> employment opportunities

the 5-7 people they employ during normal operation. High skilled engineers get flown in for setup and major changes/operations.

They add little local economic value.

Always with the threats. "You better roll over and take it, because those other countries are"

How about the middle ground of ok, you can build the datacenter, but it's owned by the locality. They can lease it back to the builder for the privilege of being able to operate on their ground. And the lease is steep. No more second homes on the cape, or private italian schools for the kids.

They provide very few employment opportunities.

Demand crunches spur supply chain capacity improvements when the market is left alone from populist interventions.

The mass data center build out is only partly driven by AI. There is a big cloud capacity crunch across the big providers, has been for a while and it is getting worse.

That’s just a minor speed bump in the circus of criminality that has been created by the US regime.

When Elon did his thing, it was way more than just firing federal workers. They dismantled key parts of the regulatory system. The SEC was purged, the lawyers were chased out of DoJ, and contracts that were key to external/industry groups like FINRA were terminated — they purged most of their staff.

AI and crypto is just the means of the grift. The corruption vig being applied to the markets is distorting everything. We see it with memory and food.

I'm sure it's more than the cost of memory. The person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care. They do care that aspect of life is infected with this shit. From the useless "AI" chatbot that is really just a reskin of their old POS chatbot (or an "Actual Indian"), to the U. S. government talking about giving money to these companies ('cuz ol' Larry and Elon need the money), all the way to the tech bros that will...not...shut up about it. And to drive it all, we'll need to put a jet engine next to your house, sorry.

Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".

The public seems to be aware that it's a hype driven grift, much more so than when it was a flood of DTC dot-coms, or plowing fiber to nowhere. There's so much money sloshing around that people correctly believe the potential for corruption of their supposedly representatives is rife.

People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?

They're venting their anger on social media apps, which are powered not by datacenters but by an invisible angel that takes your message and places it on everyone else's phone.

Arming the dumbest among us with smartphones aka portable TV studios was one of the biggest mistakes we made as a society.

No, it doesn't. Voters decide very little in the United States. People with money decide almost everything. They have better lawyers and better lobbyists than you do.

>gives those voters a de-facto, outsized, soft power

How?

That is fair. Data centers are being built in my town, and indeed the city does not seem to care what people think.

I ran the numbers based on some averages, and property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year for a city of around 23k people.

I just am not sure why the city cannot be transparent about data centers offsetting property taxes. They also do not make it clear on their website that there is no water capacity issue. People are going to be mad no matter what though. I think for some this is a proxy issue, and what really is driving them is distrust of big tech and wealth inequality.

I also suspect some of the social media backlash may be an astroturfing campaign. Accounts idle for years all of a sudden posting daily the same talking points.

> They’re mad about being told after the fact that their town might lose water, power, quiet, or tax revenue to a project they didn't have a say in.

I suspect they might also be a little bit mad (whether they admit it or not) that they are being subjected to all this to make a few people unbelievably wealthy.

These people aren't simple peasants - they are as aware of how the system works as well as the rest of us. The problem is that all of a sudden they are being made to pay the price in quality of life, instead of some other group of people they could care less about or even dislike.

If this truly matters to them, and it's not just a negotiating tactic for a piece of the pie, they should consider making common cause with other groups affected by this in other areas and look past their traditional tribal alliances. Otherwise, no little municipality stands a chance against the power of capital that effectively controls government.

Why would they lose tax revenue? I imagine these small cities gain tax revenue, but this doesn’t really drive NIMBY politics.

Investors, thats what is driving it. AI is the only thing venture capital has cared about since 2022, so the people who earn fortunes from sucking on the VC teat are following the money. It doesn't matter if the data centers are worthless in five years, they will have extracted wealth from building them.

In the "AI 2027" article/story, they're talking about next generation models "using 100 times the compute used to train GPT4. Here's a video covering that part of it https://youtu.be/5KVDDfAkRgc?si=TR8XDQmye6O6kkiT&t=169 (the 100x is at 4:38, this video starts where he starts talking compute of GPT3).

So my guess is that what is driving the need is that (speculated) 100x the next major models.

Investors chasing the ideal of not having to employ any people while still making money somehow. And, of course, being the company to provide all the AI; in a gold rush, don't dig for gold, start selling buckets.

There are things called LLMs that are incredibly useful but require a staggering amount of compute. Providers are building out data centers to meet the new need.

We should also keep in mind that the problem isn't datacenters, but how they are built.

Datacenters do not have to be noisy. Datacenters do not have to cheap out on cooling solutions. Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits.

Those corners being cut is not what make AI datacenters possible or competitive. That race is purely chip supply.

For reference, I work in an industrial neighborhood where there are quite a few new datacenters from big providers. The buildings are ugly for sure, but unless you're staring at it you'd have no idea it was there. I could try to pay more attention to see if I can hear it if I focus on it, but I suspect the sound of nearby rustling leaves will be too deafening to make out anything.

We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters.

AI companies are doing a fine job of driving the resentment all by themselves, they don't need China's help. Whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant, these companies are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the public's view of them. They seem to think that they don't need public support.

> We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters

There hasn't been any credible reporting on this so far. It's far more likely people are just mad that they have to pay for the AI boom both literally via increased electricity rates and via increased noise, water shortage and construction related pollution caused by the data centers.

I can’t believe the Chinese did this https://www.404media.co/henrico-virginia-datacenter-energy-c...

There really isn’t a need for foreign interests to artificially boost the negative sentiments towards data centers, hyperscalers are doing a pretty terrible job at getting the public onboard

China is not the enemy.

Why aren't we (in the US) building all these data centers in the Southwest where huge amounts of vacant land and the best wind and solar power options are?

With fiber connectivity it doesn't matter if they are in remote locations.

> We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters.

I'm pretty sure the economics of it for the average citizen takes care of the resentment all by itself. No need for elaborate conspiracy theories.

They are winning recall votes and getting a lot of pushback at in person city council meetings. People keep saying it's astroturfed (and I do expect a lot of communication online to not be in good faith) but you can also see the real grassroots pushback. I mean the article is talking about recalling mayors, you don't get that without pretty extreme local opposition.

We should all keep in mind that foreign interests may be astroturfing right here on HN.

Bullshit. Nobody needs to "drive" resentment. "AI" is touching everyone's lives and in not in a good way. And nobody gives a shit what privileged, wealthy, financially-benefiting political leaders want.

AI was used by the Israelis to decide what homes in Palestine to bomb.

AI was used by the Trump admin to decide what buildings to target, including a school of ~200 kids.

xAI was deploying numerous gas-turbine trailers at their datacenters in urban areas where they couldn't get enough power. Turbines that pump out huge amounts of NOx and noise...not to mention these DCs are generating so much heat they're raising the temperature of the areas they're in.

In every social group I'm in both IRL and online people hate AI shit.

They hate the monumental waste of energy, water, and land.

They hate the noise and pollution created by gas turbine generators being deployed at DCs because the DC can't get enough power

They hate that DCs consume water treated for DRINKING and pay a fraction of what individual ratepayers pay

They hate that politicians are handing out freebies to these DCs, whether it is tax breaks of infrastructure or discounted utilities or all of the above.

They hate AI phone system 'agents' that routinely get things wrong.

They hate AI "news stories."

They hate AI "agents" they have to deal with to get support for things which somehow manage to be even worse than someone who barely speaks English and has a decision tree in front of them, despite the company clearly being able to train it on much more data and refine it.

They hate it when media outlets use AI for "artwork" and graphics that look idiotic / have basic mistakes and clearly took work away from a photographer, editor, or graphic designer. Or all three.

They hate it when businesses, acquaintances, coworkers, friends reply to them with obviously-written-by-AI responses.

There are endless stories here about how AI is swamping open source projects with garbage bug reports and push requests.

In gaming circles they hate how prices on SSDs and RAM have tripled or more.

The programmers I know see endless slop and people in their field being fired because management thinks AI can do their jobs.

The list goes on. The only people who "like" AI are AI DudeBros and investors.