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Goodguy  23hr ago (text post)   Edited 20hr ago   6629 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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Less splashy but possibly important:

Apparently, of 75 municipalities that had a data center ban or moratorium on the ballot, all 75 passed. This is a bipartisan 80/20 issue. Support for data centers is political suicide now. I expect a lot more bans.

Lots of ways this could go.

  1. Obvious take: The future is Chinese.

  2. Nothing ever happens take: We don't need new centers when chips/software get 10x faster each year.

  3. Elon take: Data centers in space doesn't seem so crazy now

  4. Pollyannaish take: Maybe China follows suit and we can pace the frontier

5: Sam Altman gives every US citizen free ChatGPT Ultra (via another billion dollar loan) and launches public works projects that heavily involve AI (via a few more loans).

“If your town lets us build a data center, we’ll also build AI supermarkets and cafés, give every building an AI vending machine, every household an AI butler, and even install an AI radio host to deliver music catered to your town’s general population.”

How to ensure you get run out of town on a rail: “If your town lets us build a data center, we’ll also build AI supermarkets and cafés, give every building an AI vending machine, every household an AI butler, and even install an AI radio host to deliver music catered to your town’s general population.”

Sam Altman announces project. Five seconds later. "That guy wants to build data centers... get him!"

It’s the economy. People will gladly support data centers if they get paid, even loud ones if they get paid enough (those who care can use their check to move).

It's an 80/20 issue. For the record, I think people's data center beliefs are incoherent, but this ship isn't going to turn around over night.

With an issue that is this unpopular organically, the best bet for data center supporters is too keep their head down. Big splashy plans are not going to survive contact with the first focus group they test it on.

Are data center supporters willing to put the data center in their town? If not, they must persuade someone else to accept the space and noise. Or put them in a desert, which I think is reasonable, but apparently costly because of logistics…it’s costly either way.

It doesn't matter where they build them. The people are upset and they don't want data centers anywhere! It's not YIMBY, it's BANANA. Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone. Actually even worse since they don't even want you building them even in the middle of nowhere.

Pasted from Hacker News:

Kevin Oleary's data center is going to be built one hour from my town. A lot of people here seem upset about it but when I talk to them I can't get a single good reason to oppose the data center. Here's what I hear and my response: "It'll use too much water." - It's going to use less water than the farm that used to run on this land. The county is gaining water from this.

"Our electrical bills will go up" - They're generating their own electricity and excess power will be put back into the grid

"Noise" - It's an hour away from any structure on a stinky swamp north of the Salt Lake

"Wildlife refuge" - This bird refuge is in Brigham City. The data center will be on the opposite end of the county. Some people seem to think it's right next door.

My concern is I don't want tax payers left holding the bag if this falls apart but it seems like, at least with this DC, that that's not the case. This is going to bring a LOT of money to my county which sorely needs it and a LOT of people to my dying rural town.

I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here. I've had people ask me if I'm worried that the new data center will spy on me. What?

Edit: I checked. This is going to use 162 million less gallons per year than the farm.

Opposition to data centers comes from a few sources.

  1. The median voter doesn’t know what a data center is.
  2. They do know they’re related to AI and Big Tech, which they don’t trust at all, and in fact expect to actively fuck over normal people at any and every opportunity.
  3. Data centers don’t provide local jobs in any meaningful amount (as opposed to e.g. a factory).
  4. There really have been cases of data centers being forced upon communities in obnoxious and disruptive ways, it’s not an idle threat.
  5. People do know that data centers use tons of electricity, and they really do not want their electric bills to explode. The tech companies say they’re going to power it themselves, but nobody trusts that to really happen, because of point 2.

Points 1 and 2 are the critical ones imo, and are supported by 3, 4, and 5.

Powering it themselves means bolting lines of jumbo jet engines outside the data center, of course people don't want to have that anywhere near them.

Are you volunteering to live next to the line of140 dB jet engines running at full bore 24/7 that's been soundproofed to the maximum allowable volume while spewing exhaust?

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You think people wanting to live without noise and pollution is incoherent?

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