The fight against AI datacenters isn’t just about tech – it’s about democracy - Claims of nimbyism are a misunderstanding: the movement is about whether regular people have a say in fundamental decis…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/08/ai-datacenters-democracy
53 Comments
NM_Gringo@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 66d
Those data centers use more power than a medium size city and city scale amounts of water. No. Just no.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · -5 pts · 66d
But they don't have to be water-cooled.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 21 pts · 66d
Until some regulation is passed and enforced that they have to be closed loop, it's cheaper for them to fuck up the local ecosystem by using evaporative cooling or local water sources as a heat sink.
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · -12 pts · 66d
Not true. My company only builds closed loop.
Rothe@piefed.social · 13 pts · 66d
Who cares? They still use the energy of a large city, all for profiting a handful of billionaire/trillionaire oligarchs.
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 64d
You can believe that if you want. It is true for some (cough-Musk-cough), but not all.
Our customers are often what are considered socially "good", like medical research. Our company is employee-forward with extraordinary benefits of all kinds. The executives are very down-to-earth.
L7HM77@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 64d
I feel like this right here is where discussion is breaking down.
The arguments around data centers are interesting. I think, collectively and socially, we're hitting a language barrier around it. Like "AI" is a marketing term, language to a standard nontechnical person is fuzzy around AI, LLM, and ML.
On the surface, I'm pro data center. Astronomy, bio-med, weather prediction, the internet itself, better ML models and more compute has been a net benefit to all of society. But the current rush to build out? The holding companies building these won't even say explicitly what the data centers are being built for, the news insinuates they're for LLMs, but the local governments are under NDAs, and the general population aren't allowed to know anything and have to vote with their gut.
The opposition groups to data centers are split apart and can't coordinate well, because they're focusing on smaller facets of a larger problem. I think the general population has an intrinsic gut feeling that something is wrong, almost like 50 years of unpaid taxes is coming back to fuck everything over, but they don't have the technical knowledge to put it into a concise reason why they feel the way they feel, and it just comes out as "they're gonna drain out the entire Mississippi River."
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 64d
Yes. "AI" has become a catch-all for this current generation of GPU- based computing. The public doesn't know or care about ML vs LLM vs VLM vs GenAI etc.
We can't speak due to very harsh NDAs.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 64d
How about employee owned? The fuck employee forward mean?
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 64d
Unlimited PTO.
Generous 401 program.
Parental leave.
Adoption coverage.
2SLGBTQIA+ supportive.
Fully neurodivergent friendly.
Mental & Emotional well being programs.
Aggressive promotion schedules.
And more I forget.
The industry is moving very fast, so we cannot afford any employee-owned committee dithering. To make up for that, there are generous stock grants.
The execs take risks and own up to their mistakes. Everyone is aware that what we are working on won't be invented until tomorrow. So mistakes are all learning opportunities for the entire organization.
However, cultural mismatches to not stay with us long. If you bring nothing but a cya attitude, you don't go far.
Employee surveys are always fully honest and issues raised are always addressed.
We. Are. Happy.
That's employee-forward.
I've worked at a lot of companies from startups to Fortune 10. This place is unique.
XLE@piefed.social · 12 pts · 66d
The "Bill Cosby didn't do anything to me" of Big Tech defense
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 64d
And yours is the "my asshole neighbor is black, so I hate all black people" defense.
You have bought into the sensationalist outrage press about the worst offenders. Yes, they are bad. But as we don't pass judgement based on news of a sensational crime in a quiet neighborhood, we need to rise above the media noise to see the entire picture.
XLE@piefed.social · 5 pts · 64d
Trillionaires' toys are not a systemically oppressed minority. But the data centers are disproportionately harming historically black neighborhoods.
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 64d
The bulk of the industry agrees that Musk is doing all the wrongest possible things.
He is not the industry. He just gets the press attention.
Are all electric cars bad? No, just his.
Jax@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 64d
Yeah without telling us the companies' name this has major 'trust me bro' energy.
Edit: I get why you haven't, I'm not saying you should doxx yourself.
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 64d
My industry is ruled by trade secrets during this phase. That's part of the explanation for the complete lack of pushback on the "bad press" we get. Thanks for understanding.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 65d
Where does the heat go in your systems?
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 64d
Same place as any NYC skyscraper - the air on the roof.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 64d
So just air cooled towers then? Huh, what's the wattage that you are cooling like that?
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 63d
Somewhat less than 15MW.
Rothe@piefed.social · 4 pts · 66d
They don't have to exist.
XLE@piefed.social · 4 pts · 66d
They also don't have to exist
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 66d
Neither do airplanes.
Rothe@piefed.social · 6 pts · 66d
Whataboutism fallacy.
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 64d
I disagree.
I see your viewpoint more like "I got mugged once by a dude with an accent so now I hate all foreigners". The data centers I work with don't fit your narrative. The bad actors are on our shitlist, too.
XLE@piefed.social · 6 pts · 66d
We agree data centers don't have to exist
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 64d
I do not. Not for modern society.
Like to use credit cards? Online banking? eBay? All done in data centers.
XLE@piefed.social · 2 pts · 64d
We were talking about AI data centers, which you and I agreed don't have to exist.
Don't Motte-and-Bailey me
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 64d
Every CC company is now using advanced "AI" algorithms to approve transaction speed.
The current state of medical research requires "AI" systems to run the simulations.
What you see as "AI" is the leftover dregs of the capacity. Used for cat videos and the like. The current buildout is NOT being paid for by memesters. It is the folks that have finally found the real promise that the digital revolution has promised since the 70s. As an outsider, I do not blame you for being misinformed. But - as you would be open to learning how big science is done today if a particle physics researcher explained it - I would hope that you would be open to my lives experience.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 3 pts · 66d
AFAIK most water gets used in construction, and constructing city-sized facilities uses a LOT of resources. Now guess which side gets favored if there's a resource conflict between a datacenter and the local population.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 33 pts · 66d
It's not NIMBY if you don't want new datacenters elsewhere, either.
phant@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 66d
"Yeah, that's right. I'm a NOOP!"
Not On Our Planet
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 66d
gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org · 12 pts · 66d
By the way, i believe these numbers to be completely useless.
Say a company wants to build a datacenter at location A, but it gets blocked. So it goes to B, but it also gets blocked. Finally it builds the same datacenter at location C. Now, two datacenters got blocked, but the amount of datacenters that ended up being built is still the same.
stylusmobilus@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 66d
Diatomaceous Earth
High speed wind
Intakes
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 65d
Fuel contamination on gas turbines is a really interesting subject.
stylusmobilus@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 65d
One I need to study more
Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 66d
The article is partially a response to this article from jacobin which makes some good points, chief of which the author doesn't really address in that they'll just be built somewhere else. There will always be some city or state or country that will allow them being built and this sort of NIMBY activism only really protects the better off people who have the free time to attend city hall meetings.
Also the author seems to equate the means with the end. The jacobin article is criticizing the end goal being a blanket moratorium instead of regulation targeting the harms. It doesn't say anything about the means, but the author of this one equates there criticism of the movements aims to be an elitist criticism of the grassroots organizing of the movement, which I assume the jacobin author would be more then fine with as long as it's directed towards reasonable goals.
sundray@lemmus.org · 3 pts · 66d
You can’t use “it isn’t ____, it’s ____” anymore! That’s LLM talk!
IratePirate@feddit.org · 6 pts · 66d
I get the frustration — AI-generated texts are pervasive, they're everywhere these days. 🤦♂️
Here are three ways to phrase this in a way that does not scream LLM. 👍
1 ....