The article is interesting, but I think it dances around what should be a central point, only approaching it obliquely. A lot of the opposition to data centers isn't about specific claimed benefits/drawbacks, but the fact that the people behind them are known to be bad actors.
> My conversations make me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly beside the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? “I don’t believe them.” Paying millions in taxes? “I don’t believe them.” Creating a thousand jobs? “I don’t believe them.” I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim.
It's not reflexive; it's evidenced. Regardless of what big tech promises, or potential mitigations, everyone knows what tech companies do now. It's not a generalised small-town lack of trust in big city folks, it's a direct response to decades of extractive behaviour by the same companies and people.
Essentially, I think there's a proximal reputational problem for AI companies, which the article calls out, but the ultimate problem is factual. It's not an education/communication/negotiation issue, because the real problem is the underlying reality. The wolf at the door being distrusted is because it's a wolf, not PR.
The other part is: if there really is so much money in these, it should be easy for the companies to produce an actually good deal. Everyone can tell (after all these experiences) what bullshit smells like, when the deals are full of tricks. Why try the tricks--property taxes that pay eventually, jobs that will show up eventually, promises that electric bills won't go up--when you could guarantee the results, and guarantee the town won't be left holding the bag?
Well of course it's because the companies think they don't have to give a good deal. That they can get away with it.
One wonders if at this point they would have saved money not trying to fuck people over to get what they wanted. I hope so. The ideal world has companies doing things the honest way because it's honest, but I'd settle for them doing it that way because they're economically incentivized to do so.
mostly unrelated but amusing: I keep getting fliers from Google fiber trying to get me to switch. Every one has this one bizarre line in it: "our customers have never had their rates go up!"---as if I am too stupid to realize that is not a promise. Now, I have no idea if that works on other people. Maybe enough other people are stupid and don't notice that that's not a promise that turns out to be good ad copy. But I am personally so put off by the disrespectful attempt at manipulation that I consider switching less, even though it might well save me money. It is significantly worse for them, as a sales tactic, than if they had written nothing there at all.
You should switch to whatever is cheapest right now. If it gets more expensive, you should switch to whatever is cheapest right then. That's the market price signal that drives the good parts of capitalism.
"A lot of opposition to data centers isn't about specific claimed benefits/drawbacks, but the fact that the people behind them are known to be bad actors."
HN commenters favouring data centers never seem to address this either. It appears they just don't get it
If someone does not like "AI" software nor the people behind it, then it makes little sense to argue about electricity, water, eminent domain, etc.
Big Tech founders have claimed that the public "trusts" them because the public uses ("chooses") their software. But does this amount to "real world" trust
As you say, the distrust is backed up by evidence and by their own personal experience of the same promises getting trotted out time after time, generation after generation.
These people, these communities, have been promised these same things before (or things adjacent to them) and have seen them not deliver, or even make their situation worse.
This is especially true of the tax income and job generation elements. The estimates provided as part of the deal are utterly divorced from reality- people know it and refuse to take part in the kayfabe that surrounds it.
"We can't trust them" is the foundation of practically every conspiracy theory, though, from times immemorial. I remember people protesting against cell towers, and it was exactly what their arguments were built around: "We don't believe this thing won't fry our brains". It was the same before with electrical lines, and I guess steam power had its share too. Not telling a concerned citizen is obliged to trust everyone, marketing & propaganda were part of "underlying reality" for centuries at least. But frankly, you made it sound like it's a novel thing, a dark omen of evil AI times, or something.
The difference being that AI companies are destroying all sorts of stuff, and cellphone companies didn't - they just provided cellphones.
Society did decay because of cellphones but it wasn't anything to do with the cellphone companies. The towers always were exactly what the cellphone companies said they were.
This is an example of the same problem as the article; you're treating trust as entirely unrelated to reality. It can get out-of-step, but that's not the only possibility, and it's not the one we're facing here.
The problem with conspiracy theories is not that they're based on a lack of trust, but that they're not rational. Sometimes a lack of trust is perfectly rational.
Cell towers don't actually fry your brains. Steam powered trains don't move so fast you suffocate. However, the big tech CEOs are absolutely going to take your data and use it against you. They are going to build data centers that harm your community. The fear here is reasonable and evidenced.
This isn't unique to AI, but AI is the current iteration of the same problem. Sometimes people distrust outsiders because they're star-bellied sneetches, but sometimes they distrust them because they're the British empire. You can't treat all distrust as unreasoning.
>problem with conspiracy theories is not that they're based on a lack of trust, but that they're not rational.
Rationality isn't some sort of absolute parameter, it's determined wrt available information. And with information coming from outside it's certainly an issue of trust.
FWIW such unconditional claim as "DC will harm your community" is a shiny example of this, as you don't even care to talk about a particular DC, and obviously cases (community problems, and interests, and the way a DC placed or build) can vary a lot. Apparently, you just don't believe them at all, don't you?
>You can't treat all distrust as unreasoning.
I don't. I just noticed that arguments you believe are central are very stretchy, and can 'prove' anything, including conspiracy theories.
I have a property in NW Wisconsin. It's incredibly poor there - it seems like most people working age are on disability - the new form of welfare. Money is earned mostly in summer and hunting seasons. It's pretty depressing. Lots of alcohol problems. I hired someone to clear some trees and make lumber out of them once and he showed up for the job three months later. At least he showed up though. Weirdest thing - he never came back after the job to get paid. I end up often hiring contractors from 90 miles away to get good ones.
But a data center wouldn't help. It would raise electric prices and doesn't really employ people.
It's kind of like one industry that is in the area - there's a company that grows huge amounts of cranberries but its mostly automated. As far as I know only three people work on this huge site. They let the cranberries grow, flood the area when they're ready. The cranberries float to the top for robots to skim the surface and harvest them. The humans just move things around for the robots.
City taxes don't fix a broken economic flywheel. State taxes go to others and also don't fix it. You need a functional economy with jobs, income, spending and all that jazz. A small amount of taxes with no second order benefits is worth relatively little.
Sure but progress over perfection right? More tax revenue puts you in a better spot to attack those problems than not having it.
Even just doing what Northern Virginia does and lowering people’s property taxes gives homeowners more disposable income/ lowers prices for renters which is a start.
Which would be a good argument if the datacenters actually paid any taxes. They shop around for tens to hundreds of millions in tax breaks from officials who believe the lies like "we'll create thousands of jobs!".
TFA cites "Each project requires thousands of skilled workers during the two to six year construction period (nearly 10,000 in Mount Pleasant)" so maybe it's not totally fiction (at least during build time).
To me that's not sustainable. It just brings in outside workers, distorts the economy in bad way for locals through increased costs, distorts their daily life in a bad way and then it all goes away leaving a void in its wake. Like the olympics.
My sister dates a guy who works on these kinds of projects. He’s based out of Chicago, and goes to remote places like Idaho or Ohio to build them. They put him up in cheap temporary housing, I guess that generates some local money, but he’s very quickly moving on to the next job. They’re not hiring locals for these tasks, they don’t have the skills. The people who are benefitting are mostly local landlords.
A school and hospital would do that more than a data center tho. Look at Merced California, used to be a nowhere destination. They built a UC there and now it’s a place students, PhDs and MDs from around the world want to move to. If UC Merced were a data center it would attract no one, it would drain and pollute the lake, and Merced CA would still be a nowhere destination.
We’re talking about rural Wisconsin - there is no world where you need to make a trade off between having school and a data center. Put a school in one field and a data center in a field further away. It just seems like you should tax the data center and then build a school or whatever else you think would help the local economy.
A data center turns the whole town into an industrial zone because of the sound and water pollution. No one wants to live near one, especially not doctors and teachers with young families who can choose to live anywhere.
Data centers don’t cause water pollution generally or turn entire towns into industrial zones. There is more than enough room in rural WI towns for industrial and non industrial parts.
> No one wants to live near one, especially not doctors and teachers with young families who can choose to live anywhere.
Northern Virginia is one of the top locations for the kind of people who “can live anywhere” and is the world capital of data centers. And part of that appeal in NoVA is low property taxes due to data centers paying taxes.
There is some real aspects of the data center debate but I don’t think your engaging with them
I mean, how do you explain the backlash then if their byproducts don't generally bother people?
> Northern Virginia is one of the top locations for the kind of people who “can live anywhere” and is the world capital of data centers.
People live in NoVa despite data centers, not because of them. Its proximity to DC makes it intrinsically attractive. Towns in rural nowhere don't have the same innate draw and I don't see how datacenters provide it.
A good portion of this movement is irrational and driven by viral media. Last week a coworker was talking about how unbearably loud data centers are. I asked them if our parking lot is loud. (There’s a decent sized server floor in our building and a bunch of cooling equipment in the parking lot.) They had never noticed the cooling system.
On the other hand, my city gave the local data centers big tax breaks to come here. In the last couple years my property taxes have increased significantly along with my electricity bill. It seems obvious that I’m subsidizing the local data center. There’s probably a couple dozen people who work there, so it’s not a realistic employment opportunity for me or anyone I know. I’m not anti-tech at all, but I wish the city hadn’t made the deal they did. Perhaps big tech could be less parasitic and contribute beneficially to society?
There's a big psychological difference between the noise level in a transitory space like an office parking lot and the same noise level at a suburban home. Nobody wants their backyard, deck, or bedroom to sound like Eraserhead, even if it's subtle. (And some of the gas turbine ones are not subtle.)
I found the below line to get particularly "hard":
> When I visited DC in February to start researching the brewing AI backlash, I found that the top two uniting issues were kids’ safety and data centers.1 These were very different concerns from those I hear in San Francisco—a city with no kids and no data centers
> "The EMF reader is shakier, going haywire under the crackling power lines, then settling down a few steps away"
That kind of statement really bothers me. Is it measuring the magnetic fields or RF emissions? If it's RF, what frequency? If the EMF reader is picking up radio waves, I'm not exactly concerned. Visible light would be weird. X-rays would be very concerning. Is it just picking up the 50/60Hz power line? That's all around you in your house anyway. If you just don't like power lines, say that
Common citizens aren't the only ones who prefer not to live near these unsightly noise-and-pollution centers. Look at the satellite views around tech oligarchs' homes, and you won't see any data centers anywhere near those lavish estates. Let them build it in their own backyard.
As a thought experiment why not just move the people who want them to those neighbourhoods and move the people who don't where the people who do live. I wonder how many would actually take that deal..
People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.
How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology).
A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.
I get why people wouldn't want (steam) trains in their proverbial back yard just as much as they wouldn't want datacenters. Trains may be a net benefit for a region's mobility and economy, but that doesn't undo the local disruption to people's environments. (I'm unconvinced datacenters have that impact on a region, it generates some jobs at best but most of those will be secondary/tertiary jobs. Primary jobs will be the people doing daily work in and around the site like security and maintenance, but the higher paid specialist work will be flown in or done remotely)
The new AI ones are built below minimum standards as a cash grab and they somehow manage to be as loud as jet engines. I have no idea how they manage to achieve that, but I try to avoid denying reality. I agree that an ordinary non-AI data center is no worse than an office building without the people, but that isn't what's happening right now.
55db is lower than the noise floor in the average office. They were probably just measuring the background noise of regular-ass being outside.
For perspective, the inside of your home is probably about 40. When I turn on my box fan it's about 55.
That said they can be loud when the generators are running. It's possible that when the grid can't keep up the volume goes up, but thats not meant to be a long term state.
The answer to that is to outlaw running noisy generators. It probably already is. Most places already have noise pollution laws designed to harass teenagers with loud music. They should enforce them.
Force them to either install mufflers and proper exhausts on their generators or build their own power infrastructure. They don't now because nobody makes them and it would cost money.
Noise pollution is a real issue, even for data centers that is "humming quietly". Same for its energy consumption. Water cooling is another issue, given that lots of the steam a data center generates can rain down in places that wont make the water re-join the water lifecycle easily.
You're comparing steam trains in practice to datacentres in theory. To give one example: the US federal government is suspending all sorts of environmental regulations relating to pollution, just for datacentres: why would they do that if datacentres ran on clean solar or nuclear?
The data centers near me are pretty quiet. They’re set back from the road enough that they’re no louder than the background noise of traffic, wind, airplanes overhead, etc. I understand my small sample size doesn’t apply everywhere, but it does negate “all data centers are loud.” Some data centers might be loud.
That's inside the DC, right? I'd think that even with current generation GPUs the noise of the fans won't be audible outside the building but the cooling infra that is outside the building plus (backup) power generation through gas or diesel generators.
EDIT: recently I read about (I guess on HN) a new planned Amazon datacenter that was super environment-friendly. So in fact it might eventually be possible to create silent DCs but we'll see how this turns out.
Agreed in principle for today’s new ones, though with all the buying frenzy it quickly becomes hard to procure anything but the latest hardware and the economics of older generation hardware makes little sense for new data center deployments.
The linked article claims that sound can be heard "hundreds of feet from the data center". That is a very short range.
As much as I doubt that spreading of the data centers is a good thing, noise is not the weapon to wield. Unless we are talking the center of a quaint town. And possibly not even then.
I tend to like not fearing starvation every year, not fearing freezing to death every year and not having the vast majority of my kids die. Industrialization led to all that.
It's almost like all of that is true and early train companies didn't even bring enough value to the area to offset all of that?
Trains still do that today. They cut a locality in half with only certain crossing points being allowed. But at least enough people ride the train they can feel it's worthwhile.
I disagree with the “evil monster” part, but thanks for sharing that example. I’ll probably use it the opposite way in meetings .. people were deeply skeptical of railways too, yet they ended up transforming society for the better.
It's not about opposing data centers, it's about opposing them close to where you live.
There's now a gargantuan amount of documentation about their impact:
- insane noise levels 24/7, you can hear them even at miles away
- virtually no jobs brought to the place, besides some construction work early on
- massive drain of local resources
- massive eye sore
Like, I'm not against data centers per se, but you tell me they building one few miles from my house, I'm listing it the day I hear it and escaping as far as I can.
Some of the reaction to data center build outs has become irrational but frankly I see it as a reflection of the arrogance of the billionaire tech elite. Voters were told:
- AI is going to take your jobs
- We need to build our data centers for this job stealing tool
- We need to build so quickly that there’s no time to do accurate assessments of what this will do to water or power supplies
Turns out people don’t like that. Who could have guessed? Anyone not living in a bubble.
"AI automating jobs", which is the narrative from tech bros to raise funding translates into "AI is going to take your job", for the average Joe. If you are a graphic designer that is now struggling to find work, why would you want a data centre in your town (or anywhere)?
Rejection (or fear) of AI translating into rejection of the physical infrastructure that supports it is perfectly reasonable.
Again: sourcing? An explanation of how the Chinese Communist Party is able to transfer money to middle of nowhere community activists like those mentioned in the article?
"Everyone that disagrees with me is a bot or paid propaganda". Sure, go tell yourself that. The money is clearly on the pro-AI camp, and you'd have to be delusional to think it isn't.
The majority of people opposed AC current, cars, steam engines, rail tracks, airplanes, computers, the internet, and so on. There was always irrational fear present with new tech advances. People opposing data centers will not look any less foolish than those who opposed AC current.
I don't think the people who opposed those things look foolish even today. Most of those things, in their early days, were implemented haphazardly and with an incredible lack of regulatory oversight, and the reason they were not quite as disastrous as they could have been is that people opposed them.
And people opposing data centers today who are opposing unfettered data center creations will not look any *more* foolish than those who opposed the things you cite.
I used the softer word "foolish" - but in reality, they are idiots. Yes, they are, and they will look like idiots in the future when China wins the AI race. In the same way, nuclear opponents are idiots and have contributed to the decline in nuclear research in the West over the past 50 years (looking at you, Europe, especially Germany), while China keeps advancing its nuclear research (fission and fusion as well) and building nuclear plants to ensure its future energy independence and dominance.
What, exactly, are we racing for? Smarter chatboxes?
Nuclear plants are being forced to shut down in this heat wave, due to low river levels, as they don't have enough head pressure to run their cooling pumps and if they had different pumps their waste heat would sterilize the river. I'm sure China has no qualms about sterilising rivers but the next, hotter, heat wave will dry them up anyway, and they'll still have to turn the plants off.
It's an elite project, being forced on us without having any choice. It is worsening inflation. It is increasing inequality. It is threatening careers. It has cheapened human creativity. Just look at how the elite of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and politics are coalescing to absurd lengths to fund and build these things. Why wouldn't you be suspicious...
Inflation and inequality are driven by the money printer far more than AI. The money printer is also driving AI, because there's far more supply of money than sensible investments to put it in.
The article is interesting, but I think it dances around what should be a central point, only approaching it obliquely. A lot of the opposition to data centers isn't about specific claimed benefits/drawbacks, but the fact that the people behind them are known to be bad actors.
> My conversations make me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly beside the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? “I don’t believe them.” Paying millions in taxes? “I don’t believe them.” Creating a thousand jobs? “I don’t believe them.” I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim.
It's not reflexive; it's evidenced. Regardless of what big tech promises, or potential mitigations, everyone knows what tech companies do now. It's not a generalised small-town lack of trust in big city folks, it's a direct response to decades of extractive behaviour by the same companies and people.
Essentially, I think there's a proximal reputational problem for AI companies, which the article calls out, but the ultimate problem is factual. It's not an education/communication/negotiation issue, because the real problem is the underlying reality. The wolf at the door being distrusted is because it's a wolf, not PR.
The other part is: if there really is so much money in these, it should be easy for the companies to produce an actually good deal. Everyone can tell (after all these experiences) what bullshit smells like, when the deals are full of tricks. Why try the tricks--property taxes that pay eventually, jobs that will show up eventually, promises that electric bills won't go up--when you could guarantee the results, and guarantee the town won't be left holding the bag?
Well of course it's because the companies think they don't have to give a good deal. That they can get away with it.
One wonders if at this point they would have saved money not trying to fuck people over to get what they wanted. I hope so. The ideal world has companies doing things the honest way because it's honest, but I'd settle for them doing it that way because they're economically incentivized to do so.
mostly unrelated but amusing: I keep getting fliers from Google fiber trying to get me to switch. Every one has this one bizarre line in it: "our customers have never had their rates go up!"---as if I am too stupid to realize that is not a promise. Now, I have no idea if that works on other people. Maybe enough other people are stupid and don't notice that that's not a promise that turns out to be good ad copy. But I am personally so put off by the disrespectful attempt at manipulation that I consider switching less, even though it might well save me money. It is significantly worse for them, as a sales tactic, than if they had written nothing there at all.
You should switch to whatever is cheapest right now. If it gets more expensive, you should switch to whatever is cheapest right then. That's the market price signal that drives the good parts of capitalism.
"A lot of opposition to data centers isn't about specific claimed benefits/drawbacks, but the fact that the people behind them are known to be bad actors."
HN commenters favouring data centers never seem to address this either. It appears they just don't get it
If someone does not like "AI" software nor the people behind it, then it makes little sense to argue about electricity, water, eminent domain, etc.
Big Tech founders have claimed that the public "trusts" them because the public uses ("chooses") their software. But does this amount to "real world" trust
As you say, the distrust is backed up by evidence and by their own personal experience of the same promises getting trotted out time after time, generation after generation.
These people, these communities, have been promised these same things before (or things adjacent to them) and have seen them not deliver, or even make their situation worse.
This is especially true of the tax income and job generation elements. The estimates provided as part of the deal are utterly divorced from reality- people know it and refuse to take part in the kayfabe that surrounds it.
"We can't trust them" is the foundation of practically every conspiracy theory, though, from times immemorial. I remember people protesting against cell towers, and it was exactly what their arguments were built around: "We don't believe this thing won't fry our brains". It was the same before with electrical lines, and I guess steam power had its share too. Not telling a concerned citizen is obliged to trust everyone, marketing & propaganda were part of "underlying reality" for centuries at least. But frankly, you made it sound like it's a novel thing, a dark omen of evil AI times, or something.
The difference being that AI companies are destroying all sorts of stuff, and cellphone companies didn't - they just provided cellphones.
Society did decay because of cellphones but it wasn't anything to do with the cellphone companies. The towers always were exactly what the cellphone companies said they were.
This is an example of the same problem as the article; you're treating trust as entirely unrelated to reality. It can get out-of-step, but that's not the only possibility, and it's not the one we're facing here.
The problem with conspiracy theories is not that they're based on a lack of trust, but that they're not rational. Sometimes a lack of trust is perfectly rational.
Cell towers don't actually fry your brains. Steam powered trains don't move so fast you suffocate. However, the big tech CEOs are absolutely going to take your data and use it against you. They are going to build data centers that harm your community. The fear here is reasonable and evidenced.
This isn't unique to AI, but AI is the current iteration of the same problem. Sometimes people distrust outsiders because they're star-bellied sneetches, but sometimes they distrust them because they're the British empire. You can't treat all distrust as unreasoning.
>problem with conspiracy theories is not that they're based on a lack of trust, but that they're not rational.
Rationality isn't some sort of absolute parameter, it's determined wrt available information. And with information coming from outside it's certainly an issue of trust.
FWIW such unconditional claim as "DC will harm your community" is a shiny example of this, as you don't even care to talk about a particular DC, and obviously cases (community problems, and interests, and the way a DC placed or build) can vary a lot. Apparently, you just don't believe them at all, don't you?
>You can't treat all distrust as unreasoning.
I don't. I just noticed that arguments you believe are central are very stretchy, and can 'prove' anything, including conspiracy theories.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice -- can't get fooled again. - actual Dubya quote
An early form of anti-clipchimping. He would not say the words "shame on me".
I have a property in NW Wisconsin. It's incredibly poor there - it seems like most people working age are on disability - the new form of welfare. Money is earned mostly in summer and hunting seasons. It's pretty depressing. Lots of alcohol problems. I hired someone to clear some trees and make lumber out of them once and he showed up for the job three months later. At least he showed up though. Weirdest thing - he never came back after the job to get paid. I end up often hiring contractors from 90 miles away to get good ones.
But a data center wouldn't help. It would raise electric prices and doesn't really employ people.
It's kind of like one industry that is in the area - there's a company that grows huge amounts of cranberries but its mostly automated. As far as I know only three people work on this huge site. They let the cranberries grow, flood the area when they're ready. The cranberries float to the top for robots to skim the surface and harvest them. The humans just move things around for the robots.
If the data center was paying a decent amount of taxes surely it would help though right? In theory the taxes would go towards pro social uses.
City taxes don't fix a broken economic flywheel. State taxes go to others and also don't fix it. You need a functional economy with jobs, income, spending and all that jazz. A small amount of taxes with no second order benefits is worth relatively little.
Sure but progress over perfection right? More tax revenue puts you in a better spot to attack those problems than not having it.
Even just doing what Northern Virginia does and lowering people’s property taxes gives homeowners more disposable income/ lowers prices for renters which is a start.
Which would be a good argument if the datacenters actually paid any taxes. They shop around for tens to hundreds of millions in tax breaks from officials who believe the lies like "we'll create thousands of jobs!".
TFA cites "Each project requires thousands of skilled workers during the two to six year construction period (nearly 10,000 in Mount Pleasant)" so maybe it's not totally fiction (at least during build time).
To me that's not sustainable. It just brings in outside workers, distorts the economy in bad way for locals through increased costs, distorts their daily life in a bad way and then it all goes away leaving a void in its wake. Like the olympics.
My sister dates a guy who works on these kinds of projects. He’s based out of Chicago, and goes to remote places like Idaho or Ohio to build them. They put him up in cheap temporary housing, I guess that generates some local money, but he’s very quickly moving on to the next job. They’re not hiring locals for these tasks, they don’t have the skills. The people who are benefitting are mostly local landlords.
Some believe the lies. Some just believe in a good golf club.
Worth checking out
https://buildermuse.com/economy/every-state-offering-data-ce...
They often don't. In my area the locals gave them giant tax breaks in the hope of bringing in jobs that dont exist.
> If the data center was paying a decent amount of taxes
if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle
This is a needlessly low effort reply that hurts the discussion.
Some data centers are paying lots of taxes and upgrading local grids, others are bribing local politicians or lobbying for abatements.
That is a much more substantive discussion than blanket anti growth.
A school and hospital would do that more than a data center tho. Look at Merced California, used to be a nowhere destination. They built a UC there and now it’s a place students, PhDs and MDs from around the world want to move to. If UC Merced were a data center it would attract no one, it would drain and pollute the lake, and Merced CA would still be a nowhere destination.
We’re talking about rural Wisconsin - there is no world where you need to make a trade off between having school and a data center. Put a school in one field and a data center in a field further away. It just seems like you should tax the data center and then build a school or whatever else you think would help the local economy.
A data center turns the whole town into an industrial zone because of the sound and water pollution. No one wants to live near one, especially not doctors and teachers with young families who can choose to live anywhere.
Data centers don’t cause water pollution generally or turn entire towns into industrial zones. There is more than enough room in rural WI towns for industrial and non industrial parts.
> No one wants to live near one, especially not doctors and teachers with young families who can choose to live anywhere.
Northern Virginia is one of the top locations for the kind of people who “can live anywhere” and is the world capital of data centers. And part of that appeal in NoVA is low property taxes due to data centers paying taxes.
There is some real aspects of the data center debate but I don’t think your engaging with them
I mean, how do you explain the backlash then if their byproducts don't generally bother people?
> Northern Virginia is one of the top locations for the kind of people who “can live anywhere” and is the world capital of data centers.
People live in NoVa despite data centers, not because of them. Its proximity to DC makes it intrinsically attractive. Towns in rural nowhere don't have the same innate draw and I don't see how datacenters provide it.
Merced has a datacenter.
> Weirdest thing - he never came back after the job to get paid.
I believe you've met a Mike Garage:
https://x.com/japan_nobunaga/status/2083940637921943803
They don't always accept payment.
“Disability, the new form of welfare”? How old are you exactly?
Exactly. Let's leave data centers to other nations. Let them run the intelligence and manufacturing, lets focus on getting (more) disability.
What do you believe is the link between chatboxes and manufacturing?
A good portion of this movement is irrational and driven by viral media. Last week a coworker was talking about how unbearably loud data centers are. I asked them if our parking lot is loud. (There’s a decent sized server floor in our building and a bunch of cooling equipment in the parking lot.) They had never noticed the cooling system.
On the other hand, my city gave the local data centers big tax breaks to come here. In the last couple years my property taxes have increased significantly along with my electricity bill. It seems obvious that I’m subsidizing the local data center. There’s probably a couple dozen people who work there, so it’s not a realistic employment opportunity for me or anyone I know. I’m not anti-tech at all, but I wish the city hadn’t made the deal they did. Perhaps big tech could be less parasitic and contribute beneficially to society?
There's a big psychological difference between the noise level in a transitory space like an office parking lot and the same noise level at a suburban home. Nobody wants their backyard, deck, or bedroom to sound like Eraserhead, even if it's subtle. (And some of the gas turbine ones are not subtle.)
You know as well as I do that your server room is not the same as the cut-all-corners AI DCs getting built right now.
Is it big tech's responsibility to somehow 'contribute beneficially'? Data center construction is not a welfare project.
As long as there is no corruption involved, I do not see what is wrong with big tech choosing a project site where the cost is minimal.
If there are many poor rural cities which compete for data center deals, this seems to me like an efficient free market.
If public opinion swings, will this not influence politicians, and force big tech to provide better benefits in these deals?
I found the below line to get particularly "hard":
> When I visited DC in February to start researching the brewing AI backlash, I found that the top two uniting issues were kids’ safety and data centers.1 These were very different concerns from those I hear in San Francisco—a city with no kids and no data centers
> "The EMF reader is shakier, going haywire under the crackling power lines, then settling down a few steps away"
That kind of statement really bothers me. Is it measuring the magnetic fields or RF emissions? If it's RF, what frequency? If the EMF reader is picking up radio waves, I'm not exactly concerned. Visible light would be weird. X-rays would be very concerning. Is it just picking up the 50/60Hz power line? That's all around you in your house anyway. If you just don't like power lines, say that
Yeah that conspiracist nonsense should be left out when there are enough real problems like noise and electricity bills.
Data centers are fine if planned and built properly, which they never are in this AI shovel rush.
(Remember, in a shovel rush, sell casting machines)
Common citizens aren't the only ones who prefer not to live near these unsightly noise-and-pollution centers. Look at the satellite views around tech oligarchs' homes, and you won't see any data centers anywhere near those lavish estates. Let them build it in their own backyard.
As a thought experiment why not just move the people who want them to those neighbourhoods and move the people who don't where the people who do live. I wonder how many would actually take that deal..
I suspect they wouldn't
The power lines (seemingly everywhere) are pretty offensive on the eyes.
People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.
How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology).
A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.
I get why people wouldn't want (steam) trains in their proverbial back yard just as much as they wouldn't want datacenters. Trains may be a net benefit for a region's mobility and economy, but that doesn't undo the local disruption to people's environments. (I'm unconvinced datacenters have that impact on a region, it generates some jobs at best but most of those will be secondary/tertiary jobs. Primary jobs will be the people doing daily work in and around the site like security and maintenance, but the higher paid specialist work will be flown in or done remotely)
Data centers are quite loud.
I worked in a data center for a decade. None of the neighbors even knew what it was. One actually stopped me to ask.
It was very loud inside, but you couldn't hear it from outside unless the power failed and the generators came on.
The new AI ones are built below minimum standards as a cash grab and they somehow manage to be as loud as jet engines. I have no idea how they manage to achieve that, but I try to avoid denying reality. I agree that an ordinary non-AI data center is no worse than an office building without the people, but that isn't what's happening right now.
> somehow manage to be as loud as jet engines
Thats what anti-AI activists say. A decibel meter is about $20. For some reason the people in those videos never have one.
I saw one news report featuring a reporter casually holding a decibel meter. 55dB at a distance of about a kilometer.
55db is lower than the noise floor in the average office. They were probably just measuring the background noise of regular-ass being outside.
For perspective, the inside of your home is probably about 40. When I turn on my box fan it's about 55.
That said they can be loud when the generators are running. It's possible that when the grid can't keep up the volume goes up, but thats not meant to be a long term state.
We're not talking 55dB peaks--it's a constant 55dB _tone_, and not a pleasant one.
Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/s/RAUfB2WAMD
In this case it's a constant 60dB metallic whine. I would be livid if they built this near my home.
That's a small datacenter with a terrible exhaust fan.
Imagine how bad the big ones are then. They're not building them any less cheaply, you know.
Yes, the new ones often use dirty generators 24/7, and probably will for years. They are loud and toxic to the local community.
The answer to that is to outlaw running noisy generators. It probably already is. Most places already have noise pollution laws designed to harass teenagers with loud music. They should enforce them.
Force them to either install mufflers and proper exhausts on their generators or build their own power infrastructure. They don't now because nobody makes them and it would cost money.
If you outlaw noisy generators the DC doesn't get built, so it's the same as just outlawing the DC.
They tend to use coal and natural gas, instead, often in especially dirty forms. The fact that they can use solar doesn’t mean they do.
Noise pollution is a real issue, even for data centers that is "humming quietly". Same for its energy consumption. Water cooling is another issue, given that lots of the steam a data center generates can rain down in places that wont make the water re-join the water lifecycle easily.
You're comparing steam trains in practice to datacentres in theory. To give one example: the US federal government is suspending all sorts of environmental regulations relating to pollution, just for datacentres: why would they do that if datacentres ran on clean solar or nuclear?
They also need gargantuan amounts of fresh water. And it's anything but a quiet humming.
“Humming quietly”? Really? Humming, yeah, sure, but ask the people living next door how quiet they are.
The data centers near me are pretty quiet. They’re set back from the road enough that they’re no louder than the background noise of traffic, wind, airplanes overhead, etc. I understand my small sample size doesn’t apply everywhere, but it does negate “all data centers are loud.” Some data centers might be loud.
Are they pre-AI data centers or are they the new ones being rapidly built to capture AI compute demand?
The new ones will be though. Look up the specs for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin: no fans; recycled liquid cooling.
That's inside the DC, right? I'd think that even with current generation GPUs the noise of the fans won't be audible outside the building but the cooling infra that is outside the building plus (backup) power generation through gas or diesel generators.
EDIT: recently I read about (I guess on HN) a new planned Amazon datacenter that was super environment-friendly. So in fact it might eventually be possible to create silent DCs but we'll see how this turns out.
Some new ones might be.
Agreed in principle for today’s new ones, though with all the buying frenzy it quickly becomes hard to procure anything but the latest hardware and the economics of older generation hardware makes little sense for new data center deployments.
it's a dumb comparison and you're doubling down on it
96db is quiet?
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/communities-are-raising-n...
The linked article claims that sound can be heard "hundreds of feet from the data center". That is a very short range.
As much as I doubt that spreading of the data centers is a good thing, noise is not the weapon to wield. Unless we are talking the center of a quaint town. And possibly not even then.
The posted article measured 67db, the sound of a lively conversation, next to the data center.
I am interested to learn where the 96db comes from.
I see only vague claims about up to 96db inside of a server rack, but could not locate a concrete measurement or method used to determine this number.
I stopped reading this a few lines in at: "Because there is a lack of reliable data from sound level meters ..."
A decibel meter is about $20 on Amazon, often cheaper. I dont know what their agenda is, but they've got one.
>But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.
So you're saying the UK should never have built a railway system? It sounds like tech is right.
The benefits of the railway system should've been distributed a hell of a lot more evenly and it should have been blocked until that happened, yes.
> like a evil monster.
I tend to like not fearing starvation every year, not fearing freezing to death every year and not having the vast majority of my kids die. Industrialization led to all that.
Post-industrialization, AI-fication, Human Replacement (whatever it ought to be called) could take that all away.
I didn't make the analogy to railroads. I'm just pointing out that its a terrible one if you want to use it to argue against AI.
I didn't realize we were going to freeze to death if there weren't chatboxes everywhere.
The irony of someone arguing against the industrial revolution while enjoying all its benefits is amusing.
I didn't realize we were still in the industrial revolution.
It sounds more like humanity opposes noise pollution?
It's almost like all of that is true and early train companies didn't even bring enough value to the area to offset all of that?
Trains still do that today. They cut a locality in half with only certain crossing points being allowed. But at least enough people ride the train they can feel it's worthwhile.
Tech is such an evil monster. I'm sure you'd enjoy life before the era of trains far more than life today.
JFC I wish people on HN would read a history book.
I disagree with the “evil monster” part, but thanks for sharing that example. I’ll probably use it the opposite way in meetings .. people were deeply skeptical of railways too, yet they ended up transforming society for the better.
Only after a lot of mega companies ruined a lot of people's lives and then went bankrupt.
ah, yes.
It's not about opposing data centers, it's about opposing them close to where you live.
There's now a gargantuan amount of documentation about their impact: - insane noise levels 24/7, you can hear them even at miles away - virtually no jobs brought to the place, besides some construction work early on - massive drain of local resources - massive eye sore
Like, I'm not against data centers per se, but you tell me they building one few miles from my house, I'm listing it the day I hear it and escaping as far as I can.
> There's now a gargantuan amount of documentation about their impact: - insane noise levels 24/7, you can hear them even at miles away
Can you share a link or two to this? Hearing a data center from miles away sounds suspicious.
Some of the reaction to data center build outs has become irrational but frankly I see it as a reflection of the arrogance of the billionaire tech elite. Voters were told:
- AI is going to take your jobs
- We need to build our data centers for this job stealing tool
- We need to build so quickly that there’s no time to do accurate assessments of what this will do to water or power supplies
Turns out people don’t like that. Who could have guessed? Anyone not living in a bubble.
"AI automating jobs", which is the narrative from tech bros to raise funding translates into "AI is going to take your job", for the average Joe. If you are a graphic designer that is now struggling to find work, why would you want a data centre in your town (or anywhere)?
Rejection (or fear) of AI translating into rejection of the physical infrastructure that supports it is perfectly reasonable.
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Do you have evidence? Because that claim doesn't pass the sniff test - why would people who have large amounts of money care about data centers?
Reads like classic projection to me. Always accuse the other side of what your side is doing.
Is there? Do you have sourcing? Who are the well funded actors spending big against data centers?
The Chinese Communist Party
Again: sourcing? An explanation of how the Chinese Communist Party is able to transfer money to middle of nowhere community activists like those mentioned in the article?
how many orders of magnitude less than the money flowing into building data centers? 6 or 7?
"Everyone that disagrees with me is a bot or paid propaganda". Sure, go tell yourself that. The money is clearly on the pro-AI camp, and you'd have to be delusional to think it isn't.
Solid article. Outlines well why no one wants these things. I hope it helps more communities fight these and ensure almost none get built
I hope it also helps investors and hyperscalers to understand the risk of losing the trust of the public.
The majority of people opposed AC current, cars, steam engines, rail tracks, airplanes, computers, the internet, and so on. There was always irrational fear present with new tech advances. People opposing data centers will not look any less foolish than those who opposed AC current.
I don't think the people who opposed those things look foolish even today. Most of those things, in their early days, were implemented haphazardly and with an incredible lack of regulatory oversight, and the reason they were not quite as disastrous as they could have been is that people opposed them.
And people opposing data centers today who are opposing unfettered data center creations will not look any *more* foolish than those who opposed the things you cite.
I used the softer word "foolish" - but in reality, they are idiots. Yes, they are, and they will look like idiots in the future when China wins the AI race. In the same way, nuclear opponents are idiots and have contributed to the decline in nuclear research in the West over the past 50 years (looking at you, Europe, especially Germany), while China keeps advancing its nuclear research (fission and fusion as well) and building nuclear plants to ensure its future energy independence and dominance.
What, exactly, are we racing for? Smarter chatboxes?
Nuclear plants are being forced to shut down in this heat wave, due to low river levels, as they don't have enough head pressure to run their cooling pumps and if they had different pumps their waste heat would sterilize the river. I'm sure China has no qualms about sterilising rivers but the next, hotter, heat wave will dry them up anyway, and they'll still have to turn the plants off.
Just proving my point. "Hey, look, AC current can kill you. We must stop this nonsense"
https://www.wired.com/2012/01/0104edison-uses-ac-to-kill-ele...
What are we racing for? Smarter chatboxes?
There were even some complete and utter fools who said Asbestos wasnt all that.
And the ones who said smoking caused lung cancer.
Nothing that makes you look that cool could be bad for you
I need evidence for all of these please.
Search engines are free.
So you don't have any evidence.
It's an elite project, being forced on us without having any choice. It is worsening inflation. It is increasing inequality. It is threatening careers. It has cheapened human creativity. Just look at how the elite of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and politics are coalescing to absurd lengths to fund and build these things. Why wouldn't you be suspicious...
Inflation and inequality are driven by the money printer far more than AI. The money printer is also driving AI, because there's far more supply of money than sensible investments to put it in.
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That's a bit racist isn't it?
No, it was as a comment about the Chinese government, not something inherent in the Chinese race
what’s racist ? are you okay ?