[yardie]

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they were the smartest people in the room.

BTW, no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage. They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area. So far Altman, Ellison, O'Leary, Amodei, Pichai, and Zuckerberg have refused to answer that question.

[0] All except Jensen who has been really trying to explain the benefits of AI and has said these massive layoffs are a huge mistake.

[cogman10]

> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage.

They do when the knowledge of the resource consumption is paired with "Which will directly lead to your electric/gas bill going up."

People are also paying attention to the fact that the politicians aren't paying attention to the people. Nobody is even trying to sell the benefits of a datacenter in people's backyard. Instead, politicians are bending over backwards to eliminate any possible benefit by giving these datacenters permanent tax breaks.

When you have politicians clearly bought by businessmen who don't care about the communities that elected them. It's a bit of a no brainer that they'd be voted out.

[ToucanLoucan]

I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.

* The lack of care of governments of the people's will: they're opposed nearly everywhere but city governments get them done anyway, oftentimes while ignoring more important local problems

* The intrusion of the wealthy/big tech into people's lives. Large tech companies tend to be like insurance companies: they just appear out of the ether of daily life, and make your life worse.

* The ongoing selling out of America to the wealthy: the rich can do, buy, or build whatever they want. Regular people have to just deal with it.

I'm just saying a lot of these I expect we're going to start seeing more direct opposition to from local activists. And a lot of these areas have high rates of gun ownership.

[cogman10]

> I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.

I don't really agree with that. Like I agree with you that these things represent a lot of things people hate. But what they are also matters.

Amazon warehouses represent pretty much all the same things here, but people don't get mad at them because what they are is storage for products and jobs for the local community. They are things that get people their orders faster. While there are protests to Amazon warehouses, it's not to the level of data centers.

I'd argue that it's uniquely what these things are on top of what they represent. They are giant sucks of power/gas which raises local prices and spews out pollution. And their benefit to a local community is basically nothing. ChatGPT isn't appreciably better because of a gargantuan noisy pollution spewing data center next door. And that's assuming the residents use or appreciate ChatGPT.

[paul7986]

There needs to ANTIARCHY AGAINST AI!

ALL PROGRAMMERS and VIBE CODERS should use AI against itself ... vibe code systems that forces AI to pay all of us humans for our content! Without our content AI is irrelevant! Why are we giving our content/souls to it freely now so it thrives and we do not??

[jagged-chisel]

> ... refused to answer ...

It's a "no." Why does anyone expect an explicit, vocalized response? It's "no" until they provide proof and guarantees otherwise. You don't need to hear them say "there are no jobs" to act as if (rather, to know) there are no jobs.

[e40]

Construction jobs, yes. After that, a skeleton crew and a bunch of people in far off places, possibly outside the country.

[esikich]

So? Since when is there a floor for the number of jobs a business has to create? Suzies Tanning Salon uses a lot of energy but only employs 3 people.

[hdgvhicv]

So maybe 50kW for 10 hours a day? Double it and call it 1Mwh a day.

A 1GW DC would have to employ 75,000 people if that’s an acceptable ratio.

[BigTTYGothGF]

> They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area.

The answer to that is so obviously "no" that I wonder how much attention they've been paying.

[missingcolours]

The people doing the voting are mostly talking about how much water datacenters supposedly use.

[acdha]

More electricity than water around here—rates going up gets everyone’s attention—but there’s nothing supposedly about the water use: data centers don’t consume the water permanently but they still put stress on systems which weren’t designed for the extra volume, pushing requests for expensive expansion projects, and there can be other problems: a colleague mentioned his family back home recently learned that the extra water circulation was spreading a groundwater pollution plume substantially faster, affecting well water users in the area. Since these things tend not to contribute many jobs, there isn’t much to balance out the bad news for communities.

[miiiiiike]

I have zero faith in the current generation of gen AI. I think the claims are overblown and the odds of massive unemployment is near zero.

Even if the AI bubble pops, the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers. I don’t care if a data center developer/speculator loses their shirt. The data center will stand long after they fold and someone will operate it.

Build it here. Create the construction jobs. Collect the property taxes.

Eat while there’s food.

[multjoy]

When the AI bubble pops. It will, and it will be glorious.

[thomastjeffery]

Most people I know (in Utah) are predominantly concerned with the pollution and water use. Water is the most ubiquitous concern across politics in Utah. No matter what political ideology you adhere to, water rights and water conservation are a core topic. If you watch local news for more than an hour or two, you will see propaganda to "slow the flow". One of the most common criticisms of our Governor is that he publicly prays for rain, while using an incredible amount of water on his own alfalfa farms.

The sheer sense of scale on this particular project is mind-boggling.

> 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses

In a community where conservation is at the forefront of everyone's minds, planning something that big is like a slap in the face.

[alphawhisky]

Rare mormon W

[hunter-gatherer]

I'm local-ish to Box Elder county in Utah, here people absolutely give a shit about the environmental burden to the region. It isn't just about water consumption, but other things. I think the "We need to win China is AI" narrative is (appropriately???) falling of deaf ears. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but even lay-people in my circles have asked how these alleged AI_driven benefits (fighting cancer, stopping climate change, and whatever) are really going to come to fruition, when what they really observe in their backyards are data centers being generated so we can fill our lives with AI slop.

[cogman10]

Box elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.

[hunter-gatherer]

Indeed. Our air is so bad we can't afford to open up more smoke stacks. Of course Kevin doesn't care because he's in Canada.

[jboggan]

(I'm also in Utah)

I'll second this observation, as well as add that apart from AI slop most people around here associate the data center push with the sudden proliferation of Flock cameras at every major intersection and along every highway. Provo defeated a major data center project that was going into an empty industrial park, arguably the kind of place that would fit that sort of development. The actual cost-benefit calculation for most people is heavily weighted towards the negative and this should not continue to surprise people. The perceived downside with no upside is just going to get worse if the government gatekeeps the most useful models.

[user3939382]

Plenty of people care about their power bill. Water in some regions is a hot political issue. Data centers don’t create jobs of course, we don’t need anyone to answer that.

[Jtsummers]

"Some regions" being a a bit of an understatement, the US west and southwest are experiencing (or about to experience) severe water shortages and disruption due to the current water shortages.

[stvltvs]

Lake Mead is projected next year to be at its lowest level since it was filled by the creation of Hoover Dam. The states on the Colorado River have been fighting over the dwindling water for decades. Locals care about water.

[dreamcompiler]

Out here in the US southwest, we absolutely do care about water usage as well as the potential for higher electricity prices. We also care about jobs, which in the case of data centers are only going to be boosted temporarily until construction is finished.

[godwinson__4-8]

Why do people want to work if AI can do the job? What's up with the data center hate?

Why worry about marginal data center costs if there is UBI? Why aren't more people demanding UBI instead of demonizing data centers? The corpus they are trained on belongs to humanity. It's humanity's data. The gains belong to all of us. Is it just American hatred of anything that seems socialist? Imagine if in the the optimistic sci fi stories someone interrupted to complain they wanted to unplug the AI so they could be the one to fill out the spreadsheets.

Like who wants to have to work at a desk anyway? Isn't there more than enough excess in this economy for all of us? Why use government to turn off the spigot rather than redirect the flow?

[pesus]

We have a higher chance of the world ending than getting UBI in America. This is a country that can't even get basic universal healthcare going. Even if we did somehow get UBI, with who's controlling the country, there's almost no chance it wouldn't be abused to control people.

Losing your job means losing your livelihood and often your life for the vast majority of people.

That's not even getting into any loss of purpose or identity it might cause people. For better or for worse, working and jobs are a major part of the social fabric of society, and it would take a non-insignificant amount of time for that to change. Trying to abruptly shift that would not go well.

[godwinson__4-8]

This is fair but I mean as long as people are agitating politically it seems like going after the data center is going after the wrong end of the equation, with similarly difficult odds of success.

If you are trying to take on the hyperscalers why not push for UBI vs trying to stop the buildout? Is the former really that much more difficult than the latter? Is it even good policy beyond not wanting something in your own backyard?

[kentm]

> This is fair but I mean as long as people are agitating politically it seems like going after the data center is going after the wrong end of the equation, with similarly difficult odds of success.

I don't see why you think that. Its something that:

1) These CEOs and people with power want

2) The populace has some degree of control over, since its local politics vs national.

That makes it an attractive way to push back against powerful people that they see as operating in bad faith. It seems like their chances here are much better than trying to go directly to congress and advocating for UBI.

[godwinson__4-8]

This doesn't make sense. The reason Congress is difficult is because of those same powerful people. A world in which you can actually stop the buildout is a world in which lobbying Congress is much easier.

You have control over who you vote for. Congress is not elected nationally. Sorry I just don't see how your points make sense. You might have better success of pushing the data centers off to your neighbor. But this doesn't stop the buildout, it only gives certain neighborhoods temporary protection while economic conditions for most continue to deteriorate. Aka a false sense of security and therefore a bad idea.

[kentm]

I'm not sure why this is relevant:

> This doesn't make sense. The reason Congress is difficult is because of those same powerful people.

Its much easier to put someone who is aligned with your values into a local political position than congress. And its much more likely that your neighbors will vote in a way that aligns with your interests. And you won't get overridden by a congressman from several states away that has different incentives.

Yes, people building data centers can just shop for a new location. But resistance to data centers appears to be pretty correlated with living in communities that are good places to data center, at least anecdotally.

The world I'm looking in is one where citizens pushing back locally has seemed to get at least some measure of success, albeit spotty, whereas attempts to lobby Congress about AI has been screaming into the void. Frankly, I think your position here is completely divorced from what is actually happening in reality.

[pesus]

> If you are trying to take on the hyperscalers why not push for UBI vs trying to stop the buildout? Is the former really that much more difficult than the latter?

I'm really not trying to be rude, but have you followed US politics or history at all? Is this a serious question? Yes, it is incomprehensibly harder to fundamentally change the fabric and structure of society, especially in a way that involves giving "free" money to people, than it is to prevent something from being built.

[godwinson__4-8]

I'm really not trying to be rude, but have you followed US politics or history at all? Is this a serious question?

Trying to control something by merely protecting your own backyard never works. America has reinvented its own social contract many times, it's why we are still here 250 years later. What side would you have been on in the lead up to the civil war? The nothing ever happens side? Or civil rights? Or the New Deal? The world wars?

America has changed profoundly since the founding. Yes change is hard. So is a nation surviving for 250 years. The point is why politically agitate for a mid outcome. American politics is frequently defined by its aspirational nature. Have you read the founding documents? I mean I don't mean to be rude.

[xp84]

Okay, Jeb Bartlett, that's a nice speech, but you're suggesting that real people need to all get on board a platform which doesn't even have enough appeal to get a plurality of everyday voters supporting it[1], and should maybe even be prepared to fight a literal civil war(?) in the hopes that minority will prevail.

> American politics is frequently defined by its aspirational nature.

That part I agree with, though I would say maybe 'fantasy-based' may be better descriptor than 'aspirational' at present. Democrats for example think making a few billionaire sell their yachts would pay for universal healthcare forever (when current Medicare just for old people alone costs 1,118,000,000,000 a year), and Republicans think we can ban abortion and then no one will have anymore abortions.

[1] 45% support for a measly $1000 UBI in 2020 - a time that arguably was the best shot at people considering it! https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/19/more-amer...

[recursive]

> Why do people want to work if AI can do the job?

That's how they get paid.

> What's up with the data center hate?

Data centers are where AI comes from.

> Why worry about marginal data center costs if there is UBI?

There is not.

> Like who wants to have to work at a desk anyway?

Better working at a desk than sleeping under a bridge. A desk is probably one of the most comfortable working environments you can hope for.

> Isn't there more than enough excess in this economy for all of us?

Yes, there is not.

[kentm]

> if there is UBI?

At least in the US, the public simply does not trust that the United States government will consider such a thing. They won't even consider universal healthcare. No-one is going to go "OK we trust you, you can build your data-centers now and we'll talk about UBI once you've 'disrupted' our jobs."

Yes, a bunch of CEOs are making the rounds talking about it, but talk is cheap. Even if that talk is directed at congress. Have any of them even cleared the flow bar of funding research into how it'd work and what the policy would look like?

[jagged-chisel]

> ... how it'd work ...

Step 1: tax the living bejeebers out of the companies, executives, and boards talking about replacing people with AI

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Utter utopia

[xp84]

You're making a huge assumption there that UBI would be implemented successfully. On paper it sounds great to me, but if it's not done incredibly skillfully, UBI would just be a fast track to Zimbabwe-style economic ruin, except instead of just producing humorous-looking banknotes for the rest of the world, I'm pretty sure complete economic collapse of the US would have... a few pretty bad knock-on effects on most other countries, as in like, 2008 squared.

The biggest danger of UBI is that, since every seller knows now that every buyer has at minimum $XXXX/month to work with, anything that sounds like a great deal to someone at that income level will be repriced so that it's out of reach. e.g.

Your job income was $4000 a month, rent was $2000, childcare $1000, food, $500, car expenses $500. Now UBI comes around. All these things go up. Why do they go up? Some people say greed. This is wrong! There are still, say, 1000 2-bedroom apartments in your city, but now people have more money. Many people have been wanting to move up and now they can afford the $2000 rent. Maybe all the landlords are good Democrats and refuse to have would-be tenants bid, so they simply rent out all 1000 at the same $2000 rent (using a lottery to award them).

But now there are 200 more people who want apartments, and no apartments for them. Everyone knows there is this shortage. They're even willing to pay $2500 or $2700. New units are built that would not have been worth building at $2000 rent but which pencil out great at $2700 or $3000.

>Isn't there more than enough excess in this economy for all of us?

Prices are indeed just a label of whether we have a surplus, just right, or a shortage, but they're coded in psychology. We instinctively know what feels like an okay price for most things, and anything above that is a nearly 100% reliable indicator that we in fact have a shortage of that thing. And of course, the inverse too, which is why you see clearance racks with great deals on phone cases for 5-year-old cell phones.

You asked if we have more than enough excess. I'd say, no, we have for instance, way too few houses, and also not enough energy. Also not nearly enough semiconductors. Those are just a small sample, but those things are obviously pretty dang important. And we also of course have shortages of labor in actually useful fields like doctors, nurses, tax attorneys, auto mechanics, but way too much labor in other college-educated fields with less obvious applicability to life.

[vardalab]

Which country do you live in that you have such a positive outlook about redistribution of wealth?

[godwinson__4-8]

Most Europeans seem quite happy with their societes and the levels of redistribution of wealth. As do the citizens of most petro or other resource rich states. If compute is the new energy then many states with a similar advantage aggressively and successfully redistribute gains and have a higher quality of life for the median person than Americans enjoy.

Not everything is Venezuela or the Soviet Union.

[esafak]

How confident are you that the UBI hand out is going to be anywhere near what you made while working?

[stvltvs]

/me looks at the history of wealth distribution following new labor saving innovations

[sokoloff]

I would say the distributions from automated water heaters/boilers, washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators replacing “ice boxes”, looms, assembly lines, farming combines, electric starter motors, and automated PCB assembly have been overwhelmingly good for people across a very broad spectrum of society.

Is that what you’re also looking at? Or objecting to the rewards rightly earned for bringing such advances to so many people’s lives?

[stvltvs]

We should be happy with a disproportionate amount of wealth going to rent seekers because they let us buy their goods and work in their companies making them even wealthier?

The wealthy always skew the rules to favor themselves, e.g. US capital gains being taxed at a lower rate than labor. The global standard of living has been going up but could be even higher if wealth was distributed more justly.

[sokoloff]

People who create wealth for society by inventing and providing goods and services that others find valuable enough to buy are, by definition, not rent seeking when they do those things.

If you have complaints against rent seekers, that’s fine, but that’s not against “labor saving innovations” and it would probably serve you well to not confuse them.

[xp84]

> but could be even higher if wealth was distributed more justly.

Unfalsifiable claim since we can't predict what could have been if things had been done completely differently. But, Cuba distributes wealth more justly, so where are all the innovators coming out of Cuba? Where is the quality of life?

In fact, there are undoubtedly more Cubans building things, inventing things, and performing valuable services in the US than there are in Cuba, because in the US we allow you to be rewarded for providing something valuable to society.

If you turn the country into a wealth-redistribution paradise, the smartest people will all go somewhere else, because people don't want to work purely "For the Motherland." They want to help their country and provide for their own family's wellbeing too.

History has provided examples of this, but to top off their failure to deliver higher quality of life, most nations that established themselves explicitly to ensure fair distribution of wealth couldn't even restrain their elites from gorging at the "communal" trough to the point the commoners suffered great deprivation.

[godwinson__4-8]

0.

It doesn't have to be. Social cohesion and not having to work are already major benefits.

UBI is already premised on the fact that top earners will have to give something up if UBI is going to make sense. I've been relatively blessed, but I know no one's future is guaranteed. Thinking one has to only best accrue their own pile in a world of disruption doesn't make sense. Eventually the Bastille gets stormed. Why not get ahead of it and avoid the terror? Why burn the data center?

[sunrunner]

It's hard for people to see a socialist benefit when everything about the current version of AI seems like it's going to have an intensely focused capitalist outcome throwing us all simultaneously forwards and backwards into technofeudalism.

[whalesalad]

> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage

the environmental impacts is the only thing people actually care about, you are quite off base here. noise, proximity to housing, water usage, energy prices going up in the area. this is the core issue. not "will ai replace my job"

[cjfd]

You can talk about UBI if you want to appear nice but people on UBI are also rather useless. Of course the real solution to the problem will be the change of carbon based life into silicon based life and the extermination of the former kind of life. Which is not the elected representatives problem if it happens to happen more than 4 years into the future.

[BigTTYGothGF]

> people on UBI are also rather useless

UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.

[mjhay]

More of a lot of things. Universal healthcare (as opposed to employer-provided plans) encourages people to start their own businesses. UBI would be similar, but moreso.

[loganmn]

> UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.

I think the tech bros want to replace artists also

[mcv]

You kid, but Bezos said practically the same thing. That human need for water shouldn't hold AI back.

[pseudalopex]

A satire site said Bezos said this.[1]

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bezos-water-consumption-ai...

[Henchman21]

I agree with your point broadly, even the cynicism, but the following sticks in my craw:

> people on UBI are also rather useless

The point of life is not “that you be useful to the wealthy”.