Left, Right, and Center
In an era when Americans don’t seem to be able to agree on anything, a huge majority of people have found middle ground over data centers. Whether it’s energy suckage, climate concerns, noise pollution, water woes, old-fashioned Nimbyism, or just a general feeling of ill will when it comes to AI and big tech, people across the country are crossing the political aisle in opposition to the building of new data centers. While it might seem obvious that humans wouldn’t want to welcome their invading machine overlords with new housing, the negative vibes around data centers are relatively new, and the shift came quickly. “Around seven in 10 Americans now oppose the construction of local data centers to power artificial intelligence. Last fall, people were almost exactly evenly split when asked if they’d support a new data center nearby. Now there’s a 50-point gap. That is an absolutely crazy swing, much bigger than the reversals you tend to see when a new president comes into office or even when someone declares war.” David Wallace-Wells and Robinson Meyer in the NYT (Gift Article): Is This the Fastest Opinion Shift in American Politics? Beneath the broad agreement, some of the old political divides still live on. “What’s interesting is that, at this point, data centers’ net support — Would you support a local data center in your community? — is underwater among all parties: Republicans, independents, Democrats. If we ask, well, what if it was powered only by renewable energy? Then Democrats are more likely to like it, and Republicans are more likely to oppose it.” Craziness is like cockroaches. It can survive anything.
+ Data Centers to Add Billions in Power Costs in 13 States. (Tell people the cost is for AI and they’re up in arms. Tell them it’s for streaming Love Island and they’ll explain that everything has a price.)
+ New York becomes first state to impose one-year pause on new AI datacenters.
+ Most things in tech seem to become more efficient as they scale. AI data center needs just seem to grow bigger and bigger. “The problem is not simply that AI is being deployed so widely or quickly. Other computer technologies have seen similarly massive growth without triggering such a large spike in electricity or a shortage of computer components: Video and music are now streamed around the globe, accounting for many terabytes of internet traffic daily; the smartphone boom required the manufacturing of billions of devices that are now transferring huge amounts of data; billions of household devices are also now part of the Internet of Things; and whole industries have moved their operations to cloud software, which is hosted not in the sky but in, yes, data centers. The problem with generative AI, in the industry’s own jargon, is that it does not scale.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster.
+ Not everyone is against data centers in their backyard. For example, there are those whose backyards just became unimaginably valuable. WSJ (Gift Article): The Americans Striking It Rich in the Data-Center Buildout. “The men told the Kilitis that their 89-acre farm in this rural town of 4,000 might be worth more than $20 million … The couple thought the fields where the family raised and butchered hogs would be lucky to fetch even a fraction of that.” (It turns out a server farm can bring home more bacon than a hog farm.)
