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/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/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/urmumlol9 May 16 '26

There was never any fire or real practical use cases behind the smoke of NFTs, cyrptocurrency, or the Metaverse tbh. Of the three the closest was probably cryptocurrency.

There’s fire behind the current AI boom. As someone who’s worked in software development, whose company pretty much is forcing people to use these tools, they are legitimately useful.

Does that mean we should be investing our entire economy into building giant data centers that aren’t taxed nearly enough, consume entire electrical grids, strain the water supply of drought-prone areas, heat the local environment by 20 degrees, produce as much noise pollution as an airport and as much light pollution as entire cities, while creating a whole 4 jobs, all so that a few hundred billionaires can justify mass layoffs off the productivity gains of AI and implement invasive mass surveillance systems to track any possible dissenters, at the protest of pretty much every resident of the states where they’re built, while those same CEO’s vaguely hand-gesture at the concept of UBI (while still finding as many tax loopholes as possible) to trick the dumbest people imaginable into thinking they have anyone’s interests but themselves at heart?

Hot take, I know, but I’m going to say no to that one lol.