- "The protests were coordinated by HumansFirst, co-founded by a former leader of the modern-day Tea Party."
Stopped reading there.
- The biggest change is that the left have become the conservatives
- This is not a left versus right issue. Maybe more of a NIMBY thing. Co-locating natural gas power plants along with the servers near residential neighborhoods has not helped. The stories of electricity rates rising because of data center demand also has not helped.
People are understandably concerned by changes that promise private profits and public risks.
The groundswell of opposition and anger amongst ordinary people runs more broadly than many in the tech industry understand.
Here is famed activist Erin Brockovich railing against data centers: https://youtu.be/XpQo1yQCP34
I don't know how solid her arguments are. But this is the sort of content that is helping inform the opposition that is brewing across America and abroad.
- Your point is more about which side is right and which side is wrong.
My point is more about a cultural shift in who's on which side.
The traditional left has become conservative in that they don't want new technology.
While the traditional capitalists want basic income so they can keep building all this cool stuff and keep playing their game of building AI and robots.
What does more harm? Going back to the middle ages having another one of these dark ages where technology is shunned? Will China and Russia then grab power?
Or will we really have a dictator AI?
Possibly both where China is ruling over less advanced countries with AI. They are clearly not stopping developing technology no matter what the west decides.
- Anti-AI sentiment isn’t a leftist specific thing. Tech workers are predominantly liberal in my experience, and many like AI (or at least don’t despise it) but also have progressive views on other things.
I’m also not aware of any republicans or conservatives advocating for UBI.
Corporations are kind of a 3rd party here. They’ll do literally anything for profit, celebrate pride month for the liberals, give Trump some considerations at inauguration for the conservatives. So yeah, tech AI CEOs opine that their companies will usher in a new era of prosperity, but this is probably 90% PR speak
- Guess who organized these protests?
- Yes, as a libertarian I was certainly quite frustrated with bureaucratic authoritarianism. But with autocratic authoritarianism now looming over us, and a bunch of people cheering it on because it seems new and exciting, I most certainly have become much more conservative!
As for data centers, I'm not against them in principle - I'm sitting ten feet away from my own rack [0]. But with the way the legal environment is set up - once something is built it becomes basically impossible to regulate - combined with the vice signalling federal executive that is likely to focus one of its two minute hates on your community if you do manage to succeed at regulating operations, it's simply best to just not give this industry a foothold in your own community. And while this is most certainly a selfish position (I'm happy to use data centers hosted elsewhere), it's all we have until we restore the equitable rule of law.
[0] I am against the centralized software that necessitates so many data centers in the first place though
- Absolutely. The current left are neo-luddites which is ironic because Karl Marx's load bearing claim was that technological progress (base) determined the society (super structure). The left wants to change one without the other. How? Idk revolutions or something
- "Neo-luddite" is thrown around by people who don't actually know history and just eat up terminology that was spoonfed to them for a purpose. FYI, the luddite movement wasn't some stupid movement against technology for the sake of being against technology like the eventual term evolved into. Historically, they were skilled artisans who were protesting exploitative working conditions and practices that came about as a result of automation. When some of them started destroying machines, the British government subsequently made it a capital crime to do machine-breaking and violently suppressed these protests and controlled the narrative that the reason luddites were breaking machines was because they were ignorant people who hated progress.
Not ironically, you're eating up the same propaganda brought to you by the likes of Thiel and co. that the people protesting legitimate grievances just simply "hate technology".
- Interesting, do you think the current form of anti technology ideology is different from Luddism? In what way?
Do you mean to say that the current protests are actually against technology for the sake of being against technology?
Also, I don't say that they are against technology for technology's sake, but the real actual reason they are against technology is because they are fundamentally conservative. They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it.
- No, I'm saying is that you fundamentally don't understand what "Luddism" even is or was at any point. Let me be clear. The the term "Luddite" is completely made up. The group it was supposedly based on were simply people whop opposed exploitation at the time of early industrialization. The state at the time came up with this trope of "they are against technology!" as a way to undercut that movement and impose harsh punitive measures like capital punishment for machine breaking. They weren't just self-interested / conservative people who simply went out to conserve status, employment and lifestyle by opposing technology, that's a label/strawman put on them by the British government at the time.
Just like there was no real luddism historically, there's no group of people who are just selfish people fighting against technology out of pure self-interest. This is just a strawman setup by people who don't wish to receive criticism for their own use of technology as a means of exploitation.
- Who do you think came up with the term Luddites?
You are confusing a lot of things here. Like the existence of the movement and the people itself. And you are questioning the existence by using an adjacent topic of Luddites were not against technology.
Luddites did exist. And the people opposing data centers now are the same type of people.
- > They act in their own self interest as normal people do and try to conserve their status, employment and lifestyle. Technology tends to act against it - naturally they oppose it.
Why is the underlying assumption that tech must make life of people worst? That the only way tech can advance is by actively creating dystopia, by harming, by disrupting instead of creating better opportunities for people?
Tech changed, from positive to pure anti-human sociopathy. It used to have positive vision and many people in it actually wanted to help actual people. Then the SV pretended to want to create something good while not caring whether they were harming people. Now they stopped even pretending to want to create something good while actively openly trying to cause harm.
For christ sake, look at art. These companies could have been creating better and empowering tools for artists. Instead, they brag about destroying them, about destroying everything art communities like and then blame the victime for not being happy with that.
- Its an interesting question and I'm biased here. As for the morals of both parties I'll leave you with this: Waymo is cool tech that actually works and saves lives everyday. These are the parties lobbying against Waymo
- Trial Lawyers because they gain from accidents [1]
- Labour Unions [2]
- Transport Unions [3]
Most recently Uber also opposed it but in a different format, but still the same. I wonder what your take on this is? Who is being anti-human here? Who wants to help people? And who are selfish? For me it looks like each one of these parties would rather have less safety in streets than have their jobs taken away.
[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/tr...
[2] https://teamster.org/2026/03/illinois-teamsters-demand-lawma...
[3] https://www.twu.org/waymo-testing-in-nyc-is-a-danger-to-the-...
- Every societal shift that puts large groups of people out of jobs gets protested. Just look at how protected various groups are (like car dealerships vs online sales) because they lobbied at the right time. Same deal for the groups protesting Waymo.
The human thing to do is to protest if your livelihood is going away. That’s not evil. But it is a problem when the government just encodes one groups desires even if it’s not actually better for people.
If a community sees a building going in that they think will pollute the community (light noise, water, literally anything), they have a right to protest and push back. Does it matter what the reason is?
People are concerned about data centers because they are perceived to be disruptive and polluting, and not offering a public good to the community.
People are concerned about LLMs because there are existential questions about work, information (and misinformation), learning, and so much more. That big AI firms don’t have any answers for other than “oh yeah we’ll bulldoze that career.”
So yeah, people are concerned about this, and it’s valid. This does not make them generally anti-progress or anti-human or even anti-technology .
- I completely agree with you except the environment part which seems forced. It is valid for people to be concerned with their jobs. But in writing this obvious thing we both agree about, you have forgotten the more interesting part: Waymo stands to reduce a significant number of deaths. What does it say about the ethics of labour unions? In fact, if you could leverage any control over all this, what would you do? Release waymo or protect people's jobs?
- > Waymo is cool tech that actually works and saves lives everyday
Is it? I don't know. I was listening about self driving cars being better the people for years now ... only to find every single time it was a lie. And always comes with "but that was old tech", but the new tech is better.
But I do give you that they are one of the few "seems like they are not as casual about killing people as Uber and Musk and rest of SB". Note that the hate toward them is also much lower then hate of AI and Musk.
> Labour Unions
Considering destruction of labor unions ended up being bad news for average poorer workers and considering the K shaped economy ... maybe we need more of them.
> Most recently Uber
Uber is poster child of a tech company being build on a fraud, trying to sell service under price, create monopoly and then jack up price. And no, famous medallions were not everywhere, plenty of places had and still have normal competitive taxi market. What Uber did there was to break labor rules, sell drives under price from VC money, tope to establish monopoly, hope law obeying taxi companies and drivers will.
All the while SV celebrated it. Frankly Uber is one of the reasons why tech is hated so generally.
- Totally organic.
- Maybe, maybe not. But there are apparently plenty people who want to participate in it. Which says something.
- It is completely organic and it is not new at all. Every step change in technology involved people like this (though this one is a bit unique in size).
This type of thinking: "slowing down", "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have" is the default mode of thinking for most rich/educated people.
(Note: this type of thinking comes at the upper echelons of Maslow's needs - impoverished third worlders don't have takes on it)
What I think is that most have had enough of chaotic progress and they just want some inkling of stability and some breathing space to even contemplate on the last 20 years of change. What they are instead seeing is a barrage of stuff thrown at them one after the other. I can understand them. And so should all of us.
The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind.
- People are perfectly content to accept pollution if it provides actual jobs not just money for tech bro douchebags living on a yacht in Tahiti.
Instead of buying politicians if you want to build a datacenter start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club. And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job.
Silicon Valley is so terrible at PR. They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
- > People are perfectly content to accept pollution if it provides actual jobs not just money for tech bro douchebags living on a yacht in Tahiti.
> And for fuck sake never talk about how much you hate society and want to put people out of a job.
Let's say for the sake of argument, AI eliminates most jobs. In that case, the government will need to replace income tax.
Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti?
And will the American government have any ability to tax a datacenter built in Dubai because there was too much bureaucracy in Virginia?
> They could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the early 20th century.
We could learn a thing or two from the industrialists of the 18th century, who built all their infrastructure in the United Kingdom because it was convenient for them.
The British government's early advantage in factories snowballed into the largest empire on Earth and they maintained the advantage until WW2.
- > Will the American government have an easier time taxing the physical datacenter in the United States or the billionaire that owns it in Tahiti?
The datacenters already get long term tax deductions, probably easier to tax the billionaire's assets with a wealth tax on stock market assets...
- > Let's say for the sake of argument, AI eliminates most jobs. In that case, the government will need to replace income tax.
In this case, these people have no future and no hope. Their kids have no future. Rejecting the AI datacenter that is causing that and in addition polluting is just logical consequence. In this alternative future, poor people will get nothing from government. Rich CEOS will see them as leeches, they will have no electoral power and the taxes will be used only to survey and harm them.
Considering rich CEOs fight tooth and nail against any taxation and pay minimal taxes on their companies, if they get their way, neither will pay taxes.
> And will the American government have any ability to tax a datacenter built in Dubai because there was too much bureaucracy in Virginia?
Well, government thoughtfully killed any chance of stability in Dubai, so you probably dont want data center there anyway. Drones and missies, you know. But, again, since it dont pay taxes and presumably will move away if it is forced to pay them, who cares.
- > start sponsoring the local high school gymnastics club
I would prefer using taxes instead of one-off theatrical gestures. And it looks like data centres already pay tax. Maybe what you want is higher taxes? Possibly a good idea if it doesn't disincentivise the construction in the first place.
- What they want is neighbors invested in the same future as they are. “AI data centers” are just a very blunt expression of an industry that is banking on making schools, careers, and even interpersonal relationships obsolete. We used to start wars over this kind of threat to our “way of life”
- >> The suggestion that this is a CCP play shows a lack of theory of mind.
As if destruction / denigration of US AI / cloud / IT infrastructure wouldn't massively benefit the CCP. Surely there's no correlation there at all, just means, motive, and opportunity, but I'm sure it's nothing.
- other side:
what benefit does an AI datacenter bring to a community?
why wouldn't people complain?
on that note, if LLMs dissappeared tomorrow, what would be the loss for common folk?
Solution seems simple, build them away from communities, arrange for sustainable power generation and water use, problem is that eats into datacenter profits...
- I think both explanations are not mutually exclusive.
- I haven't heard neither "being in harmony with nature", "be content with what you have", you are literally making them up.
But more importantly, it is not true that every step was like this. In my lifetime, AI is uniquely disliked and it is really its own fault. No other technology was booed in speeches, no other had equivalents of tokenmaxxing and top down push, no other promised dystopia and doom and gloom as selling strategy.
- > No other technology was booed in speeches
NFTs, DRM, Linux at Microsoft conferences, Microsoft at Linux conferences, Google Glass, blockchain. Those have all been booed at some point. AI's not unique in that regard.
- All of them are either harmful or gambling. And gambling is harmful. Like, people booging SBF or Holmes or Shkreli also does not prove anything about universal hate of tech. It is people booing frauds.
I give them that no one was idiotic enough to try to push NFT and crypto on students in commencement speech.
- [dead]
42 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 22 hours ago | 32 comments