We don’t actually have to be moving at breakneck speeds, the AI companies just want you to think we do. A pause to investigate seems warranted.
Good. People in red state have been voting to shit on the environment for longer than I have been alive, and they can have all the data centers.
Outside the bubble of tech the attitude towards AI and everything associated with it has turned quite negative. It’s hard to see that sitting in silicon valley but venturing out into “the real world” it’s hard to ignore.
More realistically imo the sunk cost is just sunk, but who wants to be the town buying into a gold rush that’s already showing signs of being a bit overblown.
</sarcasm>
Sarcasm aside, I don't really know where they would build data centers in NYS. Electricity rate in northern and western NY is going thru the roof. ADK/Catskill have very sensitive environmental laws. Can't really build in lower hudson as real estate cost would be killer.
Solar farm on the other hand might go up tho.
They would build them as close to NYC as possible. Data Centers existed prior to AI boom. HFT, edge hosting, etc.
AI is an exciting and promising new tech, much like the web/internet in 90s and smartphones in late 2000s. Back in those times, the tech industry was far, far smaller, tiny in the 90s and maybe like 1/20th of the current size in the late 2000s. Tech companies were not a big part of people's every day lives, so these technologies could be seen as something exciting happening off to the side that you didn't need to engage it if you didn't want to.
Today, Big Tech is absolutely ginormous and huge parts of people's lives are mediated by one of a half dozen companies that together form an interlocking set of barely accountable duopolies. It is this overbearing unescapable structure that is causing the backlash, because many people understand intuitively that this exciting new tech will be leveraged against them in every way possible by this structure. We cannot treat AI as neat new thing to play with, experiment with, find novel uses for, we have to put our guard up and defend against Big Tech and DC opposition is a very easy and straightforward way. DC opposition is also highly compatible with existing NIMBY networks and mindsets, which are bipartisan and widespread. Thus
All that is to say is that it's not the technology, it's that bad people are in power and are weilding it to make your life worse in myriad ways - layoffs, increased electricity rates, slop, etc.
> huge parts of people's lives are mediated by one of a half dozen companies
The latter point is doing a lot of heavy lifting because the first point is whitewashing history. Back in the 90's, you had exactly one cable TV provider, one phone provider, maybe one or two cell phone providers if you could afford one, and your internet options were limited to either your cable TV provider or your landline phone provider for DSL, or AOL if you were really unfortunate.
You probably had one trash / sanitation provider, one choice of place to send your kids to school (unless you went the religious school route or could afford a private school, assuming one was nearby). You had one option for getting your mail delivered. One choice for policing, for fire protection and other emergency services, etc. Having only a few options has been a pretty big part of a lot of daily life.
The internet felt more wild and free, because there weren't too many places to go, and most people didn't go there. The internet didn't shrink, but people who started going online went all went to the same places, so all the growth went... where people actually wanted to go.
Texas is physically larger and 'business frienedly' so suspect they will be getting a lot more.
Taylor Sheridan can do a new series where a Ranch owned by a family for many generations is targeted by a Datacentre company.
Texas has not improved energy efficiency standards since the 2021 blackout, and have resisted all attempts at increasing the governance of the gas generation.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas' "Capacity, Demand and Reserves report" even details a scenario in which massive energy demand growth in the state surpasses available supply in 2026.
https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2025/02/12/CapacityDemandan...
Now add data centre demand in a climate where passive-cooling isn't viable, and inter-state redundancy is non-existent.
Red states still have a significant population that don't vote Republican and they're more often than not the ones who bear the brunt of negatives like data center construction.
Always thought letting populism define a "slow-down" was silly, its a moratorium and a permanent veto everyone is looking for. It's fine, the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoverished states, New York and especially NYC will still reap the benefits and offload solving the gnarly energy problems to someone else. Federalism working?
Are you sure? Most of the objections I've seen center around environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing in the surrounding area. Both of these seem to be to be objectively measurable.
> the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoverished states
What does "politically impoverished" mean? I'd say more "politically permissive" states would make more sense here. Red states are not impoverished of politics, they just have different politics.
According to one Canadian, er sorry, a UE citizen, er sorry, an Irishman named Kevin O'Leary, who is seeing Chinese spys everywhere, we actually do need to move with breakneck speed, because otherwise the quality of American lives will be forever gone. Or at least infuse of naive VC money flowing into his pockets will be gone.
Isn’t the guy famous for making losing money?
Anyway the projects should not be adjudicated based on what happens inside. They should be judged on whether they pollute and make noise.
You would reasonably ask how a datacenter, of all things - one of the cleanest industrial buildings - can give an entire town asthma. And the answer is that there wasn't enough electricity available in the region so Elon rented all the temporary gas turbines he could, and set them up in the parking lot to run 24/7. Since they're designed to run one at a time and only in emergencies they don't meet ordinary NOx pollution regulations, and a whole bunch of them in one place emits enough NOx gas to severely hurt people. Elon doesn't care.
I don't think any of us have a good read on how people feel because the vocal people are very vocal. Here on HN you'd guess everybody hates it or loves it and there are a bunch of us like me that just view it as a tool with consequences that are currently not understood.
There is such a massive amount of propaganda out there about everything, do you really trust anybody's read on a tech we've never seen before? I don't. How many people are actually well-informed?
You handwaved that 40% to a positive. This could easily mean very few people have a positive view of AI.
baby•1h ago
I have trouble understanding why Sanders has decided to be vocal about these, especially as he's been on the right side of the societal debate fence since forever. My guess is that he cares more about what AI is going to do for the common people, and he knows that we need to have this debate early (obviously, technology seems to increase disparity in places like the US). But still I'm not sure he's taking a stab at it in the right way.
For New York state (not city, no Mamdani), it seems like it's a much more pragmatic view: it increases people's costs (energy, water, etc.) and there's too much tax exemption(/evasion) for data centers currently.
twosdai•55m ago
georgemcbay•37m ago
Perhaps the majority of people in Vermont want him to be vocal about it and he is simply doing his actual job.
AI is wildly unpopular outside of our little tech bubble.
Eric_WVGG•31m ago
This isn’t to suggest he’s some kind of empty mouthpiece for Vermont — they’re obviously electing him for his beliefs — but he’s also very cognizant of whom he answers to.
greenie_beans•27m ago