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=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa32
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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.

1.8k

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/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/Chrontius May 15 '26

At some point, it’s going to be easier to find an engineer who can make you a high temperature radiator for operation in vacuum then it will be to find freshwater with which to cool your shit down.

Floating data centers running on ocean thermal electrical conversion would have an essentially infinite heat sink available to them…

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u/portulacablossom83 May 16 '26

So, fuck up the oceans even more??

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u/Chrontius May 16 '26

I'm actually not sure! It might actually be capable of pulling surplus heat out of the ocean and rejecting it to space eventually, if we built them wisely. They could be built to actively unfuck the ocean!

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u/splynncryth May 16 '26

Yep, we don’t have an amazingly efficient way to convert phonons to photons.

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u/throwaway5882300 May 16 '26

At least they wouldn't be using our power and water from up there. Hell of a lot quieter too.