here, the only label that comes close to matching the actual dispute is class war.
rvz•34m ago
Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.