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Discussion (32 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Stopped reading there.
People are understandably concerned by changes that promise private profits and public risks.
The groundswell of opposition and anger amongst ordinary people runs more broadly than many in the tech industry understand.
Here is famed activist Erin Brockovich railing against data centers: https://youtu.be/XpQo1yQCP34
I don't know how solid her arguments are. But this is the sort of content that is helping inform the opposition that is brewing across America and abroad.
My point is more about a cultural shift in who's on which side.
The traditional left has become conservative in that they don't want new technology.
While the traditional capitalists want basic income so they can keep building all this cool stuff and keep playing their game of building AI and robots.
What does more harm? Going back to the middle ages having another one of these dark ages where technology is shunned? Will China and Russia then grab power?
Or will we really have a dictator AI?
Possibly both where China is ruling over less advanced countries with AI. They are clearly not stopping developing technology no matter what the west decides.
I’m also not aware of any republicans or conservatives advocating for UBI.
Corporations are kind of a 3rd party here. They’ll do literally anything for profit, celebrate pride month for the liberals, give Trump some considerations at inauguration for the conservatives. So yeah, tech AI CEOs opine that their companies will usher in a new era of prosperity, but this is probably 90% PR speak
As for data centers, I'm not against them in principle - I'm sitting ten feet away from my own rack [0]. But with the way the legal environment is set up - once something is built it becomes basically impossible to regulate - combined with the vice signalling federal executive that is likely to focus one of its two minute hates on your community if you do manage to succeed at regulating operations, it's simply best to just not give this industry a foothold in your own community. And while this is most certainly a selfish position (I'm happy to use data centers hosted elsewhere), it's all we have until we restore the equitable rule of law.
[0] I am against the centralized software that necessitates so many data centers in the first place though
Not ironically, you're eating up the same propaganda brought to you by the likes of Thiel and co. that the people protesting legitimate grievances just simply "hate technology".
Do you mean to say that the current protests are actually against technology for the sake of being against technology?
Also, I don't say that they are against technology for technology's sake, but the real actual reason they are against technology is because they are fundamentally conservative. They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it.
This type of thinking: "slowing down", "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have" is the default mode of thinking for most rich/educated people.
(Note: this type of thinking comes at the upper echelons of Maslow's needs - impoverished third worlders don't have takes on it)
What I think is that most have had enough of chaotic progress and they just want some inkling of stability and some breathing space to even contemplate on the last 20 years of change. What they are instead seeing is a barrage of stuff thrown at them one after the other. I can understand them. And so should all of us.
The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind.
Instead of buying politicians if you want to build a datacenter start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club. And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job.
Silicon Valley is so terrible at PR. They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
> And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job.
Let's say for the sake of argument, AI eliminates most jobs. In that case, the government will need to replace income tax.
Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti?
And will the American government have any ability to tax a datacenter built in Dubai because there was too much bureaucracy in Virginia?
> They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
We could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the 18th century, who built all their infrastructure in the United Kingdom because it was convenient for them.
The British government's early advantage in factories snowballed into the largest empire on Earth and they maintained the advantage until WW2.
I would prefer using taxes instead of one-off theatrical gestures. And it looks like data centres already pay tax. Maybe what you want is higher taxes? Possibly a good idea if it doesn't disincentivise the construction in the first place.
As if destruction / denigration of US AI / cloud / IT infrastructure wouldn't massively benefit the CCP. Surely there's no correlation there at all, just means, motive, and opportunity, but I'm sure it's nothing.
what benefit does an AI datacenter bring to a community?
why wouldn't people complain?
on that note, if LLMs dissappeared tomorrow, what would be the loss for common folk?
Solution seems simple, build them away from communities, arrange for sustainable power generation and water use, problem is that eats into datacenter profits...
But more importantly, it is not true that every step was like this. In my lifetime, AI is uniquely disliked and it is really its own fault. No other technology was booed in speeches, no other had equivalents of tokenmaxxing and top down push, no other promised dystopia and doom and gloom as selling strategy.
NFTs, DRM, Linux at Microsoft conferences, Microsoft at Linux conferences, Google Glass, blockchain. Those have all been booed at some point. AI's not unique in that regard.