I think they're fighting data centers because many cities have already allowed new data center builds (even before AI exploded) and now realize these massive profit making companies are contaminating local water supplies, not providing any jobs outside of a temporary boom of construction jobs, and are causing their power bills to increase while also making their local grids more fragile.
I'm sure that right at this moment at least some people are thinking "if only we had a different executive, then we could rein in this AI problem." That is wrong at best. You could rein it in for ~4 years until you lost the next election. With a completely feckless Congress, very little can get done.
Of the dollar, by the dollar, for the dollar ...
But the admin has repeatedly ignored such restrictions. This check on power also loses it's teeth when the oligarchs align themselves behind the executive branch.
are they? whats been done to solve the infrasound pollution?
governments haven't even managed to get datacenters to follow clean air regulation
1. About 25% of data centers use close water cycle systems [1]. This could be part of the approval process. It costs more, but these companies are flush with cash.
2. Where they go matters for water table impact and energy generation mix, both geographically and per zoning laws. There are good and bad places to put data centers.
3. Energy shouldn't be a problem, but we have under/mis-invested. A world with limitless energy is possible, what happened to that vision for massive renewables to realize that?
4. A responsive government is required, which seems to be what is happening (as evidenced by the significant pushback). We should be more reasonable (the middle path), but that seems not within the politics of our times.
[1] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...
Then there's the fact that many of those datacenter are being built over what would otherwise be usable farmland. I'm sure many will say "it's not that much land", but then tech billionaires would like to build datacenters the size of Manhattan. What for? To train a bigger LLM? Yay?
If the cost of energy is a problem, I feel like we should fix that problem instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's no reason residential customers should pay the same amount as data centers.
Sure but you can say this about everything. Where are the protests about the wine industry in California? 500,000 acres of land for vineyards, far more water used for growing grapes than cooling data centers, all so a handful of people can make fortunes selling empty calories to the rich?
If you want to focus purely on utilitarian "optimal land use for essentials only" arguments there's way worse offenders than datacenters, the anti-DC sentiment is purely part of the anti-AI wave.
1. They get massive tax breaks;
2. Everyone else pays for the electricity infrastructure that they need to suppor tthem;
3. They pollute water supplies;
4. Everybody's electricity prices go up while the DC has a sweetheart deal that, again, everyone else is paying for;
5. There are no jobs unlike, say, if someone used that same money to buuild an auto plant; and
6. They tend to very far noiser than you might think, such that they probably violate noise ordinances when built near residential property but nobody enforces that. We have industrial areas for this reason but that zoning just gets completely ignored.
AI is a whole separate debate. That one, too, is pretty simple. AI is selling labor displacement and wage suppression. That's the only product. Getting rid of the data centers won't get rid of that. The DCs are just going where it's cheapest, where local officials don't have the resources to fight it and where people can be bullied or bribed into approving it. Move them somewhere else slightly more expensive and it'll still be displacing labor.
1. got no tax breaks
2. self-generated electricity with greenest of green generation
3. did not pollute water supplies
4. made electricity prices go down somehow
5. (can't figure out a theoretical version where there are lots of jobs, sorry)
6. was extremely quiet
Would people still be mad about them?
I'm trying to figure out if the bad reasons are the _actual_ reason people are generally against data centers. Or if it's really more about "AI bad."
1. Electricity costs in Maryland jumped 89% over the past year, much more than anywhere else, largely due to an AWS data center expansion: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-electricity-pr...
2. At their heart, data centers are extractive. Their boosters always overstate the jobs they will create, but they basically take land and resources from one place and create the vast majority of the wealth somewhere else. They are giant windowless boxes, they don't support their community in any way, and in fact with AI they basically add to more job destruction in their communities.
While I agree that some downsides of AI are overstated (like water usage), this whole article smacks of paternalistic "the peons just don't understand what's really going on" nonsense. The same thing happened in the 80s, 90s and early 00s when many economists painted those who lost their jobs due to globalization as Luddites who just didn't understand economics. Only decades later did many economists readily admit many of the huge downsides to many populations from globalization and that reskilling rarely works.
Blocking them should be a priority until rates are negotiated with your G&T / major provider (PJM and FERC in Maryland and many other states)
RE blaming the peon reader: you’re talking about Vox so that is expected unfortunately.
But yes this article is absolutely the "usual sort" of paternalistic garbage.
No, AI is partly rejected as mind numbing, it produces SEO slop, it produces bad code, it steals IP. Is this author living under a rock?
She then proceeds to parrot the industry that we'll have arrangements that go in the direction of UBI. This whole article sounds like a trojan horse for Vox readers to distract them from the real issues.
EDIT: The pre-IPO downvotes get aggressive again. Mentioning how the press works is strictly forbidden.
It's like if someone is building a landfill in your hometown to bury the whole country's waste. Or it's like a factory that creates zero job.
Key point doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Do all these data center buildouts include providing their own power? Seems like the answer is largely no. These companies expect power infrastructure to be supplied by the government, but also want lower taxes.
The past 20 years of surveillance capitalism and the general deployment of technology against consumers should make everyone question whether this could ever be possible.
Instead of a ban just make sure they pay what's needed to keep capacity where it needs to be.
If I build a house on undeveloped land and the electric company needs to run lines, do I also (in a much smaller way than a data center) increase the costs for all other customers? Is everything always just spread evenly?
electrical supply is not infinite. datacenters have high electrical demand. more demand + same supply = increase prices.
>Why doesn't the data center bear an extra cost for the added infrastructure?
the problem is that added infrastructure is not built instantaneously. it lags behind. so costs will be high until more supply-side infrastructure is in place.
i agree that there should be some sort of stipulation that when you build your mega datacenter that you also have to build out electrical infrastructure at the same time. but unfortunately, that is not how it is.
The fight against AI should just be about taxing token usage. We should also tax the hell out of anyone using AI as an excuse for layoffs. It's far past time to ban buybacks and dividends for any company doing layoffs. We also should have a requirement, you have to provide a bonus pool that goes dollar-for-dollar for any buybacks or dividends you do.
I mean if AI is really powerful the reason is "profitability as our competitor steals our contracts at a fraction of the price". Your competitor just doesn't hire in the first place of course.
This is a wall of text but genuinely worth skimming: https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti...
Taking a step back, if the US unilaterally stops producing AI will other countries stop? The answer is clearly no.
Datacenters and ai can be built and trained anywhere. If you want control over AI you should want it to be built in your own country where you have political representation.
All preventing datacenter buildout will do is ensure that the price remains high and only really rich organizations can access it.
I think it's a mistake to stop producing those things.
Is the reason that competence and social trust are declining because of AI? Maybe, but not only that.
Tear it all down.
You know what I learned? Nobody wants to. People will always choose the more convenient option no matter how bad it is in the long run, even when the far more ethical option is only just slightly less convenient. They choose instant gratification every time. They'll whine about it, they'll swear each new enshittified update or price hike is the last straw, but they will keep paying the bill.
And don't even get me started on trying to get people to donate money to open source projects.
So maybe it counts as victim blaming, and the sociopathic techbros that run these companies are certainly responsible for their own behavior, but, at a certain point... it's hard to blame the lion when the tourists keep walking into its den.
Ya'll wanted the cloud, you wanted Ring doorbells, you wanted Alexas, you wanted Kindles, you wanted ChatGPT to write your emails for you, you wanted iPhones... We've been telling you for years: It's just someone else's computer.
Members of Congress, just like everyone else, act in their own self-interest. And unfortunately for pretty much everyone else, their best method of self-preservation is to do nothing, hence the "eunuch" Congress.
What won't work is something like "it'll be better for the economy in the entire country, so put up with some disruption for a while." No one likes higher electricity bills while a power plant is being constructed, a new building going up too close to their homes that doesn't create jobs they can apply for, etc. It's a losing message to promise the payoff only years later or indirectly.
1. The taxes can offset the federal cuts so local taxes do not need to be raised. Requires the local gov't officials signing onto the deal in this way, which seems more likely given the massive pushback nation wide.
2. The data centers should be forced to build the energy generation they require. Excess (during off peak) can be fed back into the local grid and lower prices. It's quite likely the energy deficit will be the primary limiting factor to build out. We can also force the data center to pay premium prices, this is within the capability of regulations.
Interestingly, the group is mixed on the Ai topic. Some are anti, some are very excited. We have had amazing discussions without it becoming heated, IRL, because people communicate differently in the flesh.
Now explain to me why you are allowed to have the things you like which use a lot of water, while other people are not allowed to have the things they like which use a lot of water.
Here it's the same thing--the people protesting don't give a damn about water waste, electricity usage, or wasted land. If they did, there are tons of other offenders who are way worse. But they don't want to outright say they're protesting against AI because it makes them seem like luddites.
The list is long and includes things like people not being able to afford AC anymore; why are you trying to figure this out?
The question is whether globalization is a net positive and whether people understand that, even if it comes at a cost to themselves personally.
It should be noted that modern globalization (post 1945), with Bretton Woods, GATT/WTO, container shipping, and eventually the internet creating the integrated global economy we have today, is but the latest milestone in a long history.
Industrial wave of 1829 - 1914 radically reduced the cost of moving goods and information.
The first globalization happened 1490s - 1800s, when Columbus’s 1492 voyage and Vasco da Gama’s 1498 route to India created the first truly intercontinental trade and migration networks, linking the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe for the first time.
I totally get the general principle that not everything scales linearly like that. But, I also know very little about electricity generation, so I have no idea where the breakpoints are. (I would also guess that if the demand dips low enough, there could be a case where after decreasing costs for a while, costs actually start to rise again as there is some minimum infrastructure needed but fewer customers to bear the cost.)
The cities are paying exorbitant prices for electricity to pay for safer infrastructure for rural customers (undergrounding).
Some cities have divested from PG&E and enjoy much lower electricity prices as a result.
We're dealing with this bullshit in my own city in another state. From the parks to the roads to the sidewalks to the library every goddamn thing we touch gets driven up to the point of "can't actually do what we wanted" in cost because some rich assholes 100mi away in the vicinity of the capitol have taken a "build it fancy and rich or don't build it at all" attitude and enshrined that in state law and rules.
Sometimes they'll be so kind as to eat part of the cost with state grants, as long as we sell our freedom away in other ways.
In some states (like Oregon and Virginia) they do, but in a lot of states the regulations for rate structures are flat among all users so when there's a large surge in new demand the utility will build out new capacity and spread the cost of that new capacity to all rate payers with no regard for the fact that the new capacity would not have been needed without the new demand (from data centers). So everyone who was already using the electricity pays the new higher rates along with the new large-load user.
These companies building data centers will often make a lot of PR statements about how they are fine paying the extra cost for extra use while at the same time lobbying behind the scenes to actually avoid that happening and fighting against changes to utility rate structures that would raise their costs. By and large they can't be trusted.
In some sense, sure, any time you buy something you apply some upward price pressure. Of course, whether the resulting price changes measurably depends on many things, like the scale of your purchase relative to the scale of the market, the price elasticity of demand, who the marginal buyers and producers are, etc.
Energy hungry infrastructure projects pay something called a "large-load tariff" to try to contain their second-order costs from leaking into residential rate payers pay for. It's not perfect, so a datacenter project could trigger some upgrades that cause rates to go up.
The situation is confusing everyone right now because it's impossible for the average person to tell why rates are going up. A lot of utilities are doing things like finally addressing old fire-prone infrastructure (see the California fires) and dealing with inflation for everything from their generation input costs to inflated costs for infrastructure to putting straight of Hormuz-inflated gas in the tanks of their fleet. Customers only see that their rates are going up and AI datacenters are on the news, so they put them together and assume datacenters are to blame for everything. Yet rates are spiking even in places with zero datacenters.
The topic has entered the domain of emotionally charged topics so nuance is hard to come by. Many of the anti-datacenter people are against datacenters as a proxy for their hatred of AI and the electricity and water arguments are just convenient justifications.
(Until the bots are still more efficient)
If it was AI they would take those extra people to get more done. I know of no company that doesn't have more work than they have people. (but they lack the funds/ROI to pay more people)
What about self-hosted models?
this is especially true for AI use cases, where compute is hugely more important than latency / bandwidth
> you have to provide a bonus pool that goes dollar-for-dollar for any buybacks or dividends you do.
So, reallocate some exec comp to a pool that gets bigger when you give shareholders back money?
Would be great to balance the market better between labor and capital, but there's no easy button...
There’s no such thing as a red state or blue state, these are fictions created to generate political fighting for no value to society.
Second - many states such as Ohio have begun pushing back strongly against data centers. In Ohio we had been offering tax breaks for construction because we welcomed the economic activity, but thankfully the government here after seeing a lot of pushback across the state has realized providing tax incentives or subsidies is economically and politically stupid relative the benefits of the new data centers.
To your point, they can be built anywhere. So many folks are saying yep, let’s build them somewhere else and drain water and raise energy prices there instead of here.
Smart politics in a state like Ohio would require data centers to relocate corporate jobs to the state or face full or perhaps even surcharges for utility rates because why not?
It's easier for normal people to influence local regulations, but local regulations just push the problem somewhere else. However disdain for AI is so widespread that this is actually kind of effective.
So urgent that Andreesen has a Super PAC to push the dangerous China narrative.
Now you understand why anti-vaxxers ignore evidence. Because it doesn't fit with your worldview and you're too narrow-minded and selfish to consider that your viewpoint might actually be wrong and bad for others.
AngryData•50m ago
Sorry to all the techbros here that think LLMs are the future of every job but a lot of people here think you are delusional, and we would be happy to let you have your delusions if it didn't mean significant rises in both personal energy costs and the costs of every other downstream good. But I can't afford to tack on 30% more costs onto ever material object I need as someone not earning 6 figures doing tech work.
There is a reason the US doesn't process tons of aluminum or supply the world with fertilizer, we don't have all that cheap of energy. Go to Canada and build a hydroplant, or build a solar field.
And that is before we get into the fact that many people think the LLM boom is a massive crash waiting to happen when it inevitably doesn't change the world overnight to justify the trillions in investments.
tomrod•45m ago
Hear hear.
LLMs can generate a lot of great value. But the pouring of resources like gasoline on a wildfire is dumb. Continuing the analogy, fire is great when controlled and terrible when let loose without regard for impact.
I think a Doctorow-style setup of domain-specific AI and edge compute are where real value with AI will exist in ways our grandchildren may enjoy -- and it happens to be antithetical to the ridiculous overvaluation we in the "hyperscalers" (which seem to just want to pump and dump the market by extracting cash from US 401ks via indexes and IPOs).