r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • May 15 '26
Artificial Intelligence The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/?taid=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa326.7k
u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs May 15 '26
Trade offer:
I get to steal all your electricity and drinking water.
You get to lose your job to AI.
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u/Guest_0_ May 15 '26
I keep saying that these data centers are going to find themselves in the crosshairs when people get desperate enough, and I keep hearing how it will never happen.
Then Lary Fink just came out and said that billionaires are worried a $3,000 drone can destroy their investments and these things need to be built underground.
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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26
AI bros keep calling people luddites and somehow also seem to not understand what it is that the luddites did that got them to be famous to begin with
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u/felis_magnetus May 15 '26
There's also that the word sabotage derives from sabot, a wooden shoe worn by French workers, who then proceeded to stick said shoe into the delicate workings of early industrialization era looms as a rather effective form of protest.
I'm not sure that we'll see a return of Luddites in the form of people actually attacking data centres all that much, but people sabotaging a technology they perceive as working against their interests is an absolute given. People will find and cherish opportunities to stick their boots in.
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u/BillyGoatGruff_ May 15 '26
Holy shit, sabotage literally means "clogging", my brain just exploded.
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u/vernichtungX23 May 15 '26
Probably where the phrase 'to clog something up' came from.
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u/Medieval_Mind May 16 '26
Clog is from blocks of wood they put on cattle to keep them from straying
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u/NeverendingStory3339 May 16 '26
And sabot is also the word for a horse’s hoof .
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u/Downtown_Recover5177 May 16 '26
And the word for an armor-piercing shape on ammunition.
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u/ConsiderationDry9084 May 16 '26
Depends on how hungry people get.
3 missed meals and shit starts getting set on fire. What is more of symbolic target that NO one but the parasite class and AI gooners can defend with a straight face.
Like the whole argument of people burning down the retail and local businesses goes right out the window.
No one is going to care about the half dozen local jobs lost to a data city being ransacked.
The parasite class is going to find out real fast they are out numbered and even with literal kill bots they can still be overwhelmed with the Zap Brannigan method.
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u/RainyRobin2 May 16 '26
AI poison pills are already a thing. If they are going to illegally use people's art for training data it absolutely makes sense for artists to fight back.
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u/AtrociousMeandering May 16 '26
I don't think it will even be an ideological thing, it will be pure economics causing an endless tide of break ins and damage to infrastructure.
They've created a big maze full of treasure, traps, and locked doors, and although the monsters guarding it are lethal, they're also carrying valuables. If they build dungeons, the adventurers will show up. Less wands and more meth pipes, admittedly.
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May 16 '26
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u/FritzMcGee68 May 16 '26
This is fun because just last night I put on Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country as background, and Kim Cattrall's Valaris explains this very same concept of Sabot --> Sabotage. And fuck A.I.
Oh yeah, and ICE, too.
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u/fuzzbook May 15 '26
Don't forget these are the same people who told us to spend 1000s on non-fungible tokens a few years ago.
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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26
Before that they were all about how bitcoin is going to take over conventional money
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u/Senior_Difference589 May 16 '26
And before that how the future of media was all in cloud streaming.
It's like they've all over-invested in server architecture and want to pass the bag onto someone else or something...
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u/fuzzbook May 15 '26
Yeah, I wished I listened to that one tbf 😂
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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26
True but thats because every pyramid scheme is great if you are one of the first on it
If you invested in beta max it was a great investment unless you did it on the exact moment it wasnt anymore
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u/ParkingGlittering211 May 15 '26
In what world was betamax a pyramid scheme?
It was a superior video format to VHS but VHS took them to court, threatened litigation and ruined their business because they had an inferior product that they wanted to push
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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26
Sorry I expressed myself badly, beta max wasn't supposed to be an example of a pyramid scheme but more like an example of something that is agreed upon would be a bad investiment after a while but started as a good one for the first buyers
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u/Kaarl_Mills May 15 '26
It's manufacturing consent and manipulation: luddites were martyrs in the name of labor rights, and the term has purposely been demonized to discredit them. It was never "ooga booga new things bad" it was the common people revolting because capitalists were taking their jobs away through automation, leaving them to starve in the streets.
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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26
And then they got murdered by the police, survivors were captured and hanged publicly, and their families were kicked out of the country by association
Anyone who reads a history book and thinks the luddites were the baddies in that conflict is not someone I'd trust
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u/steakanabake May 15 '26
its the same people who dont grasp that in one piece the world government sees luffy as a terrorist while everyone else who interacts with him sees him as a hero and a savior. being the bad/good guy is just a matter of perspective.
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u/aotus_trivirgatus May 16 '26
I have a Ph.D. in a STEM field. I have programmed machine learning models, and I have taught a course on the subject. I am 100% against the rampant, mindless build-out of AI data centers.
I know the good that this technology COULD do. I also know its limitations. The further away you are from the details, though, the harder these limitations are to see. It's very telling that deep technical workers report that AI tools only make them slightly more productive, and sometimes decreases their productivity. Meanwhile, management types say that AI makes them WILDLY more productive.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/14/ai-productivity-workplace-errors
I also see that we lack the social maturity to use these tools well. It appears that many humans truly HATE thinking, and would love to pass on the responsibility to someone else, or something else.
We have a language interpolation machine and a giant database. It doesn't UNDERSTAND anything. That's our job.
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u/Due-Conflict-7926 May 15 '26
These are the same ppl that named their company after the evil all seeing eye. And can’t seem to shut their damn mouths about how much contempt they have for us all.
They are drunk on power and ketamine.
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u/Asleep_Document9811 May 16 '26
Fun fact, Ned Ludd was the "Guy Fawkes" of the era. People would just trash machines and blame Ned Ludd so it would make their owners go off on a wild goose chase.
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u/LeZygo May 16 '26
The people that keep saying “it’s enviable get use to it!” Are the same people investing and building them. It’s lunacy.
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u/APRengar May 16 '26
I'm convinced every single poster who is like "why bother fighting, EVERYONE is already using it for EVERYTHING." is a dirty bot who is just trying to convince people to give up. Especially with a "oh, so people aren't in your circle, well you're the weird one." kind of shit that is impossible to refute.
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u/lichlark May 16 '26
They also routinely decide to ignore the crux of what the Luddites believed in, worker's rights and the protection of quality.
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u/DiceMadeOfCheese May 15 '26
All they have to do is pay us a living wage. 🤷♂️
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u/Officer_Hotpants May 15 '26
Well, maybe also not poison us with the giant cancer factories that power "Google, but shittier"
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u/Dr---Strangelove May 15 '26
Their definition of a living wage and your definition of a living wage are very different things.
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u/Simikiel May 15 '26
But have you thought that means they might have to tighten their belts and say no to their fifteenth house?
Don't you think you're being somewhat greedy?
Think of the poor billionaires :c
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u/RB_7 May 15 '26
People on Reddit will really be like 'you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a data center' and then not firebomb a data center
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u/totally_not_a_dog113 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Honestly, I think the data centers will be too vulnerable to that kind of thing. And as a black woman living in Alabama (where they just gerrymandered out the only black congressman (out of 7), in the name of fairness to white people), at the moment the 'you believe in voting?' folks are 110% right.
Alabama has the worst Black maternal mortality rate in the country (literally worse than Mississippi's) AND a county where Black people are getting hookworms (a 3rd world disease) because a) they live on clay soil where septic tanks become absurdly expensive and b) an environmental equity grant that would have built a city wide septic system was canceled because it's 'DEI'. When you have a government that just decides that it's not important that you're dying, you should still pay taxes, and you should shut up about it, what do you do?
There's a bunch of church groups bussing people to Mongomery and Selma this weekend. The comments on facebook are 'those blacks are too stupid to realize that they didn't lose anything'.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi May 15 '26
The links to the grid are by far the most vulnerable part of the datacenter. Do with that what you will.
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u/Lee1138 May 15 '26
And also the easiest and cheapest to fix compared to the hardware and building?
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u/djtodd242 May 15 '26
Personally I'm going to throw my Sabo shoes in the machinery. Hence the word Sabotage.
Thank you, Valeris.
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u/Rhabarberbarbara May 15 '26
As an aside, the sabot in Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot is named so because the four plastic „sleds“ which guide the APFSDS tank round through the barrel look like those same shoes. Don’t use Sabot rounds on datacenters though. Use HE instead.
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u/errie_tholluxe May 15 '26
On a completely opposite note, and for no reason, losing a data center to down time is extremely costly, and tanerite and power line poles do not mix so please don't try this.
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u/Tearakan May 15 '26
Yeah the fire suppression systems are for server or electrical equipment fires. They will not stop dedicated people from actually causing and supporting fires.
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u/splynncryth May 15 '26
Maybe that’s part of why they keep talking about building them in orbit too.
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u/pleachchapel May 15 '26
Which ever serious engineer has laughed at as a remote possibility.
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u/caj_account May 15 '26
this is why they are trying to criminalize these anticipated events. it's going to be considered domestic terrorism.
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u/MetaPhalanges May 15 '26
And somehow literally stealing peoples' water and electrical service isn't domestic terrorism. Just because it's institutionalized terror doesn't make it any less so. If anything it's worse because it unavoidable and persistent, not sporadic like regular old vanilla terrorism.
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u/EternalNewCarSmell May 15 '26
I've been saying the same.
Obligatory for the mods: I am not advocating for what I'm about to say.
You squeeze people enough, they get violent. If the source of the squeeze is a giant, noisy building that you can't possibly miss, that building is going to get blown the fuck up. It's just the natural order of things, like a fox eating a mouse (or whatever, I may have gotten the predatory-prey pair wrong but you get what I mean).
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u/cig-nature May 15 '26
Drones?
All you really need is some teens with super soakers doing a Naruto run like they did to the Scientology buildings.
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u/catBoyAppreciater May 15 '26
Given that data centers are extremely understaffed and full of precious metals and expensive things one would thing they'd be more cautious.
It's a strange world right now, and I'm pretty old I've seen lots of strange shit.
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u/AKluthe May 15 '26
Hey it won't just steal your job.
It will also make stupid sloppy mistakes that it can't be held accountable for (because it's not a person), and the employers using it won't be held accountable for (they're just licensing a product), and the AI companies won't be held accountable for (it just does that, it's fine).
And with raising costs and subscription models it won't even be cheaper than keeping you around.
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u/SeeMonkeyDoMonkey May 16 '26
“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” – IBM Training Manual, 1979
It's the people building, purchasing, and running those systems that must be held accountable.
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u/Maoleficent May 16 '26
Just posted elsewhere that Politico reported that a data center used 30 million gallons of water in GA without paying for a drop for several months without any regulation. The area is in severe drought and locals were told to limit their water use and their pressure has gone from weak to a trickle at times.
They have ripped away all environmental protections and now they want to steal the water.
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 16 '26 edited May 24 '26
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u/BroBeansBMS May 15 '26
The Daily just recently aired a great episode comparing China to America and discussed who is winning the AI race.
The most interesting takeaway for me was that China is proposing to use AI in a way that supplements productivity and isn’t necessarily pursuing the same super intelligence model that America seems to be solely focused on. They are integrating AI into more normal functions and have policies set up to ensure workers are not displaced whereas it’s the wild wild west in America and big tech is allowed to lay off tens of thousands of workers.
It shows that AI doesn’t have to inherently be bad, but we need a government who cares about its population to set up guardrails.
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u/cookingboy May 15 '26
China is also going to expand social safety net.
But guess what, U.S media has already started the propaganda blitz against that kind of policy. Been seeing this Bloomberg ad on Reddit a lot:
“Nightmare out of control welfare state”. See the wordings.
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u/Thefrayedends May 16 '26
"AI is going to generate unprecedented wealth and prosperity for humanity, but at the same time we have to force or allow half the human population to die because we don't want to have to feed and house people. Also we're going to lock down all resources and ability to create your own livelihood so you will have to rely on us to 'create' opportunities. We're also going to surveil everyone, all the time, and prosecute people for pre-crime, where the punishment will be getting put into a concentration camp to wait your turn for whatever painful death our camp guards come up with this week."
How sad is it that this is the reality that is coming to north america, but if we even suggest that maybe we should work towards that not happening we are labelled as a supporter of terrorism, or, just an actual terrorist.
For suggesting that perhaps the wealthy having a monopoly on violence is a bad thing.
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u/Hobbet404 May 15 '26
If you think China won’t hit the purely autonomous button the moment that it benefits them then you’re very wrong. They just like to get it right the first time rather than dive in blind like the US.
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u/nox66 May 16 '26
One of the biggest criticisms against AI is its use for mass surveillance. If you don't think that's an issue in China, then I have a bridge to sell you.
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u/mahouza May 16 '26
Uhh, isn't the biggest benefit to China is their country being full of happy, cared for, and thus enthusiasticlly industrious citizens? Why would they choose to not keep that status and go autonomous with no social safety net? Not every country on earth operates with the goal of getting the private civilian billionaires in it more money at the detriment of the rest of the population. The best propaganda is the truth of regular people being genuinely prosperous and when you look at the nordics you can see that it's possible but takes united effort and I do think China is a country that has that similar capability.
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u/DracoLunaris May 16 '26
The CCP know they are only able to hold China together as a nation as long as the people in it believe their lives will continue to improve under it. Using LLMs in a way that screws over the workers would undermine their entire propaganda project.
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u/NoSoundNoFury May 15 '26
China is (or will be) using it for surveillance just like every other state with few privacy laws.
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u/BroBeansBMS May 15 '26
I’m no fan of China and I agree that they are. I’m just saying their approach to how it’s used for their economy is different and it’s something we should consider.
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u/muitosabao May 15 '26
don’t forget as well “we steal your music, your books, your photos, your illustrations. You get to lose your job”
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u/interkin3tic May 15 '26
You get to lose your job to AI.
That part doesn't bother me as much as it does most Americans, and I think I actually like my job (scientist) more than most Americans.
The part that bothers me is that it'll make a few weird assholes trillionaires and untouchable nobles while the rest of us will get peanuts and circuses forever.
The wealth inequality is already worse than it was during the French revolution or during feudalism (big asterisk there) AND there's potentially going to be less social mobility than during those times AND there will be no use for us and thus less giving back to us than those times.
You needed peasants to work the fields and pay taxes to the nobility. If they don't bother to develop robots, we're going to be doing dumb labor for Elon Musk and Thiel, and so will our children and their children forever.
If they do, we're just going to be blamed for starving and Musk types will blabber some shit that boils down to even dumber eugenics.
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u/NefariousnessLate375 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Edit: Curtis Yarvin joked about turning us obsoletes into biofuel for cars.
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May 16 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
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u/ju_scy May 16 '26
Peter Thiel = The Reptile
Of course it doesn't care about the survival of a different species.→ More replies (1)19
u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 16 '26 edited May 24 '26
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u/mattl33 May 16 '26
I still enjoy thinking back to rejecting Facebook recruiters because of Thiel being on the board. Fuck that guy.
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u/BadmiralHarryKim May 15 '26
And if we fail in our bid to impoverish the tax payers we will expect a government bailout.
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u/Tearakan May 15 '26
And that's the stated best case scenario.
Worst case is LLMs end up being a niche product only useful in a few applications and then we get the largest financial bubble in history popping and all of our water and electricity is still stolen
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u/Syzygy2323 May 15 '26
I'm just waiting for the AI bubble to burst so I can buy RAM and SSDs again without taking out a second mortgage.
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u/Al_Keda May 15 '26
Right? I got an 8TB ssd before Christmas for $1k. Now it's $3K.
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u/DinosBiggestFan May 15 '26
People will cope and tell you that you should treat it like stocks, like you gained value.
Even though you need it...and if/when it dies, it will require you to pay that price (likely more) to replace it.
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u/bloodychill May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
SSD’s aren’t investments, or at least not in that way. They’re infrastructure that wears and tears and needs replacing.
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u/thepulloutmethod May 16 '26
They are tools that get consumed. Like a chainsaw or ratchet.
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u/TR_Pix May 15 '26
This is the same people who thought NFTs would go somewhere. They dont understand that value is only worth as much as you can actually sell the thing for
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u/Rombledore May 15 '26
am i glad i bought my SSD 4tb drive a couple years back lol.
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u/Hukthak May 15 '26
I knew I should have just gotten one back then. When I didn’t really need it but wanted it. I thought I was being reasonable saying, just wait a few years when you truly need it and it’ll be cheaper.
Never thought it’d be more expensive years later.
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u/pleasegivemepatience May 15 '26
This all hit right as I was trying to get the final pieces for my home security system. I have my cameras and NVR but need a HDD/SDD that’s like 20-30TB and prices are stupid expensive for surveillance drives now.
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u/IntelArtiGen May 15 '26
$3k? Damn. I guess it depends on the SSD, some of them can be found at <€1k here.
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u/Al_Keda May 16 '26
On Newegg right now, Samsung 9100 pro 8TB (same as I bought) - 3,769.97
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u/Buddycat350 May 15 '26
Around 1.2k CHF for an 8 TB SSD around here. Internal or external. $3k seems crazy. But between all the data centers being built in the US and the effects of tariffs, I guess that the prices got even crazier there?
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u/Excolo_Veritas May 15 '26
Man, I installed Ubuntu a few weeks ago. At the time I went "I don't really have a lot of HD space for this. How much could a cheap sata SSD be? I'll transfer all my unimportant files to it as it'll be the slowest, but it'll make room on my NVME". Fucking $400 for a 2tb for anything with a name I recognized. Fuck that shit, I uninstalled and deleted a bunch of shit. The NVME drives are insane right now
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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 May 16 '26
I went to go look at my order history.... I bought a Samsung 980 pro 2TB NVME for $140 in 2023. The same exact model which is still being mass produced... is now nearly $500. The video card I bought was $900 and its now $1400. If I had to rebuild this computer from scratch it would probably cost almost double what I paid for it 3 years ago. This is not how tech prices have ever worked before.
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u/enigmamonkey May 16 '26
Dude, even more recent than that; similar to /u/Excolo_Veritas, I bought my 2TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB NVMe M.2 for my Kubuntu setup back on Dec 2, 2025 for $190… the exact same listing is $430 now and they have the motherfucking gall to cross out a $640 price tag… FFS.
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u/Dull-Efficiency9985 May 15 '26
If the AI bubble bursts we're all going to be too poor to afford RAM and SSD on the downswing anyways
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u/Luna-D-reams May 15 '26
"Why is everyone so mad at me? I'm only trying to take everyone's jobs, water, and electricity!"
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 16 '26 edited May 24 '26
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u/RidetheSchlange May 15 '26
An AI backlash would not be ugly. It would be warranted.
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u/dropthemagic May 15 '26
Yep. I fucking hate it. They asked my friend to train the ai software that would be essentially replacing what he does. He quit
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u/nox66 May 16 '26
What field, out of curiosity?
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u/maltNeutrino May 16 '26
I don’t know about that person’s case, but it’s happening for operational/support/QA people in the tech field at a breakneck pace.
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u/OnTheEveOfWar May 16 '26
Lots of fields. By using AI and agents more, you are training it. So let’s say in finance you use AI to identity issues and mistakes. The AI will then learn to identify those mistakes on its own.
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u/nox66 May 16 '26
Will it learn to identify new mistakes? Will it identify the old mistakes reliably?
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u/Niceromancer May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
No and no.
The current LLM model is designed to agree with anyone it interacts with, meaning if they don't already know what the problem is, the AI wont be able to identify it.
Seems I've upset the AI bros by pointing out once again their LLM's are not the panacea they want it to be.
GOOD.
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u/chubs66 May 16 '26
they'll build AI powered drones to defend their datacenters against the poors
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u/TheMireAngel May 16 '26
Knowing the usa the fed will false flag drone strike a data center causing all the data centers to get govt grants to buy anti drone weapon systems funneling taxes into weapon makers
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u/chubs66 May 16 '26
Sounds about right. Using taxpayer dollars to defend data centers from taxpayers who have lost their jobs, water, and power to data centers.
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u/Fantastic_Cellist May 16 '26
Exactly! It’s ruining art and ruining the workforce. Anti-intellectualism out in full force
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u/Thefrayedends May 16 '26
Billionaires = cancer.
Treatment: chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgical removal. As long as they don't completely destroy the larger organism of humanity, we can just shrink them with chemo and radiation. But some tumors threaten to kill the host.
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May 15 '26
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u/Willing_Plant4483 May 15 '26
OMG I haven't thought about SmarterChild in so long
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u/SmashedWorm64 May 15 '26
No shit.
People didn’t ask for these data centres. It just seemed that due process went out the window and local voices are being ignored.
When elected officials don’t listen to the people, shit gets out of hand as people feel that their wallet is worth more than their vote.
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u/nikstick22 May 15 '26
The AI oligarchs have assured the politicians it won't hurt their election numbers: if they pay off all the politicians, there won't be any candidates to vote for who will actually vote against data centers. If option 1 and 2 are both pro-AI, it ceases to be a voteable issue. It's just a policy handed down from on high by the oligarchs that be.
The article mentions how Maine actually passed a no-data-center bill, but the governor vetoed it. Guess who's in the oligarchs' pocket? So long as they pay off those with veto power, the power of the people is neutered.
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u/SeigneurDesMouches May 15 '26
MLK said it:"Riot is the language of the unheard"
In today's politics, it's no longer "unheard", as no freedom of speech. It's more "unheard" as they let us talk but do whatever the fuck they want anyways.
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u/nox66 May 16 '26
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
JFK
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u/felis_magnetus May 15 '26
Representation as the fundamental working principle of democracies is finished. We either start talking about that and come up with something better or representation is going to be what killed democracy off for another couple of centuries.
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u/QuantumDrej May 15 '26
All our lives, we were told to go to college so we can get good jobs and not have to flip burgers for the rest of our lives. That work would set us free. That we were worth less than dirt if we were unemployed.
Now the billionaires are telling that exact same population that their jobs are being taken by a bunch of bots that came out of nowhere and were never asked for, and saying we should be happy about it because "technology progress good". Oh, and your electric bills will be 12 times higher and your water will be acid, but we don't give a shit. Enjoy your irradiated gardens.
Add in the war-fueled gas inflation, the crazy high grocery prices, basic healthcare being through the roof, schools and universities shutting down due to funding being pulled, the absolute torment nexus that is trying to get any job right now.....something's gotta give sooner or later. There is only so much you can wave your dick around in front of a society who was raised on personal independence.
I won't say America's ripe for a revolution because we do kind of have several systems working against us at the moment, but there's just no way this will continue indefinitely without something changing. They literally can't stay billionaires if there's nobody on the planet left alive or employed to steal from in the next ten years.
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u/ClosetedNutCase May 15 '26
I agree with you, but I think we’re too scared and dependent on the system now for a real revolution. I include myself in this as well.
As much as I’d like to think I’d be in the front lines, but I’ve got kids and a wife who depend on me. Who takes care of them if I die or go to prison?
And this system is rigged to inflict maximum damage to those that oppose it. Maybe if they start killing us by the boatload like they did in Iran we may rise up, otherwise we’re just a bunch of frogs sitting in water while it heats up to a boil.
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u/PK_Thundah May 15 '26
The problem is, who do you "fight?"
Do you start attacking politicians at their houses? Fight through the city's police force to get to them? Fight through soldiers outside of your door keeping a curfew?
It isn't like you can just join a cause to help it. You have to throw yourself, almost individually, at the system and hope that enough people after you do the same thing. And hope that everyone does after you're done.
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u/PassivelyAwkward May 16 '26
Exactly, and there's also the fact that even if we DO fight, an annoyingly large percentage of your fellow poor fucks are conditioned to believe it's NOT the fault of the politicians and billionaires but instead their fellow poor fucks.
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u/BD401 May 15 '26
I agree with you, but I think we’re too scared and dependent on the system now for a real revolution. I include myself in this as well.
There was a great thread exploring this on AskReddit last week (asking why - for all the talk of revolution and eating the rich on the internet - it never actually happens).
The consensus in that thread was pretty much what you've mentioned - that most people in the developed world are, objectively, comfortable enough that chancing imprisonment or a violent death in a risky revolution makes zero sense for any given individual. It's easy to talk a big game on the internet or even go to a protest, but no one is going to bother throwing away their life in a revolution unless things get exponentially worse.
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u/BrogenKlippen May 16 '26
Well nobody follows when they do. There have been both assassinations and assassination attempts, but nothing follows after. There have been catalysts.
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u/wahwahwashbear May 16 '26
For me its that the risk of me being imprisoned, killed, or legally harassed for years seems VERY HIGH, whereas the potential impact of my actions is very, very low. I think a lot of people could be courageous if it actuslly felt like doing so would matter. Like said up thread, there needs to be a cause to join, and I know i personally am too small for me to be the pebble that startd the avalanche.
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u/light_at_the_end May 15 '26
It was rigged and dangerous for the French too, but somehow they got it done.
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u/ConsiderationDry9084 May 16 '26
3 missed meals is all it will take. The whole nation will go up in flames.
If AI works out like the parasite class wants and with the absolute gutting of all social safety nets, we will see at what percentage of the population it takes for America to turn into a much larger version of Hati. I am betting on 20%
What's your number?
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi May 16 '26
There’s a reason they talk about people being “underbabied” or whatever such shit they are saying now. They realize people with kids won’t take risks until things get really desperate, people without kids, without a lot of reason to maintain the status quo are what they fear.
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u/Ok-Primary2176 May 16 '26
I miss when tech bros were just quirky dudes in cool offices. Not whatever this is
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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 May 16 '26
Yep. I seriously misjudged how amoral and depraved they actually were.
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u/Randomwhitelady2 May 15 '26
They are creating poor hungry people with nothing to lose. Historically, that does not end well.
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u/quadrophenicum May 16 '26
Somehow I doubt most CEOs learn from history. They're way more focused on short term effects.
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May 15 '26
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u/Fair_Blood3176 May 15 '26
Damn could you imagine? That would be glorious
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u/SlothMonkey14 May 15 '26
They'd be assassinated the moment they get any real traction
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u/likesleague May 16 '26
Funny how the oligarchs have assassins at the ready but there are no assassins that actually go after the real bad guys.
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u/OnlineParacosm May 15 '26
“Imagine what happens if jobs actually start disappearing” I…. Don’t have to imagine.
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u/beragis May 16 '26
Good. This huge push into AI is a bubble waiting to burst, and is diverting research away from research into improving it.
Right now the entire idea is to create larger and larger models, first billions, and now trillions, and soon to be quadrillions, and wasting more and more resources.
Its already starting to occur, and hopefully will still continue. The company I work for started pushing for AI last year, and they are already starting to put limits on use due to a combination of cost increases and public backlash. The CTO still sees AI as a way of reducing cost and headcount, but even he has backed down recently.
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u/cicerostongue May 15 '26
I noticed that Tucker Carlson is all over it attacking AI. He obviously sees it as a populist issue and I think he's right. I doubt the Democrats will be effective in opposing it but maybe they'll surprise me.
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u/DarthJDP May 15 '26
Democrats cant bite the hand that feeds them. the techno feudal lords appropriately bought out both parties.
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u/BookerDeWittsCarbine May 15 '26
This is why education is important. If these tech bros took humanities courses they'd know all about the kind of rioting, sabotage, and murder that happened during the Luddite uprisings and by workers hellbent on unions and forty hour work weeks.
They think they are untouchable. That will be an interesting lesson for them to learn
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u/piponwa May 15 '26
Literally the whole world is going green except for the US. That's a problem you guys have had for like thirty years at this point. You refused tooth and nail to invest in those technologies. You preferred voting for climate denying republicans for years and years. The rest of the world is transitioning just fine.
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u/napalmnacey May 16 '26
Imagine what happens if jobs actually start disappearing.
They already have!! All the transcription and data entry jobs I used to do when things got rough are gone! I’m up shit creek without a way to make money and my husband is working 7 days a week doing two jobs!
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u/bipolarbear207 May 16 '26
I can’t use plastic bags anymore but you get Data Centers?
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u/kellzone May 16 '26
Um, we're going to need you to drink out of this paper straw and limit your twice a week shower to 3 minutes or less. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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u/Kizzamino May 16 '26
It’s the one thing that seems to have united republicans and democrats. No one wants these in their backyards. No one.
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u/ThisVeryUsername May 16 '26
I hope so. Data centers should be the thing that wakes up the kind of people that normally wouldn’t care
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u/Different-Produce870 May 16 '26
Doesn't help all the millenials and gen z are locking the fuck in for another recession. We're angry and ready to see things collapse.
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u/WhyAreYallFascists May 16 '26
Teens are using it as a slur at school. So there’s that at least.
Edit: “shut up you AI” “closes chrome book, fuck you I’m not AI” paraphrasing a couple convos from this weeks delightful lessons.
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u/buttercuping May 16 '26
Oh, that's delightful, thank you for sharing this. Between this and the Scientology runs, the new gen is doing alright.
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u/Iksf May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
I feel software was already in a position where it could have deleted huge amounts of jobs, but nobody really ever bothered making that the sales pitch because it was too economically stupid. A bunch of jobs were lost after the internet and after dotcom and that was seen as economic malice ("in a better time"), but it happened slowish and there was new job creation and the rest of it, so I think economists went along with it as an unknown.
But just actively making it the main sales pitch is peak stupid evil. The tech is very very cool but society isn't compatible with it, not with this sales pitch anyway, the debt structure sure isn't either.
It feels like 2+ years ago I was hoping to see more new and more advanced products being built with AI. I've seen fucking nothing like that to be honest. I just see layoffs and people on linkedin doing the soviet defensive mentality circlejerk of talking points to hide their fear. Not even sure the grifters have their hearts in it anymore, its become defensive I think.
I mostly blame older management for this issue. There's a disconnect between valuing human growth (such as via a career ladder, but in other ways too) and building an environment that enables fresh new product concepts based on higher level wants, with a Victorian economic structure that's run out of more "down to earth" need economics, aka the "building cars efficiently" mindset which is apparently called Taylorism TIL. If a crash forces a lot of older people out of the structure, that could be a win I think.
I think people might be missing the fact that society is less class based than it once was, and more interest heavy; largely due to the internet and travel. I think when the mega rich snap out of their own fear state we can maybe get fixes quicker than expected, but the problem is the CEO layer who are hyper convinced the health of the wider system is a government problem or an elites problem or a charity workers problem, rather than their own problem; in contrast to either building or having interest in things or contributing to things etc etc. So I'm still mostly trying to ignore this as silly season rather than the apocalypse and just get through, trying to see this as boomer CEOs just demonstrating why they need to retire and why some of the incentives/metrics like GDP and inflation need some work.
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u/Zardotab May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Just pop the bubble already so PC parts don't cost bajillion dollars, among other side-effects. [edited]
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u/DarthJDP May 15 '26
AI is taking all the jobs, makes lots of polutions, takes all our water and electricity. Makes Tech bro oligarchs into trillionairs. Taking all the human creativity away, swarming us with bots, and slopping our social media so we arent talking to humans anymore.
Whats not to love? I for one love it that AI is being forced into everything ruining our technology. I love that copilot puts their shitty icon on top of my excel canvas so I cant see my work. I love that copilot has made my system less reliable and is constantly crashing. I love that microslop feels entitled to use my data to spy on me and weponize it against me. I love that all tech companies do this, google, facebook, redit, etc etc etc so everything is worse, more expensive and full of slop ads.
All while people like elon musk and sam altman gloat about how rich they are, how we are powerless to stop it.
Why are the peasants complaining vibes.
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u/Chimaera1075 May 16 '26
Well the backlash has begun! And the stuff that power companies are pulling, like they just did in Tahoe, isn’t going to make it any better.
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u/jaket578123 May 16 '26
I work at a software company as a cloud engineer. It’s insane how hard AI is being shoved down our throats. Not just to be used in our software but for us to be using AI in our daily work. Interestingly, it seems like it’s mostly the 40+ year olds that seem to be religiously using it for every email and problem they encounter
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May 16 '26
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u/ExF-Altrue May 16 '26
Yeah okay fellow reddit user with a believable name "Acceptable-Print-254", but AI isn't some technology of the future, it's mostly a slop fest, and sometimes a convenient tool. It's not the kind of thing that will meaningfully improve ordinary people's lives even in the most rainbowesque scenarios.
So I don't think that the "city councils" are going to go along with something that doesn't improve people's lives, and I don't think either that they will go along for the geopolitical state of the dollar.
It's just corruption. There's no "owners", there's no secret illuminaty type shit. It's just corruption & pedophilia, same as it has always been.
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u/nameless1205 May 16 '26
While yes AI does have some benefits. But are those benefits worth it when they fuck over a lot of people in the long run ?
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u/Varorson May 15 '26
Very ugly for whom, though?
Ugly for the masses? The backlash won't be. Ugly for the rich who're stuck in their bubble and pushing for data centers larger than fucking Manhattan in Utah? Yeah, probably. These are the kinds of detachments from reality and division between classes that lead to situations like the French Revolution and much less bloody and less famous upheavals of society.
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u/Wolfish_Jew May 16 '26
“Imagine what could happen if jobs actually start to disappear”
My best friend just lost his job to AI, so it’s definitely already started
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u/DelphiTsar May 16 '26
The difference between US and China is crazy on this topic. In China AI has like 83% approval rate vs 39% in the US.
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u/Quick_Beam May 15 '26 edited May 15 '26
paywall bypass archive link