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Notes -
It does seem to me that the most parsimonious explanation is that the developers involved in this are mostly treating it as a gold rush rather than coming in with well-thought-out plans. OK, maybe it's cheaper to convert an old company headquarters into a data center, but it's also certainly understandable that people don't like it. Not helped by the AI companies' intentionally terrible PR strategies.
And you'll get similar results, as well.
One of the claims I've seen for the benefit of data centers is, well, jobs. As someone who has friends looking to get into Data Center construction, given from what I've seen, the timeline for construction seems to be around 2 to 3 years for each new data center.
In the local area, for those 2 to 3 years, the numbers will probably be rather rosey - you'll get a glut of new people spending a fair amount of cash from things from groceries to restraunts to RV parks to hotels - business is booming! Numbers go up!
Until they leave.
Whoops. So now businesses that were operating under the assumption of a cash flow that no longer exists - and as someone who's watched more businesses fuckup due to accounting budgeting and making really stupid decisions than I care to admit to, oh boy is this the likely outcome - if they can't react to the economic shock, more than likely they'll go under.
So now you've got a data center likely set in the most moronic of location and a bunch of businesses now no longer able to make ends meat because the circumstance under which they were flourishing no longer exist.
And you've still got the fucking data center.
Do I have numbers to back this up? Studies? No. All I'm going off of is a little bit more economic knowledge than the average person and watching businesses do really stupid things during covid. (Businesses got flush with cash during Covid due to government grants to stay open. So they planned around that sudden cash flow. Guess what happened when it dried up?)
Putting all that aside, even people who are pro-data center have no issue pointing out that the entire PR look is bad. And, in my personal pet peeve, I'd seen more than a few people try to compare anti-data center people to anti-nuclear power, nevermind how moronic such an arguement is.
One of these days, I'd love to see a social study to find out what causes people's brains to flip and do the meme.
What's moronic about it? It sounds very easy to me. Nuclear could have been the next generation of energy but was constrained by regulations protecting the places where they would be built. "Data centers" could be the next generation of tech but are threatened by a movement that wants regulations to protect the places where they would be built. And in both cases it scans really simply as all mixed with more than a little bit of Luddism.
Nuclear you can point to solid returns that would benefit the common consumer directly - less reliance on hydrocarbons, energy independence, cheaper energy.
Data Centers you point to with the returns that basically boil down to 'Big Businesses need it, LLMs are magic bro, trust me, we've got to beat China!'
So color me a skeptic. On Data Centers, not Nuclear. For fuck sake people, just use the magic rock and be done with it.
> is it a strawman or an argument
> "it's a good argument sir"
> look inside
> it's a strawman
We wouldn't be having this conversation right now without data centers.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You(and others) are making comparisons that Data Centers are just as important(if not more, from what I've seen people say) than Nuclear Power. And when I go digging around, that's the answers I typically find.
Brother, you accuse me of building a strawmen when all I'm doing is rooting around in your hayfield, looking for a point. Hell, you haven't even offered up a rebuttal. If you've got something in your pocket, I'm all ears.
I asked you a question to elaborate your point of view. You then claimed that data centers do not have “solid returns that would benefit the common consumer directly,” and that nobody can come up with any. Now that I point out that this is an obvious strawman, you accuse me of not making an argument.
This is ridiculous.
I’m happy to continue this conversation, but I’m confused as to whether: 1) You want to defend the notion that AI is useless 2) You want to defend the separate notion that AI is less important than nuclear 3) You want me to introduce some other opinion so you can argue against that instead of having to defend your own contradictions
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I think the AI bubble is uniquely confusing, because the real estate pros building them out are treating it like musical chairs and the companies commissioning them are treating it like the Rapture. Real estate pros figure it's a bubble, in the sense that eventually they will be overbuilt and stop building, so if I want to cash in on it I need to do it right now before the music stops I can't wait around. AI companies treat it like the Rapture, it doesn't matter if they overspend now because AGI is right around the corner and then money doesn't matter. They're unconcerned with the idea that the music will stop, they're concerned with controlling the playlist because whatever song is playing today will be on repeat forever. Combine the two and you're getting a toxic bubble.
It's also a problem in my town because of prior government interventions to subsidize the construction of new office buildings, creating a glut of new office space, which in turn makes building office space impractical. So you have sites that would be perfect for an office park being turned into data centers.
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Exactly this. Happened most recently with us during the Celtic Tiger when developers were embroiling themselves in millions upon millions of debt for landbanks and when the construction bubble burst, all that land was worth nothing and they went under (and the banks that lent them that money had to be bailed out, and we had to go begging to the IMF and the EU for loans to help us bail them out).
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