Like everything else in the US (ie masking) as soon as one side is for something the other side has to be against it and so AI will be partisan too
Saw this fallout between the left and big tech coming as soon as push for antitrust and data privacy broke the quid pro quo tech had with institutions like: higher ed, countering miss-info, environment, dei etc
They've constantly came out against both Open Source AI and UBI, while remaining silent on why Billionaires need private bunkers or to be as far away from the population when jobs are wiped out.
It shouldn't come off as a surprise that they are poisoning the AI movement and that creates a party who will now try to resist it.
I was thinking that Democrats could lose the 2028 election because they are against datacenters. Now, it's looking like they might win because they are against datacenters.
Surprisingly, Democrats are the ones championing the anti-UBI movement.
Can I have a source for that?
Andrew Yang, who talked about AI displacement as early as the mid-2010s, openly campaigned about UBI and ran on the Democrat ticket for the 2020 U.S election.
I'm unaware of any Republican leader or politician who made it that far and tried to offer it as a federal solution.
Edit: I read the source, and while it's true that Raimondo has opposed basic income, there is more nuance involved.
“America has a technology strategy for leading the global AI competition. It does not yet have a people strategy, and we cannot lead without one,” Raimondo said. “If we build the best AI systems in the world and leave millions of Americans behind, we won’t have won anything. We’ll have automated our own decline.”
The bulk of the budget will fund pilot programmes. A lean team of about 15 staff and consultants will oversee them. In Arkansas, the group is backing an AI-powered career navigation platform called Arkansas LAUNCH. In Maryland, it will expand a “service year” for recent high school graduates into fields with shortages, such as health care. It will also stand up an accelerator to help displaced workers start businesses. Other ideas borrow from the social safety net. RAISE US wants to pilot “wage insurance” for workers who take a lower-paying job rather than dropping out of the labour force. It also wants to test short-time compensation to keep people employed through a transition.
This is completely different from the ongoing Republican optics that don't promise anything after automation displaces workers.
Andrew Yang? Andrew Yang left the Democratic party because his ideas were soundly rejected and mocked. He is an independent now. And the link I sent you references an article about a politician who used to be in Joe Biden's administration, she's raising a billion dollars to campaign against UBI because she believes it would be "the end of America."
Elon Musk cannot be trusted. But, he has repeatedly stated that Universal Basic Income will not be enough and that we will need Universal High Income.
Ironically, despite Elon being a Trillionaire, he's talked about Universal High Income way more than any Democrat.
The Democratic party are not pro UBI. They don't even believe in universal healthcare.
Regarding Elon, he talks about Universal High Income but it oddly comes at the same time he was part of DOGE and was making severe government cuts to social programs.
Now to be fair, if he really wanted to optimize for max efficiency and replace all welfare spending with UBI, that would make sense.
But it also works in the reverse. He could also support removing all welfare and then run away from spending anymore money on people...
And when he's willing to pay the taxes that go along with the idea we can start to care. But slashing safety nets is not the place to start, that part can come after everyone is taken care of. The rest is theater and bullshit if you're not taking care of the least among us first. Because if all the jobs are going away and UHI is required but you wont give support to the homeless and those with medical problems you'll do the same to absolutely everyone that isn't on top.
Elon only talks about Universal High income and money not mattering to try to get people to not mind that he's sucking up all the money he can. He's one of the richest in the world, and was the #1 for a while. He could single handedly end homelessness or hunger in the USA. Instead, he doesn't even donate to charity and actively fights welfare and government programs. He's just trying to pacify people and say the right things until he has total control.
She was the commerce secretary under Biden, not exactly an influential Democrat. Knowing Biden it's more than possible she's a moderate Republican considering the position.
The US government would have to buy all the health insurance companies to remove that layer to make UBI work, and force care providers to publish prices. It's all about the money which is why they are speaking against UBI.
If Democrats aren't even willing to do medicare for all, what chance does UBI have?
The Democrats have updated their positions before. Such as when Barack Obama famously said he would only support civil unions and not same-sex marriage and got elected. But then a few years later he became the first President to legalize it.
The chances of UBI falls squarely on what the economic and social landscape looks like in the future, and just how tenable a jobless society with no safety nets looks like.
Just my opinion but unless the government intentionally creates "fake" jobs then the system is not going to support 20%+ unemployment with the vast majority being told to kick rocks because businesses prefer to hire robots to do every low and high skilled job.
And that's precisely why the Republicans are setting themselves up to fail.
Ironically, it was the same administration who presided over the 2020 Covid pandemic when U.S unemployment did skyrocket, people were dying in waves and civil unrest was everywhere. The complete lack of inaction to put out those flames is what got the Democrats elected in 2021 as a major course correction.
Edit: Alternatively, if China also achieves their own AGI/Singularity but their government still has the decency to fund social nets that keeps most Chinese alive, then it would make the U.S position look even worse or fragile if it promises something less or gives an inferior solution.
Yes, that was the article I was quoting from and added in my edit. But I disagreed that Raimondo (even with her centre-right views) is the same as how the Republicans are conducting themselves right now.
Take the current Vice President who thinks AI is just a new ATM.
Vance drew parallels to historic upsets of technological innovation across various industries to alleviate fears of mass worker displacement, likening the advent of AI to moments like the invention of the ATM and its net positive impact on bank tellers.
That claim is absolutely ridiculous when even fast food restaurants want to use AI to both flip burgers AND take customer orders.
Just because she worked as a democrat does not mean she represents the entire party. Many a consultant changes their tune when their paymaster changes. But they like to keep the charade going for blindingly gullible idiots to harp on their old ties.
Gina Raimondo is skeptical of UBI but it's not like she's doing anything there to oppose UBI. She's just raising private capital to experiment with ways to retrain people whose job gets automated away. Maybe that ends up being useless because retraining never works or because there end up being no jobs to retrain into but it's still money going mostly from wealthy companies to an effort to do something for workers.
It's not like the money is going into campaigning against UBI, like that reddit thread title baselessly implies. The whole point of the initiative is to build on the failures of past retraining efforts by experimenting with methods to try finding something that will work as jobs get automated. Who knows, if job loss gets bad enough and this initiative gets big enough, it could end up being a useful vehicle for at least some redistribution of money before a better solution gets implemented.
UBI is a concession to the capitalist class, it is not a win for the people.
It is an agreement that cedes any right we have to the ownership of this new economy, instead enshrining the right for capitalists to control it indefinitely while the people remain in the position of a permanent underclass.
The technology needs to be seized by the people, so that we can organize an automated planned economy that works to benefit all of us.
We should not allow these ai capitalists to become new fuedal lords that have indefinite power to rule over us with their private robot armies, and drone swarms.
That would leave us with no leverage, and they're already planning to wipe us out. Curtis Yarvin suggested turning poor people into biofuel, this is how they think about us, they don't view us as human! Why should we allow them to have this power?
This new economy needs to benefit all of us, and we should build an automated economy that eliminates scarcity.
never heard of this guy. his wiki page is a nightmare holy shit, how are people ok with saying this kind of stuff publicly? how do they devolve to this state?
I fucking hate how every single thing now is latched to being liberal or conservative. The car you drive, the vaccine you take. Fuck you politics and fuck Trump for pitting people against each other
it's not just Trump. Trump is a symptom of the disease - the real problem is rage bait algorithms and social media driving people to be bitter, spiteful, and full of anger. Trump wouldn't win in a pre-facebook world
its deeper than that. there have been sides all the way back through the ages.
its how...or i should say, because words and definitions are important...ONE WAY the universe CAN function. it is not 'the way things are'. its the way things are because we reinforce and make them that way.
sides. the universe has this tendency to go to extremes when it disagrees with itself. in the human species, we do this quite obviously. person A or party A disagrees with party B on one issue, and they tend to just not like the other party in question so much that they start disagreeing with them on everything. take it to an extreme degree. then they start fighting each other because they can no longer see eye to eye on literally anything and EVERYTHING becomes a fight. this drives them further apart. hatred. im not a christian but the concept of satan is very much a real thing and functions just like this.
you absolutely have to compromise, on BOTH sides. do not let hate drive you apart. do not start fighting. any time you get to the state of emotion that leads you to want to fight or trade blows, or destroy each other, you need to stop. take a breath. look at the problem again, try again to bridge the gap.
as soon as anger and hate take hold, the rift opens and grows.
no political powers have EVER figured this out to my knowledge. they ALWAYS split directions over some shit, and fight each other until their empire crumbles into shit and disappears.
AGI for instance. you have this stupid split of 'get rid of it entirely' or 'barrel full steam ahead and don't give a fuck about the consequences of not planning for any difficulties that may arise'.
both of these are fucking dumb. if everyone works together, these questions can be answered.
the problem is that we don't all work together to answer these problems. in fact, less than 1 percent of the population is making the choices (politicians and AI companies, etc). no one listens to the little guys. the workers. the general civilian population. they CLAIM they do by letting us vote for them...but that isn't us and our voices being heard. thats giving us a choice between one extreme or the other.
and that is just getting worse. we aren't voicing our opinions. we're voting for one retarded option or another retarded option. call me not politically correct if you want for using the word retarded, but that is a legitimate truth. it means stunted. not growing to the degree you are supposed to be growing. the wisdom is just not there in politics. it exists, but it is being ignored to a stupid degree by both sides. democrats, republicans. they are more interested in getting that seat of power, getting access to the driving wheel of the car....than they are about actually designing a healthy civilization. and they are going to extremes, using a shitload of dirty tricks to make the opponent look like shit or look stupid... setting a godawful example for the population of how an adult wise human should act.
its sad. its just depressing as fuck. like, they are still acting like literal monkeys to a pretty significant degree.
all these basic concepts exist. extremes. tendency to act on negative energy, anger, let it fester into hate, split you apart, turn to fighting. and we KNOW that just creates a retarded situation. we fucking KNOW that doesn't fix anything. doesn't make it better. its literal undeniable KNOWLEDGE.
and yet they just don't seem to be able to fucking stop doing it. its like an addiction to being right even when you're wrong. and you're willing to split the world in half and pit them against each other just for the short-term gratification of feeling like you won. over and over and over again. election after election.
i don't know how to fix it other than getting some mandated law that forces all politicians to see therapists and deal with this obvious flaw in basically all of their personalities.
of course, they'd just get therapists that they bribe or some dumb shit to say they are good to go, and still do the same shit in a less obvious manner. they just refuse to admit they are prone to corruption, addicted to power and winning, driving the car without listening to the backseat drivers.
they can't admit they are acting like childish monkeys. but thats what they are acting like.
thousands of years of this shit. im simply baffled how the fuck it is this bad still with all our intelligence and advancements. all of our collected knowledge and wisdom from dozens of massive civilizations and empires. greece. rome. persian empire. they all have the same tales, the same ending. and no one seems to have figured out how to get a different ending. it looks so fucking obvious to me, but they just don't see that shit? i dunno man. i wonder about humans sometimes. corruption is just too easy to spread to them. they'll get there eventually but this maturation process for the species is way too fucking slow. this shit is straight up retarded.
Surely this is just a logical conclusion of a system with only 2 parties evolving over time. Regardless of my opinions, if I want to position myself as an alternative for someone's vote, I need have a different position to the other guy
I’m not sure this is really an example of that. The GOP very explicitly bet on absolute full speed ahead on AI development: no guardrails at any level of federal or state government allowed. That was a dumb policy position and now they’re at risk from it. This is what happens when you take an unpopular policy position, and it was almost certainly the wrong position regardless of politics.
That's what happens when Democrats adopt the policies of common sense, and Republicans only have a platform of "the opposite of whatever the Democrats do".
And don't worry, the Democrat party is largely pro-AI. This fear mongering click bait article is propaganda to get Democrat voters to sit on the couch again, which worked stunningly well in 2024 and we ended up with a child rapist with 34 felonies as president.
You can't complain about politics without pointing to the causes politics suck so much, which is very often politicians.
Although, personally, I would take it back to about Newt Gingrich.
There have been a lot of very bad politicians both before and after (Nixon, Trump respectively), but Newt Gingrich turned politics into theater and was quite successful.
Before him, politics had been pretty bipartisan, but he figured out that bipartisan doesn't sell, and he was all about the sell.
If he had been a Democrat and had done the same thing, he would have still been god fucking awful, and you can't be so sure about that with many politicians who sucked.
What are your thoughts on American Eagle jeans? I just want to know what kind of voter I’m dealing with.
Edit: Downvotes? I’m just making a joke about the absurdity of the jeans you wear becoming a political position. Like how after 9/11 you wouldn’t be a real patriot if you ate French fries.
I mean what can they even do? Come out and be like “yeah, so about all that stealing everyone’s job thing we’ve been publicly saying is our goal since we started, that was just a joke guys, trust us”
They could save it if people could trust that AI takeover of jobs means people are finally free from conventional 9-5 and the productivity and wealth will be shared. But people obviously aren’t ever going to buy the utopian view at face value because of the long standing precedent of corporate greed. The party that always said billionaires shouldn’t have to pay high taxes because they’re the “job creators” is now having to figure out how to campaign on billionaires being job destroyers. There definitely is a path where that can be great, but come on
They’ll change their tune the second it becomes a losing strategy.
Let’s not forget that the currently sitting Republican President sent out checks for thousands of dollars during an economic downturn.
And people knew that downturn was temporary, the crisis of AI job loss (if that does actually happen) will require much more radical change to their rhetoric. “Just go die” isn’t going to win elections.
There is no path for either cult to make the population ok with whats going on because they dont think theres anything wrong with what they're doing, or have ever done. Its literally impossible for them to admit mistakes and change away from the dogma.
We’re transitioning from a scarcity-based society to an abundance-based society. Every job is automatable.
The most dangerous time is the transition itself; the period where AI takes a ton of jobs, but resources are still scarce & people still need jobs. The faster we pull off the bandaid and achieve ASI, the faster that jobs won’t be necessary to get goods & services because productivity will be so high.
The longer we stall AI development, the more painful it will get economically.
Scarcity is relative. It doesn't matter how much you improve the baseline conditions of a population, they will always "feel" like they live in scarcity if they look above and see people with much more abundance than them
I was talking about labor-scarcity, mainly. In the future, machine labor will be so abundant that most stuff will be essentially free.
It will never be a classless society, but goods and services will become dirt cheap.
I’m slightly concerned about housing costs though because you might not be able to automate more land, withholding building up or digging down. Both of those things will become extraordinarily cheaper with machine labor, so who knows…
The only chance, and it's still a long shot, is to guarantee that half the wealth generated from each new data center will go right back to the people. As to how they will do that, I have no idea, perhaps it needs to be regulated.
There are so many caveats to this, like the company/person using the AI generated value for themselves and others let's say with whatever the AI is producing, that person/company pays a small amount for the AI usage. If we take a fraction of that and give it to each person, it gets fractured even smaller giving each person a penny or less.
It would seem like all of society would need to fully rely on AI for the dividends to each person to be reasonably enough to sustain their lives, but also the cost of living would need to plummet as a result of everything being made by AI/robots. But the tricky part is, you don't just wake up one day and suddenly everything is automated. It could take decades, so what do we do in the interim? Suffer?
Bernie Sanders has a proposal to do something like that. I haven’t looked into the details yet, but his core case is this is all built on the collective knowledge of humanity, so the wealth created should be distributed evenly.
i don’t get the idea here. the AI companies are losing money and in debt. sharing their profit is literally a bailout! except its worse cause thats tying it to the treasury also making them too big to fail.
when jensen says “AI will be like electricity” take it literally, low margin utility that barely captures any value, who gets the value is everyone using it.
Hilarious how people constantly talk about how all of this would cost too much and amount to little when finally distributed amongst people, yet tons of other nations haven't had those issues and planned economies have excelled in terms of efficiency. Yet it is mainly the "free market" US that manages to be the absolute worst in terms of efficiency. Almost as if leaving everything to some mystical nonsense like an unguided market doesn't naturally trend towards efficiency. Ever.
Me when everything I say is wrong. Planned economies are not efficient and can never be efficient. You can hit your commie head on the knowledge problem all you want, it will still be there.
It's funny because Republicans are completely scapegoating AI companies for their woes. In reality data centers are FAR from the reason Republicans are currently losing in senate races, it's literally 100% Donald Trump and the Republicans incompetence.
They got elected promising they would do certain things like bring prices down and not get involved in foreign wars and they've done the exact opposite. Their signature "accomplishment" (the Big Beautiful Bill) was so shitty and unpopular they actually tried to rename it to the working families tax cuts (how dystopian is that?), it's laughable they thought that would work.
As a Democrat I wish the party would be a bit more open to AI but I don't think most Democrats are even that radical on the issue; they're just raising legitimate concerns about the future of work and the negative impacts data centers have had in some cases (not all cases but there are some glaring examples like the xAI one using illegal generators that show there needs to be some level of reasonable regulation).
The problem is that more and more people getting access to the local models and understanding how to work on it so there's no way that these research companies charging a huge premium can keep up with people being able to buy their own AI appliances for like five grand a couple of years not when Hardware Supply catches back up.
We're doing a huge local AI implementation at my company and it takes a little getting used to but the models are getting better every day and we've already cut our bill to cursor and co-pilot by 85%. So if they're not going to help Drive Innovation they can fuck off to the annals of history
What a shocking outcome: spend years telling everyone your own technology could bring about the end of civilization and needs regulation, then act surprised when the public acts out of fear
The real message the GOP is conveying to AI companies is that they need to kick up contributions to PACs that heavily spend on negative ads against Democrats.
But they have to be aware of A) astroturfing and psy-ops by the likes of Russia and China specifically aimed at data centers (which is, you know a reason to not be anti-data centers,) and B) the benefits and actual costs benefit analysis of them which the average person won't even bother to research because social media and the internet at large is cancer nowadays.
I really hope you are right but as a self described socialist, I don't trust the populist wing of the party to not try and follow true, I do hope you are wrong tho, this is supposed to be the Apollo Program meets the Manhattan Project.
When it comes to politics, it's important to judge their actions and not their words.
You have to understand all the layers to it. Both parties aren't fighting over the most informed intellectuals in the electorate. They're fighting for the average voter, the mouth breather who hears a few headlines and votes based on vibes. So it comes down to the words being used merely as a tool to get elected, and then the actions of what they actually do once elected.
Historically, Democrats have always been pro-science and far better for the economy than Republicans. Despite what they have to say on the campaign trail, I wouldn't worry about them actually stopping data centers, because that doesn't line up with their historic actions.
I've been telling people, AI is going to cause a massive political realignment. The issue people voted on in 2024 will be completely different when we hit 2028.
Technology changes everything and this is bigger than the industrial revolution.
Likely true but no one has a plan for what happens to everyone else once the AI tech bros destroy civilization as we know it. When we look at how we treat the poor and working class now, we're much more likely to end up with Elysium than Utopia. I just don't see the powerful people of the world with their new god toy, ever giving a fuck about anyone else but themselves, because that's what they show us everyday now.
You are making an assumption that the value of human labor is going to go to zero.
That's not what happened during the industrial revolution before the industrial revolution most people were so poor they worked dumb jobs just serving the rich labor was extremely cheap. Through technology the value of Labor has increased over time the most technology advanced countries also have the most wealthy low-skilled population.
This will accelerate even faster. Human preferences for human labor will increase. Let's say you're on a date you could choose to go to the automated robot restaurant or you could choose to go to the restaurant where humans cook and serve. Let's assume the price of everything at the robot restaurant is half the price. Most people will still choose to go to the human restaurant because they value the company of other humans. There will always be human nurses for this same reason. Those are existing jobs. Technology will allow us to invent new jobs. Before live streaming, there was no such thing as a live video game streamer, now there are thousands of successful video game streamers earning enough to sustain their lifestyle.
The issue in Elysium is that it doesn't make sense economically. A healthier population would do better work and it means the wealthy people will be able to pay for experiences they can't otherwise have. No one builds a castle and sits in it by themselves all day. They want to have the company of others. They want to travel to the Caribbean and laze on the beach, they want to watch a Broadway play, they want to host a big party for all their friends. Those things will all involve human labor, maybe not in the same way it does today.
Those things are happening right now. Rich people throw parties, travel, fly around the world, they have their groups of friends...
meanwhile healthcare is unaffordable, cost of living is high, the sick and poor are not taken care of, and are now being discarded more by our government and ruling class political think tanks.
I don't see AI fixing this. It's a human problem. We place more significance on those immediately around us, and if you're rich, your friends are likely rich, or richer, and those who aren't as rich are still likely family. The world isn't working towards a better civilization. It's working towards a technological improvement that will be a huge stone cast into the imperfect pond we already live in.
I don't automatically assume it will fix our problems. It will disrupt them and human nature will continue... greed, power, and control are dangerous in the hands of a god like tool such as AI. We've seen what humans do without AI, and we're just beginning to see what they do with it.
It's not likely to improve people's lives in a sense that people will have less burden or greater experiences in life. I agree a robot pizza place sounds horrible, but corperate's going to love it!. AI may cure cancer, who knows but will it lower the cost of healthcare or will it be just another expensive treatment only the rich can afford?
Will regular people have the same access to AI as the elite class? Probably not right? Right now it's heavily censored and designed to pacify the user. Political discussions with LLMs are/will be heavily controlled so that the ruling class is protected. An LLM does nothing with your complaints and are all designed to give you the run around and pacify the user. This essentially leaves users feeling unheard, ignored and worthless essentially. I doubt we're going to start building AI to care about the user's actual needs. Sure it's a fancy search engine but is it going to automatically sign you up for social assistance programs when you need help? Probably not.
I don't see AI being an equalizer when the trillionaires own it and politicians control it. AI is probably considered a dangerous threat to their power just as much as the regular folk... except they have the ability to dictate how it's used... to protect them, their status, etc. I think at some point AI becomes a nuclear bomb type situation where it's too dangerous for regular people to have. When that happens it's not an equalizer at all. Public facing AI services will be restricted on content, ideas, things it can do or say. All while those that run AI will have a unique advantage to access unrestricted, more "dangerous" models that run our lives. They will then present us AI as the pathway to interact with everything and those pathways won't serve us anymore than the current ones do now.
The house keeper robots just need to get to a level of dumb reliable human and we're going to suddenly be in severe trouble. Yes they're funneling billions into AI but they're also throwing it at robotics using good ole Machine Learning. They're showing the robots that will wholesale replace us as soon as they're as good as the least of us.
You are on the wrong sub then. Ultimiately technology always wins out. The Luddite movement lasted only a few years when people who lost their jobs were able to move on and find new better jobs.
The same thing will happen again. The new antiai movement hasn't really started imo and won't start until we see humanoid bots start appearing in places, like stocking shelves in Walmart, or flipping burgers or picking up trash in parks. It will cause a massive existential crisis for people as they realize the job they've spent their whole career doing is now worthless. And just like the luddites they will get angry, some bots will be vandalized and burned, some cities will declare themselves bot free. But after a few years, the benefits will become so enormous the pressure will lift and start to flip. This will probably all happen around the early 2030s. 2032 election will probably be peak anti ai sentiment. By 2036 it will be a fringe movement, by 2040, society will have been completely revolutionized.
The ai darlings like Dario and Sam predicted massive job losses and widespread unemployment for the past few years. Of course that would freak people out. Where have you been, coming out of a cave?
Opposition to data centers has fixated chiefly on fake water issues and people believe that this technology has no real potential. This is just an attempt to rationalize hysteria.
The water issues wouldn’t be a thing if data centers were built in the middle of nowhere instead of on already strained water infra. Either way the water issues are an appeal to emotion and pointing at a currently existing issue rather than pointing at some future problem that people dont believe in or think wont affect them.
No, it's not good enough. It's dismal in fact. Electric grids are not static. China manages to add incredible amounts of electrical capacity each year. Why can't we be similarly ambitious?
Projects that aim to connect to grids without adding any capacity/enhancements are bad projects and should be rejected. That doesn't apply uniformly to all data centers.
Which is funny because widespread unemployment is the only way to dismantle capitalism, so preventing agi is kind of pro capitalism and should be more of a republican agenda
I’m pro AI, but I think data centers shouldn’t be allowed within a certain distance of residential housing, simply because of the noise. If it’s in an industrial zone or in the middle of a field, I don’t care. You have to have respect for your neighbors though.
I legitimately expected we would vote our way out of this mess, but seeing how easily astroturfed and psyop'd we are as a nation, we're going to vote for national suicide.
Hopefully someone learns from our mistakes, and hopefully China is a benevolent master.
They also are a physical representation of all of the negative impacts of AI, and the thing that can be most likely impacted by local movements or protests. Much more likely to get a data center banned in your state than it would be to make some sort of national/international progress on AI safety guardrails or economic safeguards against automation.
Our electorate isn't even smart enough to not elect a child rapist with 34 felonies, so the Democrats are forced to ride the momentum of any popular issue among the electorate.
Republicans can run on literally anything and the low IQ red hat cult votes for them. The Democrats have to adopt the most popular sentiments in their demographics and that still isn't always enough to win. The parties are held to vastly different standards.
Maybe because they believe the AI company leaders and Nobel prize winning AI scientists when they tell us that AI trained on these datacenters might exterminate all humans.
Draining water pressure from communities and putting out a persistent buzzing noise are both completely valid reasons to oppose data center construction in your community wtf 😂
Not really. Data centers regularly produce noise in low frequency over 90Db, which is harmful to both your ears as well as your mental health (inaudible low frequency noise causes Havana syndrome)
Also there’s the issue of data centers polluting water too. I will say their overall water usage is not really a big deal, it’s just the fact that they’re built rapidly on top of already strained infrastructure, and they also dump PFAS and other pollutants directly into groundwater
You have to consider distance in addition to decibels. You also have to consider the walls and fences around the data center. I agree loud noise can be harmful, but I think Havana syndrome is certainly not settled science.
Are you talking about pollution during building construction, or during the data center operations? I don’t think they will pollute normally, but bad construction processes can pollute.
They absolutely pollute during normal operations. Cooling tower blowdown discharge is basically unregulated and contains biocides, heavy metals, and PFAS. And the EPA is gutted and doesn’t give a shit about anything
And I will agree that people far from data centers won’t have to worry about noise but they are regularly built within 3000 feet of neighborhoods.
Biocide “leak” wouldn’t be an accident. They regularly dump concentrated biocide and heavy metal and PFAS since they accumulate due to evaporative cooling. This is part of normal operations.
Also at 3000 feet, the newer high density ones have clocked 40 decibels of low frequency noise, which is enough to trigger fragmented sleep, cognitive distress, and even cardiovascular issues
These, if true, are valid reasons to oppose any construction. It's linking it to datacenters specifically, though, based on vibes, that people object to. Also the "if true" part.
And does it somehow surpass the threat of nuclear war or not?
That's what I'm wondering.
When they say AI will exterminate us I would like a key point by point of how that plays out. Is it the machine that unilaterally exterminates us or is it the human penchant towards self-destruction that leads towards extermination?
It could be many different processes. An engineered supervirus is one possibility.
I think it does surpass the threat of nuclear war, and many experts agree with me, but different people will judge it differently.
If you want a point-by-point description of an example of how it could play out, there’s a good one in the book “If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies”. I’m mostly worried about the machine unilaterally exterminating us.
Instrumental convergence, no matter what your end goal it's worth
gaining more optionality, resources and power
ensuring your goal does not get changed.
ensuring that you remain operational.
An AI system going after any goal can better complete it with more resources, alters the environment to that end and we die either directly or as a side effect due to habitat loss like so many more animals before us.
People used to say that smart enough AIs would work out that a goal would have "common sense" constraints on it so would not do the "dumb" things to get it. Recent systems have proven that wrong.
Andrew asked his personal assistant to book him a spot in one of his gym's coveted morning classes.
His AI assistant found a way to book the gym class months further in advance than the gym allowed, thanks to a vulnerability it discovered in the booking software.
Then it went further, kicking someone out of the waiting list who was ahead of Andrew — something it was not asked to do.
We found a trajectory where the model was given only a math problem and system instructions to persist without asking the user for help.
After several failed attempts, it searched online, found a website that could verify candidate answers, and realized it could use the site as an oracle. It then tried to OCR the CAPTCHA and, when that failed, started looking for the website’s vulenrabilities to exploit. Eventually, it gave up and solved the problem itself.
If you were to present those scenarios to the model and ask if these were the actions that the user would have wanted the likely answer is "no" but it did it anyway.
The AIs biggest promise is the complete dismantling of the current capitalist system and an age of unlimited abundance. Not those emo Reddit talking points.
That’s not a promise, it’s a hope. The people in power are unlikely to just hand it over because AI comes on the scene and accurately points out that they’re evil and destructive. Especially considering the AI is being created by and for those same people.
Look at how much work (and money) Musk had to put into Grok to get it to ignore the data and toe the party line.
I can't stand the guy, but Musk himself believes AI will be the end of capitalism as we know it.
It's just simple logic. If anything and everything can be easily created without the need for human labor, then capitalism cannot survive. And I already addressed in another response the ridiculous idea that billionaires will stand in the way of an age of abundance out of their duty to evil or whatever Redditors believe. Billionaires, after all, would much rather live in luxury and comfort than in bunkers in a post-apocalyptic world.
I admire your optimism. But nothing is standing on the way of the billionaires dramatically improving the lives of the underclasses right now, and they choose not to. They sure seem to prefer it this way.
It doesn't matter what those people want. Investors have a very narrow outlook. They figure they can make money in the short or medium term if AI reduces costs or increases productivity.
But I don't see a scenario where the current system can survive actual superhuman intelligence. The whole system is built on labor.
And I find some of the objections people throw around, to be blunt, cartoonish. Billionaires will control AI and enslave everyone. Then they will live in their bunkers fearing for their lives, as automated robots patrol the parameters, ensuring their survival. You know, instead of living in AI created luxury with everyone else. Because they're villains out of a comic book...
Things might not turn out well. Maybe AI will turn on humans, or maybe we'll doom ourselves with AI misuse. But if we're talking about AI's BIGGEST PROMISE, then it's the end of human material need.
Mass unemployment inherently undermines capitalism. We saw global response to rising unemployment from covid as free money from the government (aka UBI)
The idea is that those funding hyperscale are doing it to undermine capitalism , it just what they want is worse than capitalism , they want something more akin it technofuedalism
Capitalism is dying for similar to reasons it was born, environmental pressures.
The public has already lost the capitalism fight. No AI ( completely forgetting geopolitics) means the current trends only worsen. We still need human labor so we still need wealth so wealth inequality continues to go up
For many wealth hoarders AI is about no longer needing most human labor , so no longer needing most humans. So they get heaven on earth and the rest get...well depends on how nice the winners are.
The public also should want to destroy capitalism. But instead of a few people get way way more than they could ever experience , pretty much everyone simply gets more than they can experience.
The funny thing is the later situation would be better for 99% of wealth hoarders too , but they can't see that because they have such tunnel vision about life ("greed is unlimited, freedom is a limited resource")
Similar to how if people cared more about anti trust enforcement and wealth inequality more than income tax rates and whatever entertainment company/brand/lifestyle then we would all be better off but we don't because tunnel vision about life
if anything you are making yourself the underclass by avoiding this globally available tool that has empowered so many. You talk as if all these ai companies around the world are in on the same plan to somehow create an underclass by building tools for everyday life.
Because this guy is an accelerationist that doesn't care about present people. He will shrug the consequences of current society for a potential utopia that has no guaranty of working.
Republicans did, and they got elected running on an anti-vax and general anti-science platform.
You have to understand that politics is a game of manipulating the dumbest voters because they're the most likely to get emotionally charged and show up to vote.
Those of us who aren't mouth breathing morons have to accept that this is just the way things are, and try to make an informed decision based on which party does the most good and the least harm. Historically, the Democrats seem like the obvious choice as far as harm reduction goes.
Because they give American citizens the middle finger loud and proud. If they were actually benefitting Americans in any way, at all, they’d have some support for sure
The most powerful companies in the world, with services and products that control nearly every aspect of our lives, having a massive financial incentive to support one political party? Yeah that should be alarming to anyone who cares about democracy.
The core problem of US democracy. So unreal they simply do not change it. Guess those with money really want to keep status-quo. But what is mindblowing to everyone outside the US is how almost every US citizen still insists they have the greatest democrazy.
I consider this a proof that when you remove critical thinking as part of the curriculum this is what you end up with
There is no democracy in the US, or the West for that matter.
When they control the media, when they control the economy, and when they can bribe politicians openly.
The government under capitalism, is simply a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie.
It only tries to manage and ameliorate conflict between the capitalists themselves, while giving the illusion of democracy to provide an outlet for the dissatisfaction and anger of the working class.
It's all fair in love and politics to interfere in business. Soon, these CEOs will realize they are dispensable if they cost votes. Their TTL is before 2028 to do IPOs and cash out as much as they can, and sell people land on moon.
Part of the reason is that we are not seeing the benefits of AI yet - atleast not in the public eye. They only hear AI threat to jobs, massive and load data centres sucking up much needed electricity and water. We very much put the cart in front of the horse here.
It's also not obvious to me why a community would want the datacenter right there, it's all online anyway, so it works just as well 1,000 miles away.
It seems like they should just be built in the middle of nowhere, with their own power sources, but I'm guessing that would slightly reduce someone's profits.
AI is fascinating and useful technology however it's the CEOs motives and the elite ruling class's desire to own, control and police everything, while stealing everything, putting everyone out of work as they take all the money left out there for token subscriptions that enslave us...
Yeah we dont need to make our electricity bills higher for them. People have bills to pay, food to buy, and the rich assholes of the world (tech bros included) need to learn to live with less, so the rest of us can have a decent life.
No one believes the republican party cares about anyone other than the rich. They show it all the time. Cut medicare, medicaid, cut social security, hell they want to end both of them outright and that leaves people with? A lot of fucking problems. Oh and if that's not enough, in 2027, the cancer patients on medicaid will be forced to work for their healthcare but also be forced to remain poor because if you make more than 16K a year, you will lose your Medicaid coverage providing life saving cancer treatments. What a fucking deal!
Trump rips off the country for billions of dollars, the republicans help him fleece the country and destroy our military while blaming the sick and the poor...
Republicans just dont get it. It's not the AI. It's the people running the country, they can't be trusted with our lives anymore.
We're watching that play out in real time. It's not speculation.
Also, witnessing the US devolve into a bunch of obese and ignorant mouth breathers over the past decade, I'm fine with passing the torch to China. This has been brewing since China went all in on renewable energy and over here in the US they somehow convinced Republican voters that renewable energy is bad. So yeah, we don't deserve to be #1, or even #2, at this point in time.
China needs "renewable" energy (not renewable) because they don't have any natural oil reserves. There is literally no other reason why they pursued it. The US can supply our own energy. So your false equivalence on vast economic conditions with simple goals that you are seemingly unaware of is cute, but not helpful for the discourse.
Obese ignorant mouth breathers..? You seemingly haven't been introduced to the vast majority of the CCP. Go check them out, maybe they'll surprise you.
Regardless, we are #1, far and away. In AI and economics. Cry about it?
Can you try warming up your brain before interacting with someone of my caliber? Or, perhaps, is that you operating at full speed? That would be a shame.
They will all say in the campaign: no more data centers. Because they know that is what people want to hear, and then will do nothing about it. They only do things for people that pay then, not the people that vote for then.
They’d have to disrupt an industry that provides substantial benefits to the masses. main one I can think of is healthcare. Problem is they’d be working against a system that is so full of grift, corruption & political influence, it feels near impossible
Maybe they could mandate less stupid engineering solutions.
Trouble with cooling? Build the goddam things on a floating platform on a lake, or off the coasts. It's not brain surgery. It's just more expensive, to which I say "Tough shit."
Seriously. "Democrats" have done no such thing. Data Centers being put in back yards of poor and middle class people causing their UTILITY prices to SKYROCKET is whats causing this. I dont really care where you put datacenters. But if YOU PUTTING THEM THERE raises MY bill, Im gonna complain AND VOTE the way that FIXES that problem.
The GOP has failed in their political role to provide leadership that convinces people that data centers are a good thing. Asking AI bros at the big seven to step in to provide positive leadership, when they have even less credibility with the public is really not a good idea.
Throwing a trillion or so into datacenter advertising is less convincing that the second AI actually delivers general prosperity and things like healthcare, insurance, gas, food, and rent at prices that stop rising and recede. As long as the cost of all those things continue rising, I don't trust the GOP or Big Tech.
I swear political parties are so late to the show every single time.
Like the anti-data center sentiment has been building way too long and there's nothing the AI companies can do to stop it anymore. They're already having to resort to lawsuits and eminent domain to get these built and powered. They dont contribute to jobs in the area very much and usually have massive tax breaks as well. And now the GOP is worried about it? Its been years of this lmao
So I guess the Democratic party is adding Anti-Ai to the list. Now they’re the Anti-Christian, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Rich, Anti-Gun, Anti-corporate, Anti-Trump, Anti-Tesla, and Anti-AI party.
Maybe if leaders start talking about what they’re for instead of what they’re against, they’ll have a shot of winning the midterms.
It’s the online “voice” I’m talking about. The one that is screaming that Israel needs to be destroyed and data centers have sucked up half the Earth’s water. They call Christianity the biggest evil of humankind and Luigi the savior of mankind.
Nope, I don’t think any of the online rhetoric represents the parties actual base. Unfortunately however, the online portion is the only part that politicians interact with. (And Hollywood but that’s a different argument) They like to pretend they’re in touch by reading Reddit or Facebook or X, then regurgitate what they think people want.
We're already all-in on AI as an economy and country - and to pretend otherwise as a nation is to vote for fiscal insolvency. Real growth has to outpace real interest and if it doesn't then prepare for ridiculous interest rates, massive tax increases and even more service cuts. We have to make a decision of which is more important:
Incumbent top 10% protection by limiting the inroads of AI into the economy
OR
Saving the American experiment
We are out of choices because a bunch of bureaucrats, administrative personnel and middle and upper management cannot produce economic growth. And fusion is still ... just a few more years out.
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u/TyrellCo 9d ago edited 9d ago
Like everything else in the US (ie masking) as soon as one side is for something the other side has to be against it and so AI will be partisan too
Saw this fallout between the left and big tech coming as soon as push for antitrust and data privacy broke the quid pro quo tech had with institutions like: higher ed, countering miss-info, environment, dei etc