I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers.
1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount.
2. Construct a public swimming complex nearby, heated with waste data center heat.
3. Local governments can enforce strict limits on environmental noise at the property boundary. I've personally stood right next to a 150MW-class datacenter and experienced sound levels less than traffic from a typical suburban 4-lane street; making the datacenter quieter than any other industrial use is a choice the builder can make if they have the right incentives.
Setup directional microphones around the perimeter, and fine them $25,000 per minute per dB above the agreed threshold. Distribute the fines to the neighbors. Failure to pay promptly means the sheriff shuts down the power.
All of these options are far cheaper than launching the data center into space...
None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk.
I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid.
In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.
In my area (South Carolina) - the opposition seems hyper fixated on “water use” with little or no conversation around electrical usage or even equitable utility rates. AI itself largely absent from the discourse.
I've long suspected that monied interests are seeding social media with weak arguments about water as a distraction, and people mindlessly re-share that as part of their identity. Then the other half can come along and "correct" them while the main issue of power is forgotten. Social media gets engagement, and capital gets its data centers.
It's the same tired distraction pattern we've seen for a long time now in politics, and they keep rolling it out because it works.
What makes their actions mindless, exactly? Is the implication that what they've read is easily falsifiable by the average person? One of the fundamentals to society-scale problem solving is not to dismiss the masses as morons, as much as we often enjoy doing that. You must accept who society is composed of, or else you, by definition, can't fix their problems.
Social media fosters that kind of behavior. Plus, people usually don't look into issues before deciding which "side" to be on, and more importantly don't examine if the sides are a manufactured false dichotomy, as they often are.
I suspect rather foreign actors seed some of the anti data center narrative in order to try and reduce American capability to compete in the space, just like the Soviets did with nuclear in the 60-80s.
If they wanted to do that, they'd pick stronger arguments for starters. But either way, social media updoots and shares aren't going to change anything with capital's plans, so it'd be weird for a foreign power to think that it would.
They don't need strong arguments they need emotionally resonent ones, "AI is using all your water" is a more primal, plus doesn't matter they just flood with a thousand different arguments.
And updoots might not but plenty of people now are protesting and pushing against allowing data centers to be built near them so it is working.
Nobody's gonna change their mind about AI wastefulness from an obviously AI-generated infographic. The author should have realized this with about 5 seconds of thought.
Many communities are water limited. Many communities limit housing construction permits to available sewer hookups. Many communities are carrying expensive bonds that citizens are paying off to fund water expansion projects.
I do not want one penny of infrastructure that I have paid for in order to grow/better my community going to subsidize infrastructure for datacenters.
Maybe it's semantics, but I feel like local QoL concerns (mainly noise and electric bills, plus an overblown focus on water) are the primary driver for in-community resistance. Shoving AI into everything is annoying, and there's real ideological opposition amongst a lot of online tastemakers, but not enough to motivate John Q. Public to show up to county zoning meetings. If hyperscalers were tactful enough to limit impacts on their neighbors, I think opposition would be a much more niche issue.
My proposal would be to require data-centers to provide enough clean energy to power themselves for years to come. That would help humanity survive. Plus it would lower energy costs when there is more power-generaion available. Lowering your power-bill would make people love AI.
That addresses the extinction risk caused by climate change, but not the extinction risk caused by an AI's turning out vastly more capable than expected, then the lab's losing control over it.
All of these options require “extra” money to be spent, which even if it logically makes sense, will not happen when it’s shown companies can buy local politicians and continue anyway
With low pitched data center noise does the decibel level tell the whole story? I thought it carried better and penetrated better than the db level would indicate.
I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live within such a distance currently do not have a clue. At that point I would not even worry about the noise from the backup generators.
It's the gas turbine generators at the massive DCs causing the big issue. There are dozens of them. Not your typical historical DC/colo or even 5yr ago hyperscaler DC.
These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. And I agree these specific projects are a major problem.
It’s just not representative of the bigger picture when there are a dozen horrible projects against say 1000 total.
The hyperbole is what gets my mom terrified of moving to a city that might allow a datacenter to be built 8 miles away from the place she was looking at.
> These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme.
I'm sure that will be a great consolation to the thousands of people who have to live near them. "Don't worry, your situation is very rare! That's why we don't have to do anything about it."
The engineer style snap to solution with no interest in the actual reasons many Americans are opposed to AI is one of the reasons Americans are opposed to AI
Populism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to force data centers anyhow.
Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?
Compared to the activism of the 60s and 70s, where so many people seemed willing to put their entire lives on hold for the cause, the fact that there is no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency leads me to believe there is a threshold of contentment afforded by modern technology and QoL.
In either case it is about populism though. Hopping on a bus to California to protest was a cool thing to do. Somehow this data center thing happened to catch on and become a lever people felt they could move with mere outrage, even if it does seem pretty misguided.
> but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?
They did. They elected Trump.
> no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency
Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working (or even actively working against them). So they implicitly want a strong president.
This only goes as far as the president agrees with them of course.
I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism.
> Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working
I think consciously verbalizing a position even that nuanced and esoteric is niche, but there is certainly something to be said for peoples' susceptibility to a type of "strong" cult leader.
>I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism.
Whatever else you'd want to say about Trump supporters, I wouldn't call them apathetic. Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong, but I can't see how anyone could characterize Trump's base as "apathetic."
I tried to be clever and succinct and it backfired.
I was more referring to "everyone else" as apathetic. Generally, I don't think voting is itself considered an act of activism. Somebody will always win the election regardless of overall levels of activism and apathy. January 6 could be considered activism, however (the bad kind that's closer to a riot). "Get out the vote" grassroots efforts are activism.
I think there is currently a general lack of enthusiasm for the political system and process in the US, and a lack of faith in the government. Trump has tapped into that, and riled people up. Tapping into fear and aggression and anger does not inspire what I would consider to be traditional political and civic activism which IMO is more rooted in "let's work together to make things better for our people."
As opposed to, "let's say MAGA but actually start foreign and domestic conflicts and squander resources on pointless personal ego projects." It is disturbing to me that people continue to support that but I'm still calling it more apathetic than activist.
Thanks for the clarification. The interesting thing about the 2024 election was that Trump's turnout was higher than 2016, and in addition, according to the polling and analysis I saw, this was one of the first times in a long time where if _more_ people had voted, he would have had _more_ votes. This is in pretty stark contrast to presidential voting trends for the last 30-40 years. So although I think you could paint 2016 as an "apathy" election (I would still argue that 2016 was more about two deeply unpopular candidates than anything else) I'm not sure that same analysis really applies to 2024. I'm basing a lot of this on this very interesting interview here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0J7dIlL7c -- so to the extent that I'm wrong or you disagree, this at least gives some context to my claims.
I did look that up and took out a line about voter turnout because of it. He definitely has rallied people. He does tap into an energy that the DNC has been blind to. But if you look at the tenor of it, it really does seem to be about anger and dissatisfaction and combativeness -- destructive rather than constructive. MAGA talking points and initiatives aren't about building up communities, schools, infrastructure...they're about all the bogeymans.
I do see the failure of either party to produce a truly constructively inspiring candidate as something seriously wrong with the system. Thanks for the link, it does seem interesting.
> I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism
And I would say that speaks more to your disconnect with most of US society. Very few folks actually trust activists for good reason.
Trump is like the most mild form of what is to come. The fact he got elected when he did is remarkable to me.
It only gets worse from here if things don’t change. At some point someone like him who is actually serious will be elected and then it’s basically game over.
Trump 2016 was a warning shot most folks in the chosen classes chose to ignore. Trump 2024 is something you ignore at your own peril at this point. I would be thanking the gods at the relative apathy so far if I believed that narrative.
If Trump was remotely competent we would be having entirely different conversations. There would be no option of “weathering the storm” to wait him out if so.
> And I would say that speaks more to your disconnect with most of US society. Very few folks actually trust activists for good reason.
I don't follow. What I said is in alignment with the idea that activism is out of vogue. The comment I replied to implied that electing Trump was an act of activism (or "doing something about it").
Anyway, we already had Hitler. Sadly too often, these guys pop up at the right time and wreak havoc but I would say they're outliers (and in general the world is globalizing and trending away from them).
We're already there. Project 2025/federalist society is using Trump as they have some goals in common, but they are the real drive behind ICE, DOGE, foreign policy like Venezuela, and general destruction of the federal government.
>Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?
Talking to people on HN, the answer is a resounding "NO." If I point out that smart phones are contributing to mental illness and have enabled mass-scale surveillance larger than ever previously thought possible, the response has been "but I might have trouble paying for parking and some restaurants don't have menus."
I couldn't disagree with this more. Yes, you individually control whether or not you use your smartphone, but the device itself is terrible in ways that I have no control over:
- touch controls rather than a real UI
- a terrible app store full of monetized garbage
- incredibly bad privacy options
- etc ..
In addition to that, modern society is moving towards requiring the usage of these devices. It's harder to opt out more and more every year. This is very much not a choice I can make. My employer would NOT accommodate me if I did not have a place to install their OTP app.
What I said was meant to apply at the societal level. I wasn't meaning to speak to personal responsibility. The fact that it's become standard practice for employers to require OTP or MDM is a reflection of how society chooses to use the technology.
It's like when Facebook was the bogeyman. Facebook is just a mirror. If you see bad stuff happening (e.g. people spreading and engaging with misinformation), that's the people, not the platform. Unless one is claiming specific intent on their part, Facebook (like most tech) enables good and bad in equal measure.
Getting rid of, or pushing back on, Facebook, or data centers, or smart phones, isn't going to move the needle toward a more caring and empathetic society. Those are all red herrings. Build schools. Pay teachers. Push back on fearmongering, xenophobia, and greed. Educating people to be good participants in the global community is the only chance we have.
Populism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to destroy or hamper important infrastructure anyhow.
Sadly if they were smart they would push for UBI rather than jobs or stopping data centers.
Zero-sum scarcity mentality needs to end. Don't push back on prosperity. Push to have those gains distributed more evenly.
Push for a ridiculous tax on data centers that goes directly to the local economy. If they don't buy it then it's the same result as blocking them on vibes.
UBI is a distraction. Of course it would help, but it's not a solution. Nobody is going to accept "here's how you filthy masses can be miserable instead of very miserable" as an acceptable compromise.
Calling people stupid for not accepting it is telling. Americans in particular will accept violence first (demonstrably), and this is in fact one of the defining virtues of Americans (yes, violence in the face of the imposition of misery by the wealthy is a virtue - not all societies exhibit this virtue).
There is a weird sense of entitlement that AI data centers should be allowed to get built anywhere, but I don't think the positive case has been made that it's actually that much of a net positive in many locations. The US is massive and if AI data centers are such a positive boon then it should be easy to find a place where they're actually welcome. Unlike traditional data centers where latency might be relevant, most AI data centers aren't latency sensitive so the default plan should be to build them far from major population centers. Just buy up a massive chunk of empty land in the middle of nowhere and drop all the data centers there.
There is some misinformation around resource usage, but most data center constructions aren't being fully candid and transparent with their expected resource usage either. I think the key issue is that many major constructions haven't built any trust with local communities nor have they listened to people's concerns, but they feel entitled to force through their projects anyway.
If you think that these AI data centers are great and incredibly beneficial, go advocate for your local government to bring construction to wherever it is that you live. Let people sort themselves out based on their interests.
I mean Michigan really loves it when something gives jobs, so as long as the data center actually enacts on it then I suspect opposition will go away
That said, we've seen data center projects often employ much less jobs than expected. I know Core Scientific when they did a data center in like Texas they employed like 10 people not 200
I really don't think it has anything to do with the datacenters as a building. It's more that AI has been kinda poison pilled in the minds of the people in terms of the negative emotions they feel regarding:
* Billionaires
* Job Loss
* AI slop floods
Ultimately they feel the need to be activists and they do so by being NIMBYs because you can have a ton of influence in municipal politics.
Who cares about pressure when you can now receive enough compensation to never worry about getting re-elected ever again. You can even fuck off to some safe haven country to live the rest of your life in peace and comfort.
still isn't gonna stop people from releasing the massive built-up stress and obliterating anything these morons have attempted to build.
if they weren't concerned then "hawaiian bunkers" wouldnt even be in society's vernacular.
if any rich people get caught in the crossfire at this point then that's on them but society has made it pretty clear that this is not an "if" situation and more a "when" one.
It's incredible how much traction the completely fabricated anti-data center propaganda has gotten, given it is false in all dimensions (uses hardly any water, decreases local energy bills, don't make noise).
The interest groups opposing them will do anything, including harming economic growth, jobs, great products, and life-saving research — as long as it kneecaps their rivals.
A datacenter was built a couple hundred feet from my apartment complex around 2013-2014. Absolutely none of your comment would have even remotely held true at the time, and my family moved away as a direct result.
Assuming positive intent, what’s different nowadays that makes it all different? It would actually make me pretty happy to hear about the incredible leaps and bounds that’ve been taken.
> It's incredible how much traction the completely fabricated anti-data center propaganda has gotten
Agreed - here in Australia one of the big TV networks was heavily advertising a story last week about the big bad data centres coming to suburbia. You can be critical of Australia's local governments all you want, but at least in the big cities, no one is going without water or power for any appreciable amount of time due to data centres or anything else.
I have been sending more letters to the editor and politicians than ever before.
A senator down south has been repeating the noise concern trolling from the USA, but wont even go to his local DC <3 minutes from his office to have a listen. I saw someone defend the noise complaints by saying "Oh but we are getting one of those gas turbine ones" and when I looked at the project it was being built really far away from habitation to take advantage/mutually invest in Gas and Renewable power nearby. (The gas being used as a method to fill a pumped hydro project). Both power sources were approved before the DC.
You just cant win. The stupid is the product.
It really is just a case of opportunistic politicians feeding the mob.
All… three of them if you really try hard? Really only two qualify as disasters to me. Three Mile Island wasn’t great, but certainly not a disaster on any level I can figure.
Yeah Chernobyl was the only really bad one. Windscale was bad also but that was a long time ago and not a power reactor. Neither reactor design is anything anyone would try to run today.
Edit: Well, RBMKs are still running in Russia but with significant safety upgrades.
If the above was false, no one would care. Plus these data centers provides almost no jobs, so there is no benefit to the community. Granted there is more tax revenue, but the people paying taxes do not see their tax burden go down.
All of the above are false, except for 3 which has actually happened in a few cases, though is definitely the outlier as I have been near data centers and couldn't hear a thing. And they provide a lot more jobs than the 0 jobs that were provided by the undeveloped land they are built on.
I wonder what fallacy you’re going to use to justify GPU-heavy data centers using zero water: are you going to take the “they’re closed loop” path, and conveniently ignore that they need to be continually topped off, and that effectively makes them open loop anyway (or that they heat exchange with a separate loop that is evaporated?) Or maybe you’ll just say “sure the water evaporates, but it’ll rain down somewhere so it’s still zero” ignoring that the water is taken from a place it’s needed (a municipality) to a place it’s not (the ocean)? Or maybe you’ll point to some extremely rare designs that don’t continually consume water, and pretend they’re representative of all of them (when the number of truly closed loop data centers effectively rounds to zero.)
Not who you responded to, but water usage only matters in areas where water is a scarce resource, yet I live next to one of the great lakes and constantly hear about how we should reject proposed data centers because of the water usage. The argument makes no sense around here. The usage would be a drop in the bucket compared to already existing industrial uses of water, so it's clear that people just parrot arguments that they don't even understand.
There has been some talk recently about the impact on water of closed loop systems - as it turns out they get a flush before first use and that contamination from that has been a problem.
Water usage in this context is a rounding error on a rounding error on top of a rounding error when it comes to corn production for ethanol.
Anyone bringing it up does not actually care about the water usage. It’s just a politically easy topic to get traction with. If anyone starts off their anti-datacenter screed with this, it instantly outs them as someone you can ignore as unserious person on the topic.
Plenty of other legitimate reasons to be anti-datacenter but this isn’t one of them.
I’m against corn production for ethanol too: that AI datacenters aren’t as bad as one of the worst ideas our country has ever had, isn’t much praise.
You know what instantly outs someone as unserious on the topic for me? When they give an unqualified “none of that is true” when someone talks about water use. I agree discussion should carry the nuance, but this conversation started with none of it.
A modern 100MW scale datacenter uses about as much water as a 5-10k population municipality. And provides about as many jobs as a medium-sized wal-mart. Whether that’s a lot to you or not certainly depends on where the proposed datacenter is being built. But it does nobody any good to simply say “nuh uh, you’re wrong” when someone talks about the water use. Nor does bringing up any number of other high-water-using industrial sites that people also wouldn’t want in their back yard.
The fact there is not the social media and political outrage there is on stuff that is literally 10-1000x the water usage is what outs folks as being unserious on the topic. Collectively speaking, people do not give a shit about water usage at all for any reason.
It’s like private jets. If you talk about PJ use in the first 10 minutes about your diatribe about climate change I already know you give zero care about co2 production and only want to either hate rich folks for valid but unrelated reasons, or are an entirely unserious person.
Both are focusing on a mathematically immaterial number when it comes to the supposed problem they say they care about. It they actually cared, they would be talking about things that matter and can move the needle if they “win”.
I welcome high water use stuff in my back yard because my region has plenty of water, plus I firmly believe in the fact that a society cannot have wealth without industry. Datacenters, steel production, whatever. Bring it on.
Are there specific bad projects that should not happen due to local water concerns? Absolutely! But that is not the discussion anyone is having. Datacenter water usage as an industry is a total non issue and is an increasingly immediate tell that someone has no clue what they speak of.
I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers.
1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount.
2. Construct a public swimming complex nearby, heated with waste data center heat.
3. Local governments can enforce strict limits on environmental noise at the property boundary. I've personally stood right next to a 150MW-class datacenter and experienced sound levels less than traffic from a typical suburban 4-lane street; making the datacenter quieter than any other industrial use is a choice the builder can make if they have the right incentives.
Setup directional microphones around the perimeter, and fine them $25,000 per minute per dB above the agreed threshold. Distribute the fines to the neighbors. Failure to pay promptly means the sheriff shuts down the power.
All of these options are far cheaper than launching the data center into space...
None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk.
I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid.
In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.
In my area (South Carolina) - the opposition seems hyper fixated on “water use” with little or no conversation around electrical usage or even equitable utility rates. AI itself largely absent from the discourse.
Data centers use miniscular amount of water. Data center water use is a fake issue.
I've long suspected that monied interests are seeding social media with weak arguments about water as a distraction, and people mindlessly re-share that as part of their identity. Then the other half can come along and "correct" them while the main issue of power is forgotten. Social media gets engagement, and capital gets its data centers.
It's the same tired distraction pattern we've seen for a long time now in politics, and they keep rolling it out because it works.
What makes their actions mindless, exactly? Is the implication that what they've read is easily falsifiable by the average person? One of the fundamentals to society-scale problem solving is not to dismiss the masses as morons, as much as we often enjoy doing that. You must accept who society is composed of, or else you, by definition, can't fix their problems.
Social media fosters that kind of behavior. Plus, people usually don't look into issues before deciding which "side" to be on, and more importantly don't examine if the sides are a manufactured false dichotomy, as they often are.
I suspect rather foreign actors seed some of the anti data center narrative in order to try and reduce American capability to compete in the space, just like the Soviets did with nuclear in the 60-80s.
If they wanted to do that, they'd pick stronger arguments for starters. But either way, social media updoots and shares aren't going to change anything with capital's plans, so it'd be weird for a foreign power to think that it would.
updoots == upvotes
(slang from reddit)
They don't need strong arguments they need emotionally resonent ones, "AI is using all your water" is a more primal, plus doesn't matter they just flood with a thousand different arguments.
And updoots might not but plenty of people now are protesting and pushing against allowing data centers to be built near them so it is working.
Like everything else, it's only a matter of time before capital gets its way. Democracy is illusory in case you haven't noticed.
This is a great data-backed resource to refute made-up claims about data centers:
https://www.andymasley.com/visuals/ai-prompt-footprint/
Nobody's gonna change their mind about AI wastefulness from an obviously AI-generated infographic. The author should have realized this with about 5 seconds of thought.
The medium is the message.
Many communities are water limited. Many communities limit housing construction permits to available sewer hookups. Many communities are carrying expensive bonds that citizens are paying off to fund water expansion projects.
I do not want one penny of infrastructure that I have paid for in order to grow/better my community going to subsidize infrastructure for datacenters.
Maybe it's semantics, but I feel like local QoL concerns (mainly noise and electric bills, plus an overblown focus on water) are the primary driver for in-community resistance. Shoving AI into everything is annoying, and there's real ideological opposition amongst a lot of online tastemakers, but not enough to motivate John Q. Public to show up to county zoning meetings. If hyperscalers were tactful enough to limit impacts on their neighbors, I think opposition would be a much more niche issue.
> with a side of extinction risk.
My proposal would be to require data-centers to provide enough clean energy to power themselves for years to come. That would help humanity survive. Plus it would lower energy costs when there is more power-generaion available. Lowering your power-bill would make people love AI.
That addresses the extinction risk caused by climate change, but not the extinction risk caused by an AI's turning out vastly more capable than expected, then the lab's losing control over it.
AI is not leading to job losses.
It's pretty clear to me that coding agents are a significant cause of the current glut of comp-sci graduates unable to find their first job...
All of these options require “extra” money to be spent, which even if it logically makes sense, will not happen when it’s shown companies can buy local politicians and continue anyway
Politics in the US reliably fail to arrive at reasonable conclusions like this. I don't know why.
With low pitched data center noise does the decibel level tell the whole story? I thought it carried better and penetrated better than the db level would indicate.
What about fan noise is low pitched?
I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live within such a distance currently do not have a clue. At that point I would not even worry about the noise from the backup generators.
It's the gas turbine generators at the massive DCs causing the big issue. There are dozens of them. Not your typical historical DC/colo or even 5yr ago hyperscaler DC.
These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. And I agree these specific projects are a major problem.
It’s just not representative of the bigger picture when there are a dozen horrible projects against say 1000 total.
The hyperbole is what gets my mom terrified of moving to a city that might allow a datacenter to be built 8 miles away from the place she was looking at.
> These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme.
I'm sure that will be a great consolation to the thousands of people who have to live near them. "Don't worry, your situation is very rare! That's why we don't have to do anything about it."
The engineer style snap to solution with no interest in the actual reasons many Americans are opposed to AI is one of the reasons Americans are opposed to AI
Populism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to force data centers anyhow.
Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?
Compared to the activism of the 60s and 70s, where so many people seemed willing to put their entire lives on hold for the cause, the fact that there is no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency leads me to believe there is a threshold of contentment afforded by modern technology and QoL.
In either case it is about populism though. Hopping on a bus to California to protest was a cool thing to do. Somehow this data center thing happened to catch on and become a lever people felt they could move with mere outrage, even if it does seem pretty misguided.
> but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?
They did. They elected Trump.
> no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency
Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working (or even actively working against them). So they implicitly want a strong president.
This only goes as far as the president agrees with them of course.
> They did. They elected Trump.
I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism.
> Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working
I think consciously verbalizing a position even that nuanced and esoteric is niche, but there is certainly something to be said for peoples' susceptibility to a type of "strong" cult leader.
>I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism.
Whatever else you'd want to say about Trump supporters, I wouldn't call them apathetic. Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong, but I can't see how anyone could characterize Trump's base as "apathetic."
I tried to be clever and succinct and it backfired.
I was more referring to "everyone else" as apathetic. Generally, I don't think voting is itself considered an act of activism. Somebody will always win the election regardless of overall levels of activism and apathy. January 6 could be considered activism, however (the bad kind that's closer to a riot). "Get out the vote" grassroots efforts are activism.
I think there is currently a general lack of enthusiasm for the political system and process in the US, and a lack of faith in the government. Trump has tapped into that, and riled people up. Tapping into fear and aggression and anger does not inspire what I would consider to be traditional political and civic activism which IMO is more rooted in "let's work together to make things better for our people."
As opposed to, "let's say MAGA but actually start foreign and domestic conflicts and squander resources on pointless personal ego projects." It is disturbing to me that people continue to support that but I'm still calling it more apathetic than activist.
Thanks for the clarification. The interesting thing about the 2024 election was that Trump's turnout was higher than 2016, and in addition, according to the polling and analysis I saw, this was one of the first times in a long time where if _more_ people had voted, he would have had _more_ votes. This is in pretty stark contrast to presidential voting trends for the last 30-40 years. So although I think you could paint 2016 as an "apathy" election (I would still argue that 2016 was more about two deeply unpopular candidates than anything else) I'm not sure that same analysis really applies to 2024. I'm basing a lot of this on this very interesting interview here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0J7dIlL7c -- so to the extent that I'm wrong or you disagree, this at least gives some context to my claims.
I did look that up and took out a line about voter turnout because of it. He definitely has rallied people. He does tap into an energy that the DNC has been blind to. But if you look at the tenor of it, it really does seem to be about anger and dissatisfaction and combativeness -- destructive rather than constructive. MAGA talking points and initiatives aren't about building up communities, schools, infrastructure...they're about all the bogeymans.
I do see the failure of either party to produce a truly constructively inspiring candidate as something seriously wrong with the system. Thanks for the link, it does seem interesting.
Agreed wholeheartedly, thanks for the response.
> I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism
And I would say that speaks more to your disconnect with most of US society. Very few folks actually trust activists for good reason.
Trump is like the most mild form of what is to come. The fact he got elected when he did is remarkable to me.
It only gets worse from here if things don’t change. At some point someone like him who is actually serious will be elected and then it’s basically game over.
Trump 2016 was a warning shot most folks in the chosen classes chose to ignore. Trump 2024 is something you ignore at your own peril at this point. I would be thanking the gods at the relative apathy so far if I believed that narrative.
If Trump was remotely competent we would be having entirely different conversations. There would be no option of “weathering the storm” to wait him out if so.
> And I would say that speaks more to your disconnect with most of US society. Very few folks actually trust activists for good reason.
I don't follow. What I said is in alignment with the idea that activism is out of vogue. The comment I replied to implied that electing Trump was an act of activism (or "doing something about it").
Anyway, we already had Hitler. Sadly too often, these guys pop up at the right time and wreak havoc but I would say they're outliers (and in general the world is globalizing and trending away from them).
We're already there. Project 2025/federalist society is using Trump as they have some goals in common, but they are the real drive behind ICE, DOGE, foreign policy like Venezuela, and general destruction of the federal government.
>Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?
Talking to people on HN, the answer is a resounding "NO." If I point out that smart phones are contributing to mental illness and have enabled mass-scale surveillance larger than ever previously thought possible, the response has been "but I might have trouble paying for parking and some restaurants don't have menus."
Smart phones are fine though. Technology is just what we make it. It's a reflection. It is, and always has been, the people that need to change.
I couldn't disagree with this more. Yes, you individually control whether or not you use your smartphone, but the device itself is terrible in ways that I have no control over:
- touch controls rather than a real UI
- a terrible app store full of monetized garbage
- incredibly bad privacy options
- etc ..
In addition to that, modern society is moving towards requiring the usage of these devices. It's harder to opt out more and more every year. This is very much not a choice I can make. My employer would NOT accommodate me if I did not have a place to install their OTP app.
What I said was meant to apply at the societal level. I wasn't meaning to speak to personal responsibility. The fact that it's become standard practice for employers to require OTP or MDM is a reflection of how society chooses to use the technology.
It's like when Facebook was the bogeyman. Facebook is just a mirror. If you see bad stuff happening (e.g. people spreading and engaging with misinformation), that's the people, not the platform. Unless one is claiming specific intent on their part, Facebook (like most tech) enables good and bad in equal measure.
Getting rid of, or pushing back on, Facebook, or data centers, or smart phones, isn't going to move the needle toward a more caring and empathetic society. Those are all red herrings. Build schools. Pay teachers. Push back on fearmongering, xenophobia, and greed. Educating people to be good participants in the global community is the only chance we have.
Populism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to destroy or hamper important infrastructure anyhow.
People are actually angry about inflation and a sense of a stagnant labor market. Data centers and AI play into both those fears.
Sadly if they were smart they would push for UBI rather than jobs or stopping data centers.
Zero-sum scarcity mentality needs to end. Don't push back on prosperity. Push to have those gains distributed more evenly.
Push for a ridiculous tax on data centers that goes directly to the local economy. If they don't buy it then it's the same result as blocking them on vibes.
UBI is a distraction. Of course it would help, but it's not a solution. Nobody is going to accept "here's how you filthy masses can be miserable instead of very miserable" as an acceptable compromise.
Calling people stupid for not accepting it is telling. Americans in particular will accept violence first (demonstrably), and this is in fact one of the defining virtues of Americans (yes, violence in the face of the imposition of misery by the wealthy is a virtue - not all societies exhibit this virtue).
There is a weird sense of entitlement that AI data centers should be allowed to get built anywhere, but I don't think the positive case has been made that it's actually that much of a net positive in many locations. The US is massive and if AI data centers are such a positive boon then it should be easy to find a place where they're actually welcome. Unlike traditional data centers where latency might be relevant, most AI data centers aren't latency sensitive so the default plan should be to build them far from major population centers. Just buy up a massive chunk of empty land in the middle of nowhere and drop all the data centers there.
There is some misinformation around resource usage, but most data center constructions aren't being fully candid and transparent with their expected resource usage either. I think the key issue is that many major constructions haven't built any trust with local communities nor have they listened to people's concerns, but they feel entitled to force through their projects anyway.
If you think that these AI data centers are great and incredibly beneficial, go advocate for your local government to bring construction to wherever it is that you live. Let people sort themselves out based on their interests.
We’ve been visiting data centers for decades… now it appears to be a hot potato. It’s a bit surreal.
I mean Michigan really loves it when something gives jobs, so as long as the data center actually enacts on it then I suspect opposition will go away
That said, we've seen data center projects often employ much less jobs than expected. I know Core Scientific when they did a data center in like Texas they employed like 10 people not 200
*upate I just realized this is Saline, next to Ann Arbor and had a lot of student activism to push back against the data centre project like last year
So imo I dont think the article truly represents the opinions and thoughts of most michiganders
I really don't think it has anything to do with the datacenters as a building. It's more that AI has been kinda poison pilled in the minds of the people in terms of the negative emotions they feel regarding:
* Billionaires
* Job Loss
* AI slop floods
Ultimately they feel the need to be activists and they do so by being NIMBYs because you can have a ton of influence in municipal politics.
Who cares about pressure when you can now receive enough compensation to never worry about getting re-elected ever again. You can even fuck off to some safe haven country to live the rest of your life in peace and comfort.
still isn't gonna stop people from releasing the massive built-up stress and obliterating anything these morons have attempted to build.
if they weren't concerned then "hawaiian bunkers" wouldnt even be in society's vernacular.
if any rich people get caught in the crossfire at this point then that's on them but society has made it pretty clear that this is not an "if" situation and more a "when" one.
What I see today public will reelect anyway. So no worries about that either.
It's incredible how much traction the completely fabricated anti-data center propaganda has gotten, given it is false in all dimensions (uses hardly any water, decreases local energy bills, don't make noise).
The interest groups opposing them will do anything, including harming economic growth, jobs, great products, and life-saving research — as long as it kneecaps their rivals.
A datacenter was built a couple hundred feet from my apartment complex around 2013-2014. Absolutely none of your comment would have even remotely held true at the time, and my family moved away as a direct result.
Assuming positive intent, what’s different nowadays that makes it all different? It would actually make me pretty happy to hear about the incredible leaps and bounds that’ve been taken.
What did the nearby datacentre do that made you move?
our energy bills went up 30% YOY and we are nowhere near a data center. It’s easy to see why people don’t like this
-> and we are nowhere near a data center.
Please square that with a rational argument against data centers then?
Then it sounds like your energy bill wasn't because of a data centre.
> It's incredible how much traction the completely fabricated anti-data center propaganda has gotten
Agreed - here in Australia one of the big TV networks was heavily advertising a story last week about the big bad data centres coming to suburbia. You can be critical of Australia's local governments all you want, but at least in the big cities, no one is going without water or power for any appreciable amount of time due to data centres or anything else.
Who are the interest groups you’re referring to?
I have been sending more letters to the editor and politicians than ever before.
A senator down south has been repeating the noise concern trolling from the USA, but wont even go to his local DC <3 minutes from his office to have a listen. I saw someone defend the noise complaints by saying "Oh but we are getting one of those gas turbine ones" and when I looked at the project it was being built really far away from habitation to take advantage/mutually invest in Gas and Renewable power nearby. (The gas being used as a method to fill a pumped hydro project). Both power sources were approved before the DC.
You just cant win. The stupid is the product.
It really is just a case of opportunistic politicians feeding the mob.
Similar to the trajectory of nuclear power which lost public approval for reasons that are not entirely rational.
I have been half wondering if it gets bad enough will people be willing to support nuclear power again.
Gen Alpha or whatever the latest rising adults are called might. They are too young to remember any of the disasters
All… three of them if you really try hard? Really only two qualify as disasters to me. Three Mile Island wasn’t great, but certainly not a disaster on any level I can figure.
Yeah Chernobyl was the only really bad one. Windscale was bad also but that was a long time ago and not a power reactor. Neither reactor design is anything anyone would try to run today.
Edit: Well, RBMKs are still running in Russia but with significant safety upgrades.
All the data centers do is:
1. use all the water
2. Increase electric costs but a large amount
3. Increase noise in the neighborhood
If the above was false, no one would care. Plus these data centers provides almost no jobs, so there is no benefit to the community. Granted there is more tax revenue, but the people paying taxes do not see their tax burden go down.
So the wonder why ??
All of the above are false, except for 3 which has actually happened in a few cases, though is definitely the outlier as I have been near data centers and couldn't hear a thing. And they provide a lot more jobs than the 0 jobs that were provided by the undeveloped land they are built on.
I wonder what fallacy you’re going to use to justify GPU-heavy data centers using zero water: are you going to take the “they’re closed loop” path, and conveniently ignore that they need to be continually topped off, and that effectively makes them open loop anyway (or that they heat exchange with a separate loop that is evaporated?) Or maybe you’ll just say “sure the water evaporates, but it’ll rain down somewhere so it’s still zero” ignoring that the water is taken from a place it’s needed (a municipality) to a place it’s not (the ocean)? Or maybe you’ll point to some extremely rare designs that don’t continually consume water, and pretend they’re representative of all of them (when the number of truly closed loop data centers effectively rounds to zero.)
I eagerly await your response.
Not who you responded to, but water usage only matters in areas where water is a scarce resource, yet I live next to one of the great lakes and constantly hear about how we should reject proposed data centers because of the water usage. The argument makes no sense around here. The usage would be a drop in the bucket compared to already existing industrial uses of water, so it's clear that people just parrot arguments that they don't even understand.
There has been some talk recently about the impact on water of closed loop systems - as it turns out they get a flush before first use and that contamination from that has been a problem.
As I get older I realize how the news works.
You are talking about a single incident that has been reported 500 times by different organizations.
And that single instance still hasn’t actually been traced back to the datacenter in question. Could have come upstream of that for all we know now.
Water usage in this context is a rounding error on a rounding error on top of a rounding error when it comes to corn production for ethanol.
Anyone bringing it up does not actually care about the water usage. It’s just a politically easy topic to get traction with. If anyone starts off their anti-datacenter screed with this, it instantly outs them as someone you can ignore as unserious person on the topic.
Plenty of other legitimate reasons to be anti-datacenter but this isn’t one of them.
I’m against corn production for ethanol too: that AI datacenters aren’t as bad as one of the worst ideas our country has ever had, isn’t much praise.
You know what instantly outs someone as unserious on the topic for me? When they give an unqualified “none of that is true” when someone talks about water use. I agree discussion should carry the nuance, but this conversation started with none of it.
A modern 100MW scale datacenter uses about as much water as a 5-10k population municipality. And provides about as many jobs as a medium-sized wal-mart. Whether that’s a lot to you or not certainly depends on where the proposed datacenter is being built. But it does nobody any good to simply say “nuh uh, you’re wrong” when someone talks about the water use. Nor does bringing up any number of other high-water-using industrial sites that people also wouldn’t want in their back yard.
The fact there is not the social media and political outrage there is on stuff that is literally 10-1000x the water usage is what outs folks as being unserious on the topic. Collectively speaking, people do not give a shit about water usage at all for any reason.
It’s like private jets. If you talk about PJ use in the first 10 minutes about your diatribe about climate change I already know you give zero care about co2 production and only want to either hate rich folks for valid but unrelated reasons, or are an entirely unserious person.
Both are focusing on a mathematically immaterial number when it comes to the supposed problem they say they care about. It they actually cared, they would be talking about things that matter and can move the needle if they “win”.
I welcome high water use stuff in my back yard because my region has plenty of water, plus I firmly believe in the fact that a society cannot have wealth without industry. Datacenters, steel production, whatever. Bring it on.
Are there specific bad projects that should not happen due to local water concerns? Absolutely! But that is not the discussion anyone is having. Datacenter water usage as an industry is a total non issue and is an increasingly immediate tell that someone has no clue what they speak of.
Well you'll need to keep waiting because I never made such a claim and therefore I have no need to justify it.