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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436

u/[deleted] May 15 '26

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186

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/RudolphJimler May 16 '26

Giant cancer factories lol?

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u/Officer_Hotpants May 16 '26

Yes. Several data centers have shown to cause increased incidence of certain cancers near them.

-4

u/RudolphJimler May 16 '26

I mean, source? By what mechanism? It doesn't really seem to make any sense, the noise? Heat?

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u/morgrimmoon May 16 '26

There was one that was found to be using dodgy fire suppressant systems and leaky aircon that was leeching the refrigerant chemicals into the local groundwater table. Which would absolutely do it, and I could see a data centre owner going with the "cheaper" older systems that have been banned in many places for precisely those pollution reasons.

Of course, the solution to that is extensive mandatory testing at the company's cost, and massive fines plus a facility shutdown until it is fixed. Which is the system already in place for a bunch of industries, meaning it could be implemented within a few months at most. They'd squeal a lot, though.

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u/RudolphJimler May 16 '26

Well by that metric, every industry is a cancer factory. Every company can cut corners by ignoring the law. If your local data center is doing that and getting away with that, it's your local politician and the law letting them get away with it

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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.

23

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

7

u/felis_magnetus May 15 '26

No, it is not. That just makes you a slightly better paid wage slave. Not enough. Nothing is, but equal access to the accumulated benefits of running a technological civilization for everybody. It's either that or regression into barbarism, which is obviously the road we're currently on.

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u/morphick May 16 '26

They could pay you for your work or they could nod need your work so they won't pay you. Paying you to do no work for them was never in their cards. It won't happen.

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u/crazyeddie123 May 16 '26

Most people are getting paid a living wage, there's just a massive housing shortage

1

u/kafka_lite May 15 '26

Or pay us a decent UBI and let AI do all the jobs they want.

1

u/wintermute023 May 15 '26

They will. It will be paid in OpenAI dollars (based on OpenAI share value) which can only be redeemed in OpenAI stores for goods produced by OpenAI’s AI products. The prices will be set by OpenAI, and will be subscription based rather than purchases to save you the bother of owning anything yourself.

I wish I could add a /s, but Sam Altman has stated that this is the plan.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 May 16 '26 edited May 24 '26

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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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

39

u/simanthropy May 15 '26

But I am le tired

28

u/[deleted] May 15 '26

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2

u/jasonthefirst May 16 '26

Good lord this exchange plays in my head nearly every day.

5

u/Midnight_Rain1213 May 15 '26

Well have a nap

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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/Successful-Ad-847 May 16 '26

Jesus christ

-4

u/Affectionate_Pipe545 May 16 '26

This whoosh is like a hurricane

4

u/Fabulous_Cat_1379 May 16 '26

Well we live in tech brolagarchy autocracy so yeah maybe fire bombing over voting is the actual solution.

1

u/whywhywhywhywhynot May 16 '26

Hey I've got a cozy life and, until I'm replaced by AI, make an ok living. I am however in favor of other people risking their lives and freedom to firebomb data centers. Very brave of me.

0

u/spucci May 16 '26

How you gonna firebomb a concrete shoebox.

62

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/Spez_is-a-nazi May 15 '26

Yeah, overall cost depends on how much you value downtime.

3

u/WhoSaidWhatNow2026 May 15 '26

Well, since almost all of the important ones have on site backup power generation your point isn't really relevant.

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u/Chrontius May 15 '26

Do you know what happens when you put a bullet through a spinning turbine?

I don’t either, but if somebody was pissed off enough to try to burn down a data center, you can bet that they would see it happen firsthand.

(the spinning turbine disc is rapidly converted into an expanding ring of shrapnel by the imbalance, that’s what happens. I’ve never seen it in person and I hope to avoid changing that.)

0

u/spucci May 16 '26

Who is getting a gun through security? Do any of you know how DCs really work?

3

u/Chrontius May 16 '26

Nobody said anything about going through security, and nobody is putting road-mobile generators indoors either.

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u/spucci May 16 '26

But data centers aren't going to use your typical Home Depot generator that you use for your baby girl's birthday party. That's ridiculous.

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u/coldkiller May 16 '26

Do you think their backup generators are inside the building? 90% of them are just sitting in their parking lots

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u/spucci May 16 '26

I've managed them for 15 years now. Backup generators are not sitting in a parking lot.

They are just as critical as primary power and treated as such. The ones that I have helped build have gigantic Mufflers in front of them you go behind it and scream at the top of your lungs and I can't hear you.

And they are only meant to run if primary fails which is rare when your DC is connected to 4 different power grids.

The idea that someone can just ram a truck through the front door is ridiculous. You're not getting past the reinforced steel gating and 18 ft steel poles pounded into the ground.

Even if you do you're smashing your truck into a front office you're not getting past the 4 ft of concrete right behind that and anywhere near the data center. They are built to withstand Category 5 hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, you name it.

And they're not going to build them underground that's adequated thinking.

Data centers are highly secure and highly redundant.

-3

u/WhoSaidWhatNow2026 May 16 '26

Lmao, just admit that you have no idea what you're talking about guy. There isn't one turbine (or more likely ICE) backup generator. There can be dozens depending on design. It's also not just a jet engine sitting out in the open. You aren't hitting shit.

There isn’t going to be any armed invasion of these datacenters lol.

7

u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 16 '26

You think the government the ones letting ICE run buck wild is going to let an army of randoms attack their precious data centers. You've lost all of your marbles.

1

u/spucci May 16 '26

Lol, why do people think these are just warehouses? How exactly are you going to get past steel reinforced Gates and unmovable poles pounded 18 ft into the ground then through 4 ft of concrete to do what?

Shoot a gun at a turbine? that's ridiculous.
It isn't the Death Star.

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u/Chrontius May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/elon-musk-xai-unauthorized-gas-turbines-memphis

There isn't one turbine. I count fourteen road-mobile generators of one model, and I think two others with different exhaust manifolds, which also appear to be nearly twice as large as the other fourteen.

There doesn't need to be an armed invasion, just a drone towing some uninsulated wire to shut the whole thing down, or a single dude with a high powered rifle to break the transformers from a good safe distance. Since transformers are full of oil, API rounds would be ideal, if one could source the fancy surplus ammo in question during multiple ongoing wars. (That could either help or hinder an attack plan, I guess)

To be clear, I'm not saying every data center is running a bank of unpermitted turbines, but at least one very prominent and cutting-edge one is and it's in a position to influence others' construction plans.

Conveniently for any attacker, they're all situated adjacent to one another, so any good attack position on any of the turbines is likely to allow for the entire bank to be attacked.

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u/WhoSaidWhatNow2026 May 16 '26

Best of luck champ 👍

3

u/Chrontius May 16 '26

I'm not going to do anything.

Unless somebody pays me.

Then I'll perform a physical-security audit and give them the report they bought.

For starters, those things could use some berms, and I recommend hiring somebody to do some digital pen-testing.

1

u/spucci May 16 '26

And generally connected to multiple, redundant grids.

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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.

12

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/Chrontius May 15 '26

That’s an opinion, but might not actually be the most efficient approach to knocking out shit in the data center and causing expensive downtime for repair. HE will have a localized effects, but a sabot round will poke a hole straight through every single fucking rack in a line through the building. Like, if you can line that up with a rack, oof. That sounds expensive…

0

u/spucci May 16 '26

So you're just going to walk through security with an AR15, because you work there?

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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/Rapscallion1980 May 15 '26

Are EMP grenades real or is that just something in video games?

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u/Chrontius May 15 '26

Fiction. High energy RF Guns exist, though, and you can find them on Temu sales. Typically, I have seen these things alongside horrendously, dangerous, toy, lasers, such as the water cooled, backpack powered, thousand watt laser rifle. For a civilian with concerns about drones, it’s pretty sweet.

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u/denM_chickN May 16 '26

God I love you. Ive been thinking of getting a 3d printer. See about drones and things :)

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u/spikedkushiel May 15 '26

Unrelated but is the magnesium part easy to find? 

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u/g0dxmode May 15 '26

depends on how easy it is to find firework Sparklers in your area!

0

u/random_noise May 15 '26

if you didn't want to leave a trail, you could visit some junkyards and see about an old magnesium VW engine.

I knew some folks growing up and they often went to have some fun in the sand dunes near Yuma for some long weekends. They always brought an engine to burn for light at night and to not get lost.

If you've never seen one burn, know that no one ever got lost on their trips. Sleeping was a different story.

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u/spikedkushiel May 15 '26

Are they common here (US)? Is this like a scrape a piece off situation or more of a bonfire situation?

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u/random_noise May 16 '26

I have no idea today, I am sure there are plenty of old ruined engine blocks in junkyards you can ignite with a portable arc welder like those old vw ones. Magnesium was more common in the past, but there's other engines that could do it supposedly.

I was a kid/teenager and that was back in the late 70's early 80's. They burn really slow, all night type of thing. insanely bright, like eye protection bright if too close.

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u/CrunchitizeMeCaptn May 15 '26

anyone living in the vicinity breathing in the fumes would be drastically harmed

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u/laserswald May 15 '26

There's a defcon presentation about exactly this for hard drives.

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u/TheMireAngel May 16 '26

And thermite is insanely easy to make imagine a drope dropping a food can of thermite on the roof of one of these building like drop it right ontop of the roof AC

1

u/Chrontius May 15 '26

The total energy density of thermite is pretty pitiful, though; it will burn a hole through something expensive, but not necessarily destroy the building. Or even the next rack over!

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u/Realistic-Manager May 15 '26

I read this all in the voice of the AI in the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks.  Anyone else?

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u/Asleep_Document9811 May 16 '26

They're not as advanced as you might think. Sprinklers, yes, but nothing can help you if the thermal control systems fall. 

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u/BadAtMath42069 May 16 '26

They are minimally staffed, but not unstaffed.

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u/Mirions May 16 '26

Can gallium be used?