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Notes -
There is a great new Substack article about the populist backlash to AI data centers by Jasmine Sun. She also did an interview with Ezra Klein for those of you who like audio content.
I like the article because Sun speaks fluent Silicon Valleyish while also taking the time and effort to visit and talk to the people on the ground in the rural Midwest instead of condecending at them from the coasts. She asks an important question: why precisely do people hate data centers so much?
Looking only at the statistics, AI land use and water use issues are fake. Nowhere is running out of land, and nowhere (West of San Antonio at least) is running out of water. Are the people in these communities stupid? Do they not know how to shut up and multiply?
It turns out that a lot of the fear and anger stems from a combination of distrust and PTSD from deindustrialization. An interesting example is Janesville, Wisconsin, a town with a giant concrete slab in the middle of it where the GM plant used to be.
Fascinating. The collapse of the auto industry in 2008 was apparently so bad that it is better to prevent industrial development alltogether in order to avoid the risk of another collapse. It almost makes sense until you think about it for 30 seconds.
Some of the objections Sun hears in other towns fare a bit better.
This is the steelman of the anti-data center position. People are worried that the big companies proposing data centers are going to Foxconn them and not deliver the supposed benefits.
One of the things that comes across especially clear in the Ezra Klein interview is just how unprepared the AI companies were for the backlash. They didn't realize how sketchy it comes across to insist on NDAs with local officials when negotiating deals. They thought, as a straightforward application of Coase's Theorem would tell you, that any bumps in the road could be ironed out by handing over a big bag of money. It turns out that people don't work that way. It feels like a bribe, and Americans do not like being bribed.
The article seems to be either eliding something important, or treating small-town-folk as serious rubes -- while I'll grant that normies are not likely to be as familiar with the details of AI-doom discourse as the average Mottizen, surely it trickles into their consciousness at least a little bit?
Which is particularly relevant because it's being promulgated by the same people trying to build the data centres -- it's similar to the dust-up with fedgov on "AI safety".
Only instead of:
"Hey we are building this technology that can hack everything and take over the world, you should give us money -- but we need you to leave us in complete control and not regulate us in any way"
it's
"Hey, we are building this technology that will take over not only your job, but the entire world -- also there's a strong chance that it will lead to the extinction of humanity. If you help us out on this, we will happily... pay municipal taxes at a somewhat reduced rate(!?) as negotiated by our slimy lawyers"
Does this seem like a good deal to you?
Speaking out of both sides of one's mouth and then being shocked (shocked I say!) when people catch wind of what you are saying to others and become uncooperative is a strong sign that one is not as smart as one thinks one is -- probably a pretty big bear signal for these companies if you ask me. (doesn't help that both sides of the mouth sound suspiciously like an evil robot)
Small-town bumpkin real-estate developers have been able to mint money by working municipal politicians into approving terrible deals (in terms of, say, servicing costs for new subdivisions) for many years -- you do it with some combination of bribery and 1-1 marketing; not sure which of these Sam et al are failing at, but if they can't figure it out they definitely deserve to lose.
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