The debate about data centers continues to heat up. Erick Erickson spoke some common sense in his newsletter this week about this little hot topic. He points out one problem: too much of big tech is led by autistic idiots who think tearing down society is a good thing. Read on.
Two things can be true at once. Foreign entities have seeded the opposition to data center growth in the United States. China, in particular, through its control of TikTok and other influence outlets, has relentlessly worked to stop the American AI advantage against China. Also, at this point, much of the opposition is organic, bipartisan, and growing. Americans are deeply opposed to data centers. They are wrong and shortsighted, but my view is the minority view.
We should start by understanding the problem. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, and Sam Altman, the proprietor of OpenAI, are two of the worst spokesmen for AI and data centers to exist. In the movies, we were promised cool, slick, and socially popular villains who could fool people into believing they were the good guys. In the real world, the villains announce their villainy upfront along with a large helping of weirdness.
Sam Altman recently bragged about how AI could learn your child’s interests and develop a podcast your child could listen to on the way to school about their interests. God forbid you have to talk to your child. Dario Amodei has all but said AI is going to take your job, kill your family, destroy your future, and the government needs to shut it all down, but AI is also a good thing. Amodei’s wife, it turns out, tried to start a porn company for women and solicited a post-conviction Jeffrey Epstein for investment in the company.
Austin Power’s nemesis, Dr. Evil, looks positively saintly and normal compared to these weirdo evil clowns who, in another life, would be luring your children into sewers with red balloons.
Only Mark Zuckerberg and Meta seem to understand how to approach Americans on the matter. Meta is investing in local communities. The company is training blue collar workers with tools the workers do not have to buy and giving them skills they can use for a lifetime. The workers get six figure jobs without college degrees. In many of the towns Meta is working in, their data centers are generating so much in property taxes that the citizens are seeing reductions in their own property taxes. School funding has increased. Infrastructure funding has increased.
But the builders and owners of data centers are often super secret too. They want local governments to sign non-disclosure agreements about water intake. That has everything to do with hiding their builds from their competitors and very little to do with keeping water usage from local communities. Most golf courses use more water than data centers and most of the golf course water is recycled, like the data center water. In the post-COVID world, American trust in institutions is low. The secrecy and feeling of powerlessness against giant corporations feeds that distrust and amplifies opposition.
On CNN the other night, an opponent of data centers falsely claimed the vibrations from the centers can cause miscarriages. There are the concerns about low frequency hums. There are also concerns about power consumption, though in the states with the most data centers, power rates have come down. Rates are going up in states with fewer data centers largely because those states are also highly regulated progressive states.
Every time the conversation might change, Dario Amodei pipes up with another devastating pronouncement about artificial intelligence. One might suspect he wants the government to regulate AI in a way that he helps structure to give his own company a competitive advantage against the others.
Meanwhile, China is pouring money into data center development, power plant construction, and anti-data center propaganda in the United States. A recent poll in this country showed people would rather nuclear power plants in their backyards than data centers. I want both. We need both to control the future because, if we do not, China will control the future and curate all our information.
Americans need to get this right. If you listen to podcasts or check emails or read the Internet, you benefit from data centers. But, I am hard pressed to blame skeptics when the loudest pro-AI voices are the CEO’s who cannot help but scare you as their opponents amplify every fear to shut down our future success.
9 comments:
The trick, as always, is finding the truth. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
Between 2022-23 there was over an 800% increase in newly licensed contractors. Before that time the average was 300-350. Suddenly over 2,900 new contractors in ONE year. Are they from out of the country? Out of state? Corporations can have one 'contractor' pass an open book test and the person can represent several corporations. They even read it to you if you can't read ... or you can just send a 'representative' of your company to take it.
How many companies from china are already here running the show? How many foreign corporations are funneling all the federal money going through the planning districts? Most supervisors are too dumb to even notice if they can even read the numbers. Our state was sold out. Data centers do not employ many people after their massive construction. Follow the federal dollars and you will find the most corruption. Start at the msboc.
"Truth does not change...." - Or because Gerard, on his daily "getting lost in the weeds" program, thinks he is all knowing. I've heard he invented computer Ping Pong in 1978 (my Apple CRT box). Since then, well....
This week Trump has been emphasizing that he's mandated the Data Centers to "build their own electricity so they don't take it from the grid". First thing I thought was "Wow". So they will have their own little grids? That's kinda scary. So if the main grids go down, they'll be fully operational but everone else will be playing Hunger Games. Perfect for a surveillance system to oversee the engineered collapse of society. Connect the dots people.
"Meanwhile, China is pouring money into data center development, power plant construction, and anti-data center propaganda in the United States."
Jane, if some Dick jumped off a cliff, would you jump off, too? If China wants to pour money into something that will be a detriment to its people, why would we want to "beat" them by pissing away more money into a even bigger detriment to our people? It isn't that 1 or 100 or even 100,000 data centers are "bad," it is, "what is the ROI on 1/100/100,000 for the society which some would purport they are a benefit?"
As an example, why would we build EV charging stations at the rate of one every square mile of the entire CUS today when there is nothing even approaching such a need. Obviously, EV charging center building companies, "developers," and others have a vested interest in building them because that's how they make their money, but "investors" in the deal would not stand a chance of making money for the foreseeable future, if ever, because there is, again, not a need for so many. There just aren't enough EVs on the roads at the present time nor any hint that such a need will be there before those current charging stations will be obsolete, broken-down, etc.
If the suggestion was to build charging stations at the rate that reasonable forecasting indicates will be useful next year, or even in the next 2-3 years, that would make business sense. Similarly, building data centers that can be powered, cooled, maintained, etc. makes sense. Extreme overbuilding because China is doing it just makes us a bunch of Dicks jumping off a cliff.
2:21 this is not a new thing. Companies who operate in remote areas have been creating their own energy sources for many years. Out west you'll see windmills powering oil wells in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, and thus the predicted "bubble" to burst the finance sector.
I believe the 100% miscarriage rate was in cattle, not human.
I get the impression (from the AI industry and some commenters) that the current state of the internet will cease to exist if we do not build data centers on every corner. I can do math and I still cannot figure out why the U.S. of A. would need 3,000 more data centers in the next 5 years.
Post a Comment