That's like saying Big Industry didn't do a good job of marketing factories in the industrial revolution. Datacenters aren't meant to be directly marketed. The benefits accrues to those who purchase the resulting services, and the marketing is for those services.
"Telecommunications" would have to, by any reasonable standard, include Telephonic Communications and the vast switching networks for voice.
Clearly that's a domain that has been automating at the very least since the human operated plug and board switching centres with human operators that answered phones and hand routed calls left the network centres.
You'll need to compare how many job postings there are as well to get the full picture, especially for junior roles. That's one of the most contentious effects and has an outsized impact on society.
Not much layoffs and they're probably due to the Trump #1 tax hikes on engineering anyway. But you can't say that without getting tariffed. Saying you're using AI is a much safer bet
Why does the construction of buildings to run business operations of any kind need to be "marketed" in the first place, absent manipulative media campaigns trying to manufacture a controversy around them?
Because the public is affected? If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected. Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes.
Our environment and communities are being treated as economic externalities.
An abstract concept is being affected in unspecified ways by a generalized category of activity?
> If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected.
Right. That's why they'd need to do all of the hard work to acquire all of the necessary property rights, easements, contracts, etc. from those people in order to undertake such a project.
Are data centers being constructed on other people's property without their consent? Are the actual negative externalities that impact specific people -- not the vague, all-encompassing notion of "the public" -- not being addressed within their context? I'm not aware of any of that happening.
> Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes.
This is a good argument to back up the proposition that fertilizer-rich water from agricultural sources shouldn't be fed into municipal water supplies for use as tap water. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this proposition holds regardless of what intermediate uses the water may be put to as it travels from the farm to your kitchen faucet.
It's a terrible argument to back up the proposition that people shouldn't build data centers. It would be akin to citing the MV Dali incident a few years back (in which a cargo ship with improperly maintained power systems collided with a bridge) as an argument against the use of containerized logistics.
> Our environment and communities are being treated as economic externalities.
Yes, that's what we'd hope for. Would you rather that they weren't?
What? The people against datacenter construction are absolutely not the same as the people freaking out about 5g towers. The latter share circle on the venn diagram with horse paste connoisseurs.
People objecting to buildings existing on account of the possibility that other people might do things they don't like inside them are in the same category as horse paste connoisseurs, in my opinion.
That’s a a ludicrous comparison. Not liking what people do in a building is the same as believing in baseless conspiracy theories? Regardless that’s not even why people are rejecting them.
People are rejecting them because of what they do outside. Drive up power costs, take up space, use up water, raise the heat, make noise. And with almost zero upside for the community. The fact that they’re owned by unlikable charlatans training a product that takes away jobs just makes it easier.
> Not liking what people do in a building is the same as believing in baseless conspiracy theories?
Yes. Obsessing over what people you have no relationship with are doing in their own facilities based on loose-associative, emotion-laden reasoning that leads you to believe that they are somehow harming you is 100% the conspiracy-theory mindset.
> People are rejecting them because of what they do outside. Drive up power costs, take up space, use up water, raise the heat, make noise.
No, that doesn't seem correct. These qualities describe essentially all activity, especially economic and commercial activity. Every office building, factory, warehouse, school, hospital, housing complex, power plant, water plant, etc. also does exactly the things on your list.
Any opposition to data centers that's statistically greater than the baseline opposition to any economic development (which perennially comes from certain quarters) can be reasonably attributed to worry about AI technology particularly.
> The fact that they’re owned by unlikable charlatans training a product that takes away jobs just makes it easier.
The fact that they're owned by unlikable charlatans is also a driver of motivated reasoning and conspiracy theories.
> No, that doesn't seem correct. These qualities describe essentially all activity, especially economic and commercial activity. Every office building, factory, warehouse, school, hospital, housing complex, power plant, water plant, etc. also does exactly the things on your list.
Do you not recognize that half of the things you listed are ESSENTIAL for a community? The rest at least provide employment. Datacenters bring nothing for the community besides a handful of jobs not nearly commensurate with the downsides.
Most of the datacenters in my city are concentrated near the warehouse zoned area by the expressway, railroad and interstate leading to the airport. Basically nobody lives there, and those that do are probably much better off now that the diesel trains no longer running.
It does seem most of the pro-AI people aren't actually affected by any of the negative aspects of it. It's a lot easier to be in favor of something that doesn't actually affect you or anyone you care about.
It appears to be not so much about the datacenters themselves as it is limiting the growth capabilities for the LLMs. From their understanding fewer datacenters means more congestion which means less possibility LLMs can be shoved into more places where the public thinks they are intrusive. Which seems to be everywhere.
We don't build the chips or even the machines that build the machines that build the chips. We don't own all the rare earths and our ability to generate electricity isn't anything special.
The data centers are getting built. Up to us if it's in Utah or overseas.
Everyone pays for the negative externalities of these outsized water- and electricity-sucking, noise- and heat-generating monuments to greed and charlatanism.
Very well thought out argument, I'm sure spamming it some more will really convince people. You're telling me people aren't affected by AI in any way whatsoever? That's a very bold and obviously untrue claim. No wonder people don't trust AI sycophants, you can't even keep your story straight.
Some people have empathy for those who are, even if they are not.
I don't live anywhere near SpaceX's methane monstrosity in Memphis, but I still think it shouldn't exist because of the negative impact it has on the people who live near it.
And I still think Anthropic became fully complicit by renting it out.
What negative impact is that? For context there are only five houses within half a mile of xAI's data center, the building for which has been there for decades, and any homes in the area have been living by the existing giant natural gas power plant next door to the data center for 20+ years. It's really not introducing anything that hasn't been there forever
I often see empathy being mentioned in places where I can totally see the self-preservation link: if other people are negatively affected, it will sooner or later also affect me personally negatively. I am totally fine with seeing empathy and compassion as tools for self-preservation, without assigning any morality to it. Unless I kill you and all of your tribe and anyone else who cares about you, not caring about your needs will backfire on me. It simply makes rational sense to see what you need and make you happy so I can stay happy too.
I live near a datacenter, well, technically, there's a farm on one side and an abandoned factory on the other side. Tell me, is living in one or the other optimal to be able to participate in this discussion without being dismissed?
How would you know? I mean, I'm surrounded by lots of buildings, but I'm not usually aware of what's going on in ones I don't go inside of. There are lots of warehouse-sized buildings all over, and whether those buildings contain racks full of servers or something else entirely isn't something I'd immediately discern.
The stated reasons are "populist brainrot". They aren't scientific or based on reality at all. What has happened is the AI folks have made themselves very very disliked. Saying you are going to take everyone's jobs will do that. So whatever they try to do, people will oppose it. It doesn't matter if the reasons are based in reality or not.
The average person's inattention to nuance could be labeled as "populist brainrot" in this case, and the cases of poor zoning could be used as examples of the issues with datacenters that the average person does not evaluate with the proper attention to nuance.
Sure, the water use is often a simplified argument against these data centers, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons but they are in fact more nuances and context dependent based on the specific location.