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> We are also in a time when most people would prefer to use that water for drinking, washing, cleaning… basically anything except data centres. And those peop

> We are also in a time when most people would prefer to use that water for drinking, washing, cleaning… basically anything except data centres. And those people are stupid or to be charitable "ignorant." Full stop. I'm not trying to be an ass here, I mean it genuinely. Those people are ignorant at best. Email runs on datacenters, Google runs on datacenters, netflix needs them. Delta airlines uses data centers to route flights and host their massive amounts of data (and so do all the other operations out there). The NWS is using super computers (and big data) to predict the weather. The good, the bad, everything runs on giant clusters of data centers, compute, and power. How many datacenters host the most popular steam games and movies? Indeed, the very message of "Data Center BAD!" is hosted on data centers. You think this wild anti-progress ideology could exist in a world without them? Of course not. Our modern life is enabled by these damn near miraculous technical tools and the people screaming about water or anything else are seldom against the things that they like. Plenty of people shit-talk data centers then go fly to Paris on vacation. Plenty of the same people water their lawns and drive to work when they could walk. In my experience, "DATA BAD" is just code for "AI BAD" - they're really against AI. You talk to these people, and the same thing always comes up, "well, AI is bad for artists" or "AI is going to take over all the jobs" or something along those lines. It's always some scifi fueled Yudkowskian fever dream or fear of losing their jobs or "Elon/Bezos/Gates/Whoever = BAD!" Very little of it is based in any sort of actual evaluation of the world. And I'm not necessarily arguing with them on these guys being jackasses. But the world is not just a black and white thing typically, and the complaints about all of these changes (and that's what all this is, a fear of the new and complaints about change) are reactionary grasps yearning for a prior era. It's terminally (and ironically) online people complaining that they can no longer find meaning in an increasingly competitive work place. It's fear! I've now seen this with many people I know. I've seen this in a huge amount of online spaces. I've seen it in the real world. This is "millenials getting conservative but not realizing it." It's people being afraid of change. Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem. People being unwilling or unable to adjust to change and it is at it's core a conservative mindset despite the liberal (not leftist mind you) costume it wears. Logic and reason aren't going to convince these folks of anything, they didn't get to their views with logic, they're not going to logic their way out of them. It's modern liberalism's version of climate denial, and it's literally a reactionary way of viewing the world. To your point, very few of these people are likely to read the economist and think "whoa, I was wrong." You're spot on there - but I also don't think that people know where their water comes from, their food comes from, their power comes from, their Net Flix comes from, their medication comes from, or really anything else. They're thinking "I DON'T LIKE X, X NEEDS Y, THEREFORE Y BAD!" That's it typically. The radical leftist position should be "seizing the means of computation" and "man the barricades, this is OUR data center now!" Not, "WE NEED BETTER LAWS TO PROTECT PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE SPACE OF IDEAS TO PROTECT JOBS MAKING LOGOS AND WRITING AD COPY!" This is millenials getting older and confusing reactionary nostalgia for "a better world."

bayindirh 11d ago
> Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem. Millenial here, hello. Yes, we were the biggest pirates, because we had no means to buy the music we liked, period. CDs were kidney-money (if the album we liked available at all), digital distribution was non-existent and cassettes were sounding worse than first generation shellac records in some cases. I personally bought most of the music I used to pirate. I buy the eBooks I like, and keep a backup copy for myself. Heck I even hounded a CD from a disbanded group for a couple of years and ordered it online because the music was good and they deserved another sale. Because for us, piracy was about the service at first. We went to concerts, bought merch, etc. to support them. Also this brings me to the second point: You miss the point entirely about datacenters & AI datacenters. Second, you miss the point between AI, the tech and the building of AI the tech. First, datacenters are nothing new, and nobody is opposed to "normal" datacenters. The difference between a standard datacenter and AI datacenter is almost night and day (power density, compute load, hardware portfolio, etc.). I always talk about AI datacenters, because I work at a datacenter. I know how these things can be made more environmentally friendly, but no, everybody has to move fast and break things. In this case, we're mostly breaking down our planet, accelerating water stress and global warming related side effects while destroying livelihoods of communities as a whole. Second is AI as a tech vs. how it's built as a tech. Heck, I'm not even opposed to copyrighted works used as training data, many of us want consent. Control over whether their works are used for training or not. Not compensation, not money, but consent. Not to be seen as slave of these AI providers to feed them. For artists, compensation is their right. Have you ever composed music, or performed even? Do you know how much effort goes into doing this (hint: We used to rehearse for 10 hours/week for 14 weeks to give a 90 minute concert)? Watch this [0] if you want some insight how a single song is assembled over ideas, takes, tries with blood, sweat and tears. Same for writing. Did you read Hyperion Cantos, Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer, Zones of Thought, etc.? I mean, even the fact checking in Ready Player One could easily take a year. These books created worlds, changed minds and the authors of these books and others deserve some fair compensation for this. You may find graphic design, art and photography mundane, but when you're not taking selfies and shooting stories or taking videos of a concert which you won't be able to enjoy because of the video-grabbing session for likes, these can be very powerful mediums for storytelling or getting your message across. Not everyone is against AI as the tech. I am not. I have developed agent-based systems with emergent intelligence before people knew the term autonomous agent. Yes, we need better laws to protect property rights in the space of ideas, but not to solely protect the jobs, but TO PROTECT THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMANS AND THEIR FREEDOM TO CREATE AND OWN THE THINGS THEY HAVE CREATED. "You'll own nothing and be happy" is a drug to make masses comply, and unfortunately, you're apparently one of the flag carriers of that crowd. This post is written with a real brain, approximately 10 fingers, at 1x by a physical human you can talk with. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLqhOEzpWyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLqhOEzpWyo

bayindirh 11d ago

> Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem. Millenial here, hello. Yes, we were the biggest pirates, because we had no means to buy the music we liked, period. CDs were kidney-money (if the album we liked available at all), digital distribution was non-existent and cassettes were sounding worse than first generation shellac records in some cases. I personally bought most of the music I used to pirate. I buy the eBooks I like, and keep a backup copy for myself. Heck I even hounded a CD from a disbanded group for a couple of years and ordered it online because the music was good and they deserved another sale. Because for us, piracy was about the service at first. We went to concerts, bought merch, etc. to support them. Also this brings me to the second point: You miss the point entirely about datacenters & AI datacenters. Second, you miss the point between AI, the tech and the building of AI the tech. First, datacenters are nothing new, and nobody is opposed to "normal" datacenters. The difference between a standard datacenter and AI datacenter is almost night and day (power density, compute load, hardware portfolio, etc.). I always talk about AI datacenters, because I work at a datacenter. I know how these things can be made more environmentally friendly, but no, everybody has to move fast and break things. In this case, we're mostly breaking down our planet, accelerating water stress and global warming related side effects while destroying livelihoods of communities as a whole. Second is AI as a tech vs. how it's built as a tech. Heck, I'm not even opposed to copyrighted works used as training data, many of us want consent. Control over whether their works are used for training or not. Not compensation, not money, but consent. Not to be seen as slave of these AI providers to feed them. For artists, compensation is their right. Have you ever composed music, or performed even? Do you know how much effort goes into doing this (hint: We used to rehearse for 10 hours/week for 14 weeks to give a 90 minute concert)? Watch this [0] if you want some insight how a single song is assembled over ideas, takes, tries with blood, sweat and tears. Same for writing. Did you read Hyperion Cantos, Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer, Zones of Thought, etc.? I mean, even the fact checking in Ready Player One could easily take a year. These books created worlds, changed minds and the authors of these books and others deserve some fair compensation for this. You may find graphic design, art and photography mundane, but when you're not taking selfies and shooting stories or taking videos of a concert which you won't be able to enjoy because of the video-grabbing session for likes, these can be very powerful mediums for storytelling or getting your message across. Not everyone is against AI as the tech. I am not. I have developed agent-based systems with emergent intelligence before people knew the term autonomous agent. Yes, we need better laws to protect property rights in the space of ideas, but not to solely protect the jobs, but TO PROTECT THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMANS AND THEIR FREEDOM TO CREATE AND OWN THE THINGS THEY HAVE CREATED. "You'll own nothing and be happy" is a drug to make masses comply, and unfortunately, you're apparently one of the flag carriers of that crowd. This post is written with a real brain, approximately 10 fingers, at 1x by a physical human you can talk with. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLqhOEzpWyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLqhOEzpWyo