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Goodguy  1d ago (text post)   Edited 22hr ago   6910 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.”

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.

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

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