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.
The point you're trying to make here seems to depend on an underlying premise that for people to use their property in certain ways, it's not enough that they comply with the various rules intended to minimize negative externalities, but that they must also somehow create positive externalities for others in proximity.
That premise isn't one that's generally adhered to as either a moral or legal principle, especially in the US, where we tend to have a strong preference for protecting property rights, and only justify restrictions on the basis of preventing harm to others, not some obligation to create benefit for them.
But aside from that, you seem to be conceding the point -- that opposition to new data centers is coming from concerns about AI itself, and not concerns related merely to the constriction of new commercial infrastructure.
No, my point is that is how most people evaluate these things. How does this massive infrastructure project benefit me and my community. And the math with datacenters is very clearly that they don't. You may think that they have no right to restrict building on private property but that is simply not the case. Municipalities usually do have the right to restrict usage of private property based on their laws. This premise plays out literally everywhere. Not always positively, re NIMBYs.
The recent increase opposition to datacenters online and at national level is absolutely due to AI. AI is in the zeitgeist. And also datacenter construction is increasing as a direct result of AI. I fully agree that the reason datacenter memes are on instagram right now is because of AI.
But at a local level it is fundamentally not about AI, it's about the effect on the community, which again, is negative. AI does have some small part because, as much as you may dislike it, sentiment about the purpose of a project does have an effect on a community's willingness to give a green light. But it's far from the defining issue at a local level where the actual resistance is. Communities were rallying against datacenter construction well before AI entered the conversation.