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The electricity usage is off the charts. Every place that gets a data center has their electricity prices go up. Consumers are now fighting to stop data center

The electricity usage is off the charts. Every place that gets a data center has their electricity prices go up. Consumers are now fighting to stop data centers from coming into their hometowns. It's not like Data centers have lots of jobs that benefit a community anyway. It's basically a building that eats a local city's resources and gives barely anything back in return. At best, an AI data center is a year job for the local blue collar workers. A temporary benefit at best, while the price of electricity rises will negate any local benefits by a long shot. Plus water and noise, and other such issues.

dofm 25d ago
I think that was maybe a rhetorical question, but that indeed sums it up.
ToValueFunfetti 25d ago
Just read this interview[1] the other day that contends that the blue collar workers, or at least their union leaders, are thrilled about the data center boom. There are loads of these projects underway and they show no sign of stopping, so the fact that it's only work for a few years per building hardly matters. Plus, the pay is great because the projects have to fight each other for labor. It also says that localities competed for these projects because of the substantial tax revenue they'll bring in for the communities. Separately, while electrity usage is a valid concern with respect to pollution, data centers are not really driving electric costs up for residents, with (maybe?) a couple exceptions. Noise is likewise a non-issue by-and-large with (definitely existent) rare exceptions. And the water usage issue is totally invented; data centers use a tiny fraction of the water other industries that would otherwise occupy industrially-zoned land use. You didn't mention it, but the interview also contends that the "this will take our jobs" angle that gets passed around here as a reason isn't on anybody's mind. Instead, it seems that the AI companies used NDAs to prevent localities from efficiently pricing their deals. That's obviously sketchy on its own and worthy of attack, plus as a bonus it prevents governments from making statements to clarify that the populist narratives that surround the things and are, bluntly, false. [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-centers https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-cen...
- nozzlegear 25d ago
  This is a very long interview, and I really don't think it's as rosy for AI as you're painting it. Jasmine makes it clear throughout that people are very concerned about data centers in their areas, and AI in general. From the comments on that post, Rachel says: > With all due respect to Nate and Jasmine I think they are overthinking why people hate data centers - it’s a fairly direct answer. People hate data centers because they are a tangible manifestation of a technology that is expected to take away their jobs and lifestyle, mess with their societal place and sense of self, and uglify their neighborhoods and the natural world, all while providing little obvious benefit to the regular person and the tantalizing prospects of all the weird elites they hate the most becoming brains in a jar who lord over them forever. Bingo.
  - ToValueFunfetti 25d ago
    I read that comment as well at the time and was taken aback. After such a lengthy discussion where Jasmine went and talked to the people doing the disagreeing over multiple weeks and reported her findings, Rachel replies that no, this is wrong, her presumably pre-existing belief is correct, and she cites nothing at all in support of this. Due respect seemed lacking despite claims to the contrary. Likewise, I am taken aback that you, having apparently read this lengthy interview to find it in disagreement with my summary, elected instead to quote Rachel's unsupported comment dismissing the whole thing. Why not just quote the journalist disagreeing with me instead of some rando disagreeing with her? Does Rachel have a reputation that I'm unaware of?
    - deleted 25d ago
      [deleted]
    - nozzlegear 25d ago
      I feel like we read two different articles. Both Nate and Jasmine think the outlook for AI looks grim. They both think that the locals are right to protest, they think that the concern about AI and its environmental impact is real, they both think that AI is politically toxic and SV is out of touch. Meanwhile, your comment downplays all of the legitimate concerns that Jasmine discusses and worse, even invents concerns to downplay as if Jasmine had reported on them. In particular, you said that noise is a non-issue – that's not discussed at all in the interview (CMD+F "noise" – zero results). You said that data centers "are not really driving electric costs up for residents," but Jasmine doesn't say that at all. Instead, she says that power and electricity are the most serious of everyone's environmental concerns, and that electricity rates going up is just one of the concerns that motivates opposition. You said that the "they will take our jobs" argument is not on anybody's mind, which is literally false. Jasmine says job displacement wasn't the dominant explanation that people gave for opposing local data centers, but they both repeatedly discuss job displacement. Jasmine even quotes people she interviewed as saying "my boss keeps making me use AI, I have to say that I’m using AI or people won’t resource my project." You said that NDAs prevented governments from clarifying "bluntly false" narratives, but that's, at best, cherry-picking what Jasmine was saying. You're right that NDAs were used and officials couldn't correct rumors about deals or water usage, but the interview does not say that the concerns people had were just straight up false. She notes that they had real concerns like grid strain, gas generation (from the power plants they're putting on data center property), ugly facilities, temporary jobs, subsidies, secrecy, and an unequal distribution of the benefits. > Likewise, I am taken aback that you, having apparently read this lengthy interview to find it in disagreement with my summary, elected instead to quote Rachel's unsupported comment dismissing the whole thing. Why not just quote the journalist disagreeing with me instead of some rando disagreeing with her? Does Rachel have a reputation that I'm unaware of? I find it strange that you're putting more stock in a substack journalist from the Bay area who went to Wisconsin to figure out why people are doing something, than the people who live there and are doing that thing. Do the people who live in the places where data centers are going up have no value to their opinions? Does Rachel need her own Substack before we can take her bonafides seriously? I'm taken aback.
newsomix9xl 25d ago
The electrical price argument I find unconvincing. If this is a shortage of electrical capacity the data center didn't arrange that. I'm pretty sure they want plentiful cheap electricity. And the data center doesn't set the price: that's the utility and regulators. Yet the consumer is blamed for poor regulation and low supply?
- dragontamer 24d ago
  Supply and demand. The Hyperion Datacenter alone is estimated to eat 5GW of power from the grid. In contrast, all of Texas just reached a peak of 91GW a few weeks ago. A singular datacenter uses electricity that's comparable to small states, and is a non-negligable portion of electricity usage of larger states like Texas. -------- What do you think happens when a rich datacenter comes in bidding whatever price for electricity? Spoiler alert, we live in a free market. The price auctions of electricity skyrockets, just like what's going on in the PJM interconnect.
  - newsomix9xl 24d ago
    I have seen a local utility promote a program to use electricity at off peak hours. Why? So they didn't have to create more capacity: they could keep using their old generators which were profitable; adding more capacity cut into their profit margin. They are deliberately reducing supply to keep themselves at maximum profitability. But hey - someone invents popular electric cars, and everyone wants to use AI for their homework. These things need electrical capacity. A lot more. As I've said elsewhere: data centers don't set electrical prices (utilities do, sometimes under regulators); data centers don't determine capacity - utilities do. Data Centers want cheap electricity and abundant capacity like we all do. Maybe more so. If a local restaurant makes hamburgers, and decides to restrict the number of hamburgers they can make to keep profit margins up, and then someone comes into town with a circus that wants to eat and the restaurant decides to triple their prices to gouge the circus and sells all the hamburgers to them, is that the fault of the circus? The circus didn't want to restrict the restaurant capacity, nor did they set the price of the burger. They want many and cheap burgers like everyone else - they're a customer just like us. This is clearly an institutional problem: greedy inefficient utilities, and let's call them "oddly cooperative" political players (I'm not gonna say corrupt without any evidence, but whose interests are they serving?).

dofm 25d ago

I think that was maybe a rhetorical question, but that indeed sums it up.

ToValueFunfetti 25d ago

Just read this interview[1] the other day that contends that the blue collar workers, or at least their union leaders, are thrilled about the data center boom. There are loads of these projects underway and they show no sign of stopping, so the fact that it's only work for a few years per building hardly matters. Plus, the pay is great because the projects have to fight each other for labor. It also says that localities competed for these projects because of the substantial tax revenue they'll bring in for the communities. Separately, while electrity usage is a valid concern with respect to pollution, data centers are not really driving electric costs up for residents, with (maybe?) a couple exceptions. Noise is likewise a non-issue by-and-large with (definitely existent) rare exceptions. And the water usage issue is totally invented; data centers use a tiny fraction of the water other industries that would otherwise occupy industrially-zoned land use. You didn't mention it, but the interview also contends that the "this will take our jobs" angle that gets passed around here as a reason isn't on anybody's mind. Instead, it seems that the AI companies used NDAs to prevent localities from efficiently pricing their deals. That's obviously sketchy on its own and worthy of attack, plus as a bonus it prevents governments from making statements to clarify that the populist narratives that surround the things and are, bluntly, false. [1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-centers https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-cen...

nozzlegear 25d ago
This is a very long interview, and I really don't think it's as rosy for AI as you're painting it. Jasmine makes it clear throughout that people are very concerned about data centers in their areas, and AI in general. From the comments on that post, Rachel says: > With all due respect to Nate and Jasmine I think they are overthinking why people hate data centers - it’s a fairly direct answer. People hate data centers because they are a tangible manifestation of a technology that is expected to take away their jobs and lifestyle, mess with their societal place and sense of self, and uglify their neighborhoods and the natural world, all while providing little obvious benefit to the regular person and the tantalizing prospects of all the weird elites they hate the most becoming brains in a jar who lord over them forever. Bingo.
- ToValueFunfetti 25d ago
  I read that comment as well at the time and was taken aback. After such a lengthy discussion where Jasmine went and talked to the people doing the disagreeing over multiple weeks and reported her findings, Rachel replies that no, this is wrong, her presumably pre-existing belief is correct, and she cites nothing at all in support of this. Due respect seemed lacking despite claims to the contrary. Likewise, I am taken aback that you, having apparently read this lengthy interview to find it in disagreement with my summary, elected instead to quote Rachel's unsupported comment dismissing the whole thing. Why not just quote the journalist disagreeing with me instead of some rando disagreeing with her? Does Rachel have a reputation that I'm unaware of?
  - deleted 25d ago
    [deleted]
  - nozzlegear 25d ago
    I feel like we read two different articles. Both Nate and Jasmine think the outlook for AI looks grim. They both think that the locals are right to protest, they think that the concern about AI and its environmental impact is real, they both think that AI is politically toxic and SV is out of touch. Meanwhile, your comment downplays all of the legitimate concerns that Jasmine discusses and worse, even invents concerns to downplay as if Jasmine had reported on them. In particular, you said that noise is a non-issue – that's not discussed at all in the interview (CMD+F "noise" – zero results). You said that data centers "are not really driving electric costs up for residents," but Jasmine doesn't say that at all. Instead, she says that power and electricity are the most serious of everyone's environmental concerns, and that electricity rates going up is just one of the concerns that motivates opposition. You said that the "they will take our jobs" argument is not on anybody's mind, which is literally false. Jasmine says job displacement wasn't the dominant explanation that people gave for opposing local data centers, but they both repeatedly discuss job displacement. Jasmine even quotes people she interviewed as saying "my boss keeps making me use AI, I have to say that I’m using AI or people won’t resource my project." You said that NDAs prevented governments from clarifying "bluntly false" narratives, but that's, at best, cherry-picking what Jasmine was saying. You're right that NDAs were used and officials couldn't correct rumors about deals or water usage, but the interview does not say that the concerns people had were just straight up false. She notes that they had real concerns like grid strain, gas generation (from the power plants they're putting on data center property), ugly facilities, temporary jobs, subsidies, secrecy, and an unequal distribution of the benefits. > Likewise, I am taken aback that you, having apparently read this lengthy interview to find it in disagreement with my summary, elected instead to quote Rachel's unsupported comment dismissing the whole thing. Why not just quote the journalist disagreeing with me instead of some rando disagreeing with her? Does Rachel have a reputation that I'm unaware of? I find it strange that you're putting more stock in a substack journalist from the Bay area who went to Wisconsin to figure out why people are doing something, than the people who live there and are doing that thing. Do the people who live in the places where data centers are going up have no value to their opinions? Does Rachel need her own Substack before we can take her bonafides seriously? I'm taken aback.

newsomix9xl 25d ago

The electrical price argument I find unconvincing. If this is a shortage of electrical capacity the data center didn't arrange that. I'm pretty sure they want plentiful cheap electricity. And the data center doesn't set the price: that's the utility and regulators. Yet the consumer is blamed for poor regulation and low supply?

dragontamer 24d ago
Supply and demand. The Hyperion Datacenter alone is estimated to eat 5GW of power from the grid. In contrast, all of Texas just reached a peak of 91GW a few weeks ago. A singular datacenter uses electricity that's comparable to small states, and is a non-negligable portion of electricity usage of larger states like Texas. -------- What do you think happens when a rich datacenter comes in bidding whatever price for electricity? Spoiler alert, we live in a free market. The price auctions of electricity skyrockets, just like what's going on in the PJM interconnect.
- newsomix9xl 24d ago
  I have seen a local utility promote a program to use electricity at off peak hours. Why? So they didn't have to create more capacity: they could keep using their old generators which were profitable; adding more capacity cut into their profit margin. They are deliberately reducing supply to keep themselves at maximum profitability. But hey - someone invents popular electric cars, and everyone wants to use AI for their homework. These things need electrical capacity. A lot more. As I've said elsewhere: data centers don't set electrical prices (utilities do, sometimes under regulators); data centers don't determine capacity - utilities do. Data Centers want cheap electricity and abundant capacity like we all do. Maybe more so. If a local restaurant makes hamburgers, and decides to restrict the number of hamburgers they can make to keep profit margins up, and then someone comes into town with a circus that wants to eat and the restaurant decides to triple their prices to gouge the circus and sells all the hamburgers to them, is that the fault of the circus? The circus didn't want to restrict the restaurant capacity, nor did they set the price of the burger. They want many and cheap burgers like everyone else - they're a customer just like us. This is clearly an institutional problem: greedy inefficient utilities, and let's call them "oddly cooperative" political players (I'm not gonna say corrupt without any evidence, but whose interests are they serving?).