Obviously, it's fine to be wary of any development in your area. But it seems like there is a certain amount of irrational(?) fear of datacenters. And I really don't understand it.
I saw a poll recently that people would rather live near a nuclear power plan than a datacenter. That's... their choice, of course, but doesn't seem logical to me.
I have heard several "concern stories" about them on NPR recently. Maybe there is a political component to it. But I do worry there is some kind of manipulation being done.
Ad homniems aside, is the accusation even accurate? So far as I can tell he doesn't obviously have "a massive financial incentive to do so", like he's a VC investor in anthropic or whatever. He does seem to be bullish on AI in general, but I'm not sure why that'd be a disqualification for someone on the pro-ai camp any more than someone who's interested in retaining their property values or whatever would be a disqualifier for the anti-ai camp.
I don’t know the background to this project, but a nuclear project would likely be very transparent - with public studies on the impacts and meetings for the public to make their views known. It’s far quicker to build a datacenter than to increase local grid and water capacity later.
> The Stratos Project moved forward with far too many unanswered questions around water, power, cost, and transparency.
In a town near me where a paper plant recently closed (to much anger), then people protested the potential use of the land for a data center, citing concerns about noise, water use, power use, and traffic.
As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, it makes me furious to receive my electricity bill and see that even though I used less electricity than the same month last year, I am paying significantly more. And this happens every year.
Do you think Virginia is adding solar, battery, and wind proportional to that additional power draw? Nope! It's natural gas and coal power imported from PA and WV. It would be one thing if I was paying more to build out renewable energy for environmental purposes and to set up a reliable and clean grid for the future. But no, I'm just subsidizing these huge companies and hurting the environment to boot.
This echoes some of my biggest gripes about data centers:
We should be mandating green power, to a great extent, be built to support these facilities.
We (US states) should not be competing, in a race to the bottom, to be the state to give the biggest tax breaks and pass the cost to the citizens.
We should not be ignoring the citizens who will have their health and livelihoods affected.
AI data centers, for better or worse, are very necessary for many reasons. They could be built responsibly, or at least less hazardously, but the care isn't being put into that aspect of their construction.
The resource consumption is huge and it provides relatively little to the surrounding community compared to its intake. For most residents who live near one it’s a net loss. Qualify of life decreases and utility bills go up so that a Silicon Valley exec can get a nice bonus for closing the deal.
A nuclear plant creates energy and a decent amount of jobs, while a data center’s value is dubious to the average human and the data center barely brings in any jobs.
> I saw a poll recently that people would rather live near a nuclear power plan than a datacenter. That's... their choice, of course, but doesn't seem logical to me.
Yay people have finally become rational about nuclear power safety !!!
They're big, use up a lot of power, destroy a large batch of land, produce noise and locals get basically nothing out of that (it's not like they provide a lot of jobs or anything). The power bills also go up.
Obviously, it's fine to be wary of any development in your area. But it seems like there is a certain amount of irrational(?) fear of datacenters. And I really don't understand it.
I saw a poll recently that people would rather live near a nuclear power plan than a datacenter. That's... their choice, of course, but doesn't seem logical to me.
I have heard several "concern stories" about them on NPR recently. Maybe there is a political component to it. But I do worry there is some kind of manipulation being done.
Watch these
https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo?si=4XpIb0vb8YjY1g_k
https://youtu.be/t-8TDOFqkQA?si=EB8zAF0JYHvOB23a
https://youtu.be/3VJT2JeDCyw?si=ak7haiWzbX9O8BL9
Then, tell me if you want to live anywhere near those.
Then, tell me of a nuclear power plant that has that bad a repo.
Have you read the responses to (at least) the first of these videos? https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...
Also, I thought the response by Benn Jordan on Bluesky was informative. https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...
It would be helpful if you didn't post rebuttals from people with a massive financial incentive to do so.
Ad homniems aside, is the accusation even accurate? So far as I can tell he doesn't obviously have "a massive financial incentive to do so", like he's a VC investor in anthropic or whatever. He does seem to be bullish on AI in general, but I'm not sure why that'd be a disqualification for someone on the pro-ai camp any more than someone who's interested in retaining their property values or whatever would be a disqualifier for the anti-ai camp.
> That's... their choice, of course, but doesn't seem logical to me.
Wouldn't the question be more simply, Do you want your power bills to go up for the same power used?
And the nuclear accidents that have happend have mostly been overblown (apart from Chernobyl).
I don’t know the background to this project, but a nuclear project would likely be very transparent - with public studies on the impacts and meetings for the public to make their views known. It’s far quicker to build a datacenter than to increase local grid and water capacity later.
> The Stratos Project moved forward with far too many unanswered questions around water, power, cost, and transparency.
In a town near me where a paper plant recently closed (to much anger), then people protested the potential use of the land for a data center, citing concerns about noise, water use, power use, and traffic.
As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, it makes me furious to receive my electricity bill and see that even though I used less electricity than the same month last year, I am paying significantly more. And this happens every year.
Do you think Virginia is adding solar, battery, and wind proportional to that additional power draw? Nope! It's natural gas and coal power imported from PA and WV. It would be one thing if I was paying more to build out renewable energy for environmental purposes and to set up a reliable and clean grid for the future. But no, I'm just subsidizing these huge companies and hurting the environment to boot.
This echoes some of my biggest gripes about data centers:
We should be mandating green power, to a great extent, be built to support these facilities.
We (US states) should not be competing, in a race to the bottom, to be the state to give the biggest tax breaks and pass the cost to the citizens.
We should not be ignoring the citizens who will have their health and livelihoods affected.
AI data centers, for better or worse, are very necessary for many reasons. They could be built responsibly, or at least less hazardously, but the care isn't being put into that aspect of their construction.
Could you share more about the rate increases? The newspaper articles I've seen seemed sketchy on how people were affected.
The resource consumption is huge and it provides relatively little to the surrounding community compared to its intake. For most residents who live near one it’s a net loss. Qualify of life decreases and utility bills go up so that a Silicon Valley exec can get a nice bonus for closing the deal.
A nuclear plant creates energy and a decent amount of jobs, while a data center’s value is dubious to the average human and the data center barely brings in any jobs.
> I saw a poll recently that people would rather live near a nuclear power plan than a datacenter. That's... their choice, of course, but doesn't seem logical to me.
Yay people have finally become rational about nuclear power safety !!!
...right, right?
They're big, use up a lot of power, destroy a large batch of land, produce noise and locals get basically nothing out of that (it's not like they provide a lot of jobs or anything). The power bills also go up.
You’re saying it as if living near a nuclear power plant is bad or something
If you're looking for actionable information, and don't want to sign up anywhere to see it:
https://www.breatheutah.org/news/the-stratos-project-questio...
Utah hasn’t voted for a Democrat president since Johnson. Reap what you sow.