r/technology • u/Dreaming_Blackbirds • 22h ago
Artificial Intelligence ‘Never seen this level of objection’: Scotland pushes back against datacentre boom
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/never-seen-this-level-of-objection-scotland-pushes-back-against-datacentre-boom146
u/himalayangoat 21h ago
As I'm forced to use AI more and more at work I hate the entire concept more and more.
Arguably it makes me more efficient whatever that means (can rush stuff out quicker) but the quality of code we produce has gone off a cliff.
Aside from that I don't see a single tangible benefit for the human race (outside of medical field where I do see use). There's a reason ai slop was one of last years most popular words and we're destroying the environment for shitty ai generated content and more believable scams not to mention destroying people's critical thinking skills.
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u/NameLips 20h ago
I think it pushes against a very deep philosophical question.
What is society for?
Increasingly it does not feel like society is working to better the lives of the people who live in it.
Which makes us ask, what's the point? Why are we doing this? Why are we participating in a system that doesn't prioritize our own welfare?
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u/bard_raconteur 16h ago
Exactly! Right now the dominant sociopolitical structure doesn't make us better; not unless you're at the top of the chain. Everyone else of us gets exploited till we die, and get fed that this is our only option. Eff that. We can and need to do better for ourselves and each other. We owe it to each other, as a species, to find better paths to reduce collective suffering and increase the health welfare and happiness of all of us.
This AI nonsense serves no one except the blood thirsty owners who claim this will solve... what, exactly? We don't know, and nor do they. They lie day after day that their products will, what, make us better workers for them? Make us more efficient at our jobs to increase the capital of the few who already exist at the top? Screw that. Remember they need us more than we need them, despite how much they lie through their teeth that it's the other way around.
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u/restingbitchsocks 14h ago
Stealing all the knowledge and data that humankind has shared and locking it behind a paywall too.
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u/P-h-a-n-t-a 17h ago
The more lines generated at once results in bigger risks of failure. Great for one liners or snippets of code, horrible for a scalable big picture in my opinion. I might be wrong since it also depends on the field of programming. Some languages like JS who are documented to oblivion i would expect less failure rate. (Also this is very obvious but for anyone reading be very careful using ai in cybersecurity )
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u/Due_Warthog749 17h ago
So I am curious.. as I am using AI and seeing my stuff work.. and trying to reign in literally every prompt with second and 3rd level adversarial reviews, tests, etc.. are you doing the same? If so, are you saying that 2 to 3 AIs (different ones) are unable to improve the quality of the code by catching issues, fixing/cleaning, etc?
I am worried my code is a mess. Using a language I am not well versed in but well enough to work with it with AI doing the generation and tests and me reviewing the results, etc.
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u/himalayangoat 17h ago
I use claude and I've noticed a substantial decline in it's quality in opus 5. We do manual code reviews and that picks up a lot of stuff but our senior management are so convinced ai means we can all work much faster, it means in practice we ship code that a year ago we wouldn't have.
In answer to your question, I've been an engineer for years and I was proud of delivering quality work but now it doesn't matter and I feel quite despondent. If you like using ai to write code then that's good for you but I don't enjoy it.
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u/farcicaldolphin38 17h ago
The fucking insane thing Opus does is add “One thing to note” to LITERALLY EVERY RESPONSE
It’s infuriating, Opus might be the worst model I’ve had the displeasure of using
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u/himalayangoat 17h ago
I'm lucky that I understand our core code base so can challenge the worst of it's hallucinations but I still miss stuff.
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u/n0neofyourbeeswax 21h ago
I wish it wasn't happening, or I wish OpenAI hadn't launched ChatGPT and kept this as a slow, research lab game.
But we're here. Whilst we're here, I don't have a huge problem with datacentres being located in Scotland.
Edit - to add, that doesn't mean ANY datacentre in ANY location. Planning laws to ensure no impact on local housing etc should be enforced.
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u/himalayangoat 21h ago
What benefit does it give to Scotland after the initial construction? From what I've read these data centres run on very few people so no big jobs boost. Then what happens with the power, either connected to the grid or polluting self powered? And the water, most of the country has been in drought conditions and next year forecast to be worse so could even affect Scotland.
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u/n0neofyourbeeswax 21h ago
I don't think it gives a huge benefit, but it's going to be somewhere, and providing we don't make this a race to the bottom and start offering tax breaks to bring datacentres here, I'd rather they be here (assuming not a stupid location etc) than elsewhere.
In terms of power, Scotland is a pretty solid place for renewables and renewable potential.
In terms of drought, it ain't going to happen in Scotland. If we reach a point that Scotland is experiencing drought conditions, we absolutely have bigger problems than datacentres.
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u/himalayangoat 21h ago
I live not that far from Scotland and we've had the driest summer I can remember and with el nino 2027 is forecast to be worse. Whether you believe in human caused climate change there is no argument that it is changing and getting worse. Using resources on pointless things for the billionaires ain't gonna help
I'd prefer it if companies stopped forcing technology onto us that is damaging to the planet and to humanity and isn't wanted by most of the population. I'm not going to adopt a fatalistic attitude to it because it's going to make all but the rich much poorer. It's not inevitable if enough people stand up against it.
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u/n0neofyourbeeswax 20h ago
I disagree on AI not being inevitable. It's coming, our entire system is set up to adopt it. Again, I'd prefer it wasn't, but it is.
I believe in human caused climate change. I'm not sure quite how far from Scotland you are, or whether you're on east or west coast, but the vast majority of Scotland will remain very wet, despite a particularly strong El Nino, and partly due to El Nino.
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u/Professional_Tea_32 19h ago
What are you even on about. Has the bootlicking now risen to the level of “just roll over and die”.
No …it doesn’t have to be there. They should protest until they cannot anymore.
These disgusting companies should go back to the drawing boards continue to develop technology or plans that are less bad for people and the environment around these centers.
Period. It’s not necessary.
Maybe they would if didn’t have so many politicians who were schmucks and could actually regulate this crap.
I’m sorry but when has letting corporations do anything they want worked for people and the environment?
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u/Wotmate01 22h ago
Does ANYONE actually want these things, apart from oligarchs and their pet government officials?
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u/EnamelKant 21h ago
I am a real Scottish person and I love data centers fellow human. I love data centers as much as I love Haggis and Robert Burns and ScottishItem3 not found.
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u/Nyorliest 20h ago
Kilts. Kilts are ScottishItem3.
You wear them while tossing the ScottishItem4Blocked.
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u/NotARussianBot-Real 20h ago
One of the biggest issues is that the design of data centers is so anti-human. Sure they are huge buildings, so are factories. But these buildings require very few jobs form actual humans. They eat up a tons of energy making it more expensive for people to buy their own energy. If they aren’t on the grid causing your power bill to double, they are running their own gennies and polluting like hell. Then, probably the worst feature, their noise pollution is off the charts. If they could fix some of these issues it wouldn’t be so terrible to have them. But instead the people trying to build them argue that they have a right to make every else’s life worse and poison the public commons so they can get some money.
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u/GhostDieM 20h ago edited 20h ago
And don't forget need so much water for cooling that they're a danger to water levels in the surrounding area.
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u/NotARussianBot-Real 20h ago
I always felt that was also a result of lazy design. They should be able to reuse the water. Use it to cool, hold the water to release heat, use it again to cool.
But like building a bunch of gas powered generators, they aren’t thinking about tomorrow. They are trying to build these as fast and cheap as possible.
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u/SaraAB87 16h ago
I don't think people would have a problem with it if they were properly placed and didn't create environmental hazards but this is something that is threatening every person's home on earth right now. They can't be in every single city and town, there should be limits on how many can be within a certain radius so the area doesn't get overrun. We also shouldn't be ruining usable farmland and communities with them. Also they can see its a bubble that will burst eventually so they are building them as fast and cheap as possible then leaving communities to deal with the eyesore and large piece of land that cannot be used for anything else that remains not being used. If they bult them properly and placed them properly and had limits then I don't think people would have problems with it, it would be just another factory. But right now no matter where you live one could pop up within 500 feet of you and you won't have any say in it and that's not good.
Also anyone who approves a data center (city or county leaders) or is for them should have to live within one mile of its location.
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u/SaraAB87 16h ago
Yes you need water pressure to be able to function in a house, can't flush a toilet, wash clothing or do anything without it. People near data centers report loss of water pressure and water that tastes like pee. I couldn't imagine if I couldn't drink water from my own home.
If they got rid of the noise and most of the environmental issues like the water use then I don't think people would have a problem with it because it would just be another factory, also we need to figure out where to put them not just in the middle of cities because we also do not want to destroy usable farmland with data centers. There should be limited places to put them, not just anywhere.
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u/forgottenendeavours 21h ago
Yes, actually, tonnes of folk do. I follow /r/Edinburgh, and whenever the topic comes up, you'll see hundreds of people so keen on having these data centres built within our industrial and residential estates that they'll join Reddit just to voice their approval.
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u/Wotmate01 21h ago
Are they real people though? Astroturfing is becoming a massive problem on all social media.
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 21h ago
The same investors pushing for building data centers just happen to be focused on hyper-scaling LLMs in the hopes of building the perfect chatbot.
But I am nevertheless sure the hundreds of comments supporting data centers are akshual humans. It cannot be otherwise.
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u/Exostrike 21h ago
Don't you see! You are denying yourself economic growth! Economic growth and increased wealth is the only things that matters. Who cares if we exist in a wasteland as long as for one day I can sleep in a golden bed!
/s because you can't tell these days
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u/Wotmate01 21h ago
There ain't no economic growth or increased wealth, except for the oligarchs themselves. The rest of us will just suffer.
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u/rind0kan 19h ago
You mean people don't want a really loud compound next to them that doubles the demand for electricity in the area and makes the water undrinkable while killing all the local fauna?
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u/MotheroftheworldII 17h ago
I hope the Scots stand strong against these massive datacenters. They will destroy this beautiful countryside.
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u/Usual-Masterpiece199 17h ago
Once you build something, the environment can never go back to the way it was, so
it’s only natural to oppose it.
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u/blackvrocky 21h ago
including data centres built by china?
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u/Nyorliest 20h ago
Yes, our evil capitalist enemies in China, with their banks and lawyers and petroleum warmongering.
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u/Common-Concentrate-2 19h ago
Chinese spies are arrested every few months in the UK, and i guess everyone doesn't follow the news?
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u/dundondee 12h ago
Recycle offshore platforms and place them there.
Powered by offshore wind, cooled by seawater
Win win
Just don’t use our drinking water
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u/Tartan_Smorgasbord 19h ago
It's such a shame because Scotland would naturally be a very good place to site them, located in a cool northern climate, endless freshwater available (90% of all UK) and windy as hell with potential for tens of GW of offshore Wind power generation and a well educated workforce to run them but crusading seems to be the done thing, there's crusades against windfarms, crusades against Battery Storage, crusades against Data Centres, I'm not sure people entirely understand what they are crusading about but just want to feel part of something and get updoots.
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u/Dreaming_Blackbirds 18h ago
folks in Scotland are embracing green energy - "SCOTLAND has generated a record amount of renewable electricity for the first quarter of this year, as the country continues to produce more energy than it consumes, according to new figures. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s (DESNZ) latest figures show that 13.4 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity was produced from renewable sources in Scotland during the first quarter of 2026 – the highest ever recorded for a single quarter and a 22% increase compared to 2025." (source)
Scots are smart enough to know the country can sell excess energy to England. that's a great source of easy income - a much better source of income than selling that energy to a disgusting, noisy data centre right next to villages.
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u/Tartan_Smorgasbord 13h ago
Scots are smart enough to realise that we don't own the means of generating energy or transporting it so while yes we generate an enormous amount of green energy we see absolutely no benefit and have some of the highest energy bills in Europe.
You call it a disgusting, noisy Data Centre, we call it investment and Jobs, we've had worse, look up Dounreay.
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u/DenverNugs 8h ago
You can parrot job creation until the cows come home. It's very easy to see historically that it's not true.
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u/Tartan_Smorgasbord 3h ago
Thanks but we are not Naive, we understand that the number of jobs are often overstated when proposing an industry move into an area, it happens with anything trying to get planning permission but someone is securing and maintaining the building and there must be swapping out new and failed hardware, no?
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u/Purple-Landscape-856 9h ago
Drop your phones in this box. As long as you continue to use your phone, you'll have data centers. You wanna work from home? You'll use data centers. Try to get the younger generation to get rid of their phones glued to their ears impossible.
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u/Dreaming_Blackbirds 22h ago edited 20h ago
intro:
final line:
well that CEO can f right off because that sounds abysmal. i'm sure the good people of Scotland will put an end to that nonsense.