[vmg12]

I think its a mistake to fight datacenters and AI.

Taking a step back, if the US unilaterally stops producing AI will other countries stop? The answer is clearly no.

Datacenters and ai can be built and trained anywhere. If you want control over AI you should want it to be built in your own country where you have political representation.

All preventing datacenter buildout will do is ensure that the price remains high and only really rich organizations can access it.

[UtopiaPunk]

You're starting with an assumption that AI is, on the whole, a net positive for society. A lot of people would disagree.

[riversflow]

Nuclear bombs and ICBMs aren’t a net positive for society either, but not pursuing them is bad geopolitical strategy.

[UtopiaPunk]

Maybe I'm a big idiot, but I think nuclear disarmament is a good geopolitical strategy. The USA has treaties in place pursuing that end on a global scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_disarmament

[TiredOfLife]

There is currently a war (largest since WW2) in europe that is a direct result of nuclear disarmament.

[UtopiaPunk]

I understand that the war between Russia and Ukraine, and now Iran and Israel/USA has set back the slow progress that was being made on nuclear disarmament. I don't understand your claim that nuclear disarmament caused a war, though.

[Dibby053]

I guess the argument is that if Ukraine hadn't willingly handed over the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in the world after its independence, Russia would have not started a war against them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

[gyanchawdhary]

It’s great for society. It may not be working for you, but don’t project that on the rest of the world.

[npinsker]

That’s so far from obvious. The most concerning possibilities for me — like kids not learning how to struggle or problem solve on their own — won’t be resolved for many years.

[aspenmartin]

Of course and a lot of people disagree that vaccines work, why does this negate any hard evidence?

[jameslars]

Is the hard evidence of AI being a net improvement for society in the room with us now?

[rickydroll]

If I'm in the room, yes. For me, AI is one, is the best handicap accessibility tool I've ever had. At a minimum, speech recognition is a higher quality, and second, it lets me write code again. I'm working on the third benefit, which is it helps me organize, helps my ADHD mind organize large chunks of random information.

If you look around, you'll find the AI has made some significant improvements to medicine and engineering. These improvements get drowned out by the AI Cheerleaders, but they're there.

[bluefirebrand]

> helps my ADHD mind organize large chunks of random information.

I keep seeing this and I'm pretty envious! You must have a different form of ADHD than I do. For me, trying to use AI to build anything is terrible for my attention, it turns everything into a miserable slog because it's so hands off.

I miss getting into flow.

[rickydroll]

I hear you.

AI helps me get into flow state because I can have a rambling conversation with a chatbot and work through ideas and what abouts. eventually it helps me forget to a place where flow is easier to maintain.

[jameslars]

I like this argument/reasoning more than any I've encountered so far. Thank you! Enabling the disabled is definitely a positive and this is a strong argument for the "pro AI" column.

[rickydroll]

I think another argument for AI is that it can help pull out patterns and information that are normally hidden from human cognition because we can't encompass that information and keep it in mind.

I think one place we should apply this is to the financial system. Use it to detect fraud, tax manipulation games and Other b**** pulled by the 1%ers.

With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influence and power.

[aspenmartin]

Depends, is the net improvement of the internet, electricity, agriculture, steam engine also in the room?

[nancyminusone]

Asbestos is the miracle material it is advertised as. It really is great insulation, and really is absolutely fireproof. Thousands of industrial uses are readily apparent.

Despite this, because of its other effects, the cost to clean up and stop using asbestos is greater than the sum total of any benefit from all mined asbestos worldwide.

Even a miracle technology can still be a net disaster.

[aspenmartin]

It's a good point I have to say

[gensym]

I don't understand that this argument. Why does the net improvement of the technologies listed imply that AI will also have a net improvement? Are you just arguing that there's no such thing as technology that is harmful on net?

[kami23]

I am unsure what you mean by hard evidence in the context of AI then, what is the evidence we are negating in your view?

[goatlover]

We could have had this same argument about social media 15 years ago before hard evidence showed it's not quite the net benefit to society it was touted as.

[andagar1243]

What is the hard evidence that you speak of?

[junek]

Are you really comparing LLMs to vaccines? Jesus

[vitally3643]

You presume there is hard evidence that AI is good for society. In reality, the inverse is true.

Now you understand why anti-vaxxers ignore evidence. Because it doesn't fit with your worldview and you're too narrow-minded and selfish to consider that your viewpoint might actually be wrong and bad for others.

[nancyminusone]

Why should I think that I "own" or control a datacenter built in my town compared to one built in another country? It's pretty unlikely anything I do will have any effect on what goes on inside one even if I work there.

The greatest control I have is probably to have it not get built, though even that is minimal as it has failed to stop the one that is indeed being built in my town.

[gensym]

For people worried about their livelihoods, there's value in slowing AI adoption to give our economy time to transition rather than just throwing a lot of people out of work all at the same time.

[vmg12]

Did slowing down factory build-outs stop globalization from gutting the midwest? I think there are direct parallels here. We either automate ourselves or someone else will automate us and we will have no control.

[gensym]

I grew up in Illinois in the 80s and 90s, so I had a front-row seat to that gutting. Watching my dad move from factory to factory, go to night school to learn tool-and-die and then see all the tool-and-die jobs move overseas.

So no, it didn't stop it. But the fact that it didn't happen overnight did allow my dad to feed his family and make sure my brother and I had better opportunities. If that gutting had happened over a couple years rather than a couple decades, we would have starved, and the knowledge that we did it "ourselves" rather than have it forced upon us by globalization wouldn't have stocked our pantry.

So, yes, there are direct parallels here. I want to give US families a chance to adapt.

[swatcoder]

Even if you do want datacenters built in your country, you probably don't want them built at the maximally explotative locations that their developers pursue.

They don't provide appreciable community value and they effectively mine limited local resources (power, grid capacity, land, water) and sell it as compute, immediately diverting the profit back out of the local economy and into very distant business accounts instead.

Builders choose their targets specifically by how well they can strong-arm weak/vulnerable communities into letting them build these mines through political influence and misrepresentation. It's bad.

What you probably want is to leverage their global market value to establish new power and grid capacity in undeveloped areas, perhaps to someday become a seed for new communities that grow around the infrastructure development work.

But that's much more expensive than bullying and seducing a weak city council so it won't happen with regional/state/federal regulatory protections or incentives that push them away from the exploitative opportunities and towards the constructive ones.

[3sk_ask8]

Yes, it is vital to create more slop and Anime figures. We need to win that race at all costs.

So urgent that Andreesen has a Super PAC to push the dangerous China narrative.

[Henchman21]

Counterpoint: Only C-suite members and billionaires have political representation in the US.

[catigula]

There's no such thing as 'control over AI'; that goes double for someone who is a complete nobody plebian with a little baby stock portfolio. You know, basically everyone except for a select few.

[goatlover]

The industry can be regulated and taxed like anything else.

[UtopiaPunk]

Yeah, and it should be. But the USA, at least in this current moment, builds regulations catering to corporations and the rich over people's general needs. So the regulations that are on the table at the national level are ineffective.

It's easier for normal people to influence local regulations, but local regulations just push the problem somewhere else. However disdain for AI is so widespread that this is actually kind of effective.

[riversflow]

disdain for dumping industrial sludge into rivers is quite high too. if you don’t demand regulated domestic production it will just get moved to the least regulated place with the best underlying economics, I imagine you know this though…

[UtopiaPunk]

Yeah, I agree with you! Regulation of that kind of environmental problem works better the more land is covered. National is best, statewide is meaningful (if you are in a geographically large state). Local is better than doing literally nothing, but it does have the nasty side effect of pushing the problem out of people's sight :(

[conartist6]

You could say the same of human intelligence and competence and social trust.

I think it's a mistake to stop producing those things.

[Abh1Works]

Fair point, but you dont produce intelligence, competence and social trust. Essentially a society earns it.

Is the reason that competence and social trust are declining because of AI? Maybe, but not only that.

[bpodgursky]

Uh yes you could but what's your point. If we make ourselves dumber, it doesn't make China dumber, human intelligence will just leave us behind.