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A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their tec
by yardie 3mo ago
A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they were the smartest people in the room.
BTW, no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage. They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area. So far Altman, Ellison, O'Leary, Amodei, Pichai, and Zuckerberg have refused to answer that question.
[0] All except Jensen who has been really trying to explain the benefits of AI and has said these massive layoffs are a huge mistake.
- dreamcompiler 3mo agoOut here in the US southwest, we absolutely do care about water usage as well as the potential for higher electricity prices. We also care about jobs, which in the case of data centers are only going to be boosted temporarily until construction is finished.
- missingcolours 3mo agoThe people doing the voting are mostly talking about how much water datacenters supposedly use.
- acdha 3mo agoMore electricity than water around here—rates going up gets everyone’s attention—but there’s nothing supposedly about the water use: data centers don’t consume the water permanently but they still put stress on systems which weren’t designed for the extra volume, pushing requests for expensive expansion projects, and there can be other problems: a colleague mentioned his family back home recently learned that the extra water circulation was spreading a groundwater pollution plume substantially faster, affecting well water users in the area. Since these things tend not to contribute many jobs, there isn’t much to balance out the bad news for communities.
- user3939382 3mo agoPlenty of people care about their power bill. Water in some regions is a hot political issue. Data centers don’t create jobs of course, we don’t need anyone to answer that.
- Jtsummers 3mo ago"Some regions" being a a bit of an understatement, the US west and southwest are experiencing (or about to experience) severe water shortages and disruption due to the current water shortages.
- stvltvs 3mo agoLake Mead is projected next year to be at its lowest level since it was filled by the creation of Hoover Dam. The states on the Colorado River have been fighting over the dwindling water for decades. Locals care about water.
- hunter-gatherer 3mo agoI'm local-ish to Box Elder county in Utah, here people absolutely give a shit about the environmental burden to the region. It isn't just about water consumption, but other things. I think the "We need to win China is AI" narrative is (appropriately???) falling of deaf ears. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but even lay-people in my circles have asked how these alleged AI_driven benefits (fighting cancer, stopping climate change, and whatever) are really going to come to fruition, when what they really observe in their backyards are data centers being generated so we can fill our lives with AI slop.
- cogman10 3mo agoBox elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.
- hunter-gatherer 3mo agoIndeed. Our air is so bad we can't afford to open up more smoke stacks. Of course Kevin doesn't care because he's in Canada.
- jboggan 3mo ago(I'm also in Utah) I'll second this observation, as well as add that apart from AI slop most people around here associate the data center push with the sudden proliferation of Flock cameras at every major intersection and along every highway. Provo defeated a major data center project that was going into an empty industrial park, arguably the kind of place that would fit that sort of development. The actual cost-benefit calculation for most people is heavily weighted towards the negative and this should not continue to surprise people. The perceived downside with no upside is just going to get worse if the government gatekeeps the most useful models.
- cogman10 3mo ago> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage. They do when the knowledge of the resource consumption is paired with "Which will directly lead to your electric/gas bill going up." People are also paying attention to the fact that the politicians aren't paying attention to the people. Nobody is even trying to sell the benefits of a datacenter in people's backyard. Instead, politicians are bending over backwards to eliminate any possible benefit by giving these datacenters permanent tax breaks. When you have politicians clearly bought by businessmen who don't care about the communities that elected them. It's a bit of a no brainer that they'd be voted out.
- paul7986 3mo ago[flagged]
- blinkbat 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- paul7986 3mo agoNo just a bored dude who loves tech and being creative - sharing a thought that seems unique to spur conversation.
- miiiiiike 3mo agoI thought it was funny.
- paul7986 3mo agosure im sharing a somewhat unique/new idea so its going to be mocked. Yet AI paying us for our content to keep it relevant after it kills so many jobs is something Open AI and ANthropic are pushing via free stock options to all Americans. Yet what about all other humans where's is their system and will those stock options provide enough pay to keep this economic system we have going? If not then my concept of using AI against itself so all humans get their fair share for feeding AI content could be an option. Either way AI needs to pay us it's fair share as without humanity past content it wouldnt exist and without it's future content it's irrelevant.
- cjfd 3mo agoYou can talk about UBI if you want to appear nice but people on UBI are also rather useless. Of course the real solution to the problem will be the change of carbon based life into silicon based life and the extermination of the former kind of life. Which is not the elected representatives problem if it happens to happen more than 4 years into the future.
- mcv 3mo agoYou kid, but Bezos said practically the same thing. That human need for water shouldn't hold AI back.
- pseudalopex 3mo agoA satire site said Bezos said this.[1] [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bezos-water-consumption-ai-quote/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bezos-water-consumption-ai...
- mcv 3mo agoThank god. It's so hard to tell these days.
- Henchman21 3mo agoI agree with your point broadly, even the cynicism, but the following sticks in my craw: > people on UBI are also rather useless The point of life is not “that you be useful to the wealthy”.
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago> people on UBI are also rather useless UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.
- mjhay 3mo agoMore of a lot of things. Universal healthcare (as opposed to employer-provided plans) encourages people to start their own businesses. UBI would be similar, but moreso.
- whalesalad 3mo ago> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage the environmental impacts is the only thing people actually care about, you are quite off base here. noise, proximity to housing, water usage, energy prices going up in the area. this is the core issue. not "will ai replace my job"
- godwinson__4-8 3mo ago[flagged]
- vardalab 3mo agoWhich country do you live in that you have such a positive outlook about redistribution of wealth?
- godwinson__4-8 3mo agoMost Europeans seem quite happy with their societes and the levels of redistribution of wealth. As do the citizens of most petro or other resource rich states. If compute is the new energy then many states with a similar advantage aggressively and successfully redistribute gains and have a higher quality of life for the median person than Americans enjoy. Not everything is Venezuela or the Soviet Union.
- esafak 3mo agoHow confident are you that the UBI hand out is going to be anywhere near what you made while working?
- stvltvs 3mo ago/me looks at the history of wealth distribution following new labor saving innovations
- sokoloff 3mo agoI would say the distributions from automated water heaters/boilers, washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators replacing “ice boxes”, looms, assembly lines, farming combines, electric starter motors, and automated PCB assembly have been overwhelmingly good for people across a very broad spectrum of society. Is that what you’re also looking at? Or objecting to the rewards rightly earned for bringing such advances to so many people’s lives?
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago> They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area. The answer to that is so obviously "no" that I wonder how much attention they've been paying.
- rzwitserloot 3mo agoIt's the local v. federal thing. The US has been suffering from this for a while, as has Germany. The EU, too, is suffering from this. The local politician's thinking is thusly: - Datacenters are going to happen somewhere. And when this inevitably occurs, jobs everywhere, including here, will disappear. There is nothing I can do about that. It's as baked into my assumptions about the near future, as is the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow. - If I allow the datacenter to happen here then while the builders are here they might buy some stuff locally for the build, and after they are done, the datacenter will employ literally a handful of people to guard and maintain the place. Not much of a gain, but, hey, the alternative is that I have nothing at all. In other words, the 'competition' aspect between states / bundeslander / EU countries is causing these entities to race to the bottom together. The solution is... not to do that. As somebody living in a country that doesn't suffer from this particular malady (The Netherlands, which does have provinces, and provinces work in reverse from states: The only rights they have are ones explicitly allotted to them by the state; The Netherlands is not a 'federation of provinces', whereas the US is a 'federation of states', Germany is a 'federation of bundleslander', and the EU is a federation of countries). It means a province in The Netherlands cannot just offer a would be major company some ridiculous boon to come settle in their province at the cost of other provinces, because provinces in The Netherlands do not have the right to dictate e.g. tax rates, and even any infra project they would do requires permission (and funds) from the 'federal level' (the country). It's been going on for ten years and there have been nada, zero, zilch solutions to the problem. Thus my stance remains: You have to put a stop to that. The problem is, of course, this requires an entity that currently has some power (namely: states / bundeslander / EU countries) to voluntarily give up power to the federated entity that sits 'above' them, and it's always difficult to convince an entity with power to voluntarily relinquish it. Still, that's the job.
- thomastjeffery 3mo agoMost people I know (in Utah) are predominantly concerned with the pollution and water use. Water is the most ubiquitous concern across politics in Utah. No matter what political ideology you adhere to, water rights and water conservation are a core topic. If you watch local news for more than an hour or two, you will see propaganda to "slow the flow". One of the most common criticisms of our Governor is that he publicly prays for rain, while using an incredible amount of water on his own alfalfa farms. The sheer sense of scale on this particular project is mind-boggling. > 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses In a community where conservation is at the forefront of everyone's minds, planning something that big is like a slap in the face.
- alphawhisky 3mo ago[flagged]
- criddell 3mo agoWhy is water so inexpensive? Shouldn’t the price per gallon increase exponentially? It seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with curves so that typical households pay very little for water and the big users pay a lot for water.
- thomastjeffery 3mo agoBecause you don't pay for the water, you buy the rights. Water is treated like an infinite source with a limited flow rate, and the source itself is sold as property. The solution is not to price water as a commodity, either. If we priced water high enough to disincentivize waste, we would create an incredible burden for regular people. Water should be as cheap as possible, and at the same time regulated to guarantee an amount of conservation. People who can afford to more than double a state's power grid capacity, all for a single data center, can afford more water than the populace can afford. What we need is to regulate water use generally so that the watersheds and ecosystems we rely on can be reasonably conserved.
- 3mo ago
- jagged-chisel 3mo ago> ... refused to answer ... It's a "no." Why does anyone expect an explicit, vocalized response? It's "no" until they provide proof and guarantees otherwise. You don't need to hear them say "there are no jobs" to act as if (rather, to know) there are no jobs.
- e40 3mo agoConstruction jobs, yes. After that, a skeleton crew and a bunch of people in far off places, possibly outside the country.
- esikich 3mo agoSo? Since when is there a floor for the number of jobs a business has to create? Suzies Tanning Salon uses a lot of energy but only employs 3 people.
- hdgvhicv 3mo agoSo maybe 50kW for 10 hours a day? Double it and call it 1Mwh a day. A 1GW DC would have to employ 75,000 people if that’s an acceptable ratio.
- esikich 3mo agoSo what's the ratio for malls? Or strip malls? Or metal refineries? Or auto plants? Or giant office buildings?
- yusefnapora 3mo agoPresumably Suzie also serves the people in her community who want tanned skin but don't like the sun. A data center offers nothing of value to the community it's embedded in - neither jobs nor any useful product or service. All the benefits accrue to the owners, and the very real costs are paid by the people breathing in the fumes from the gas turbines, or paying an extra hundred bucks a month for power. If you don't understand why people don't want them, you're probably trying not to. It's not that hard.
- miiiiiike 3mo agoI have zero faith in the current generation of gen AI. I think the claims are overblown and the odds of massive unemployment is near zero. Even if the AI bubble pops, the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers. I don’t care if a data center developer/speculator loses their shirt. The data center will stand long after they fold and someone will operate it. Build it here. Create the construction jobs. Collect the property taxes. Eat while there’s food.
- multjoy 3mo agoWhen the AI bubble pops. It will, and it will be glorious.
- downrightmike 3mo agolaptops with tb of ram easy