Simply change the pricing so that the datacenters pay a higher rate to subsidize everyone else.
The handwriting was on the wall with this issue since the O'Bama administration: he had been convinced that putting all health care records in one central repository i.e. server famrs, and then unleash AI-systems on all that data, would come up with a cure for cancer. And at that time, there was an electricity shortage problem.
Another server farm is the one that the NSA built in Utah where the local power grid has been unable to keep powered-up. That's the one purported to have the backdoor on everyone's internet traffic kept. But some people prefer I go away with my foil hat.
The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.
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.
There is no cloud capacity crunch, what a bunch of hog wash. What we've mostly got are some of the most inefficient systems on the planet where consumers are also building some of the most inefficient projects on top of it.
There is no real effort being put towards maximizing the amount of resources you can get out of hardware, the game for the entire duration of our industry has been throwing more money to buy more hardware.
Now that there are actual limits happening, there still isn't any major motivation to truly rewrite things to be better or more efficient. What they're trying to do instead is force the US government to bail them out via corporate welfare or to threaten allies into buying their wares.
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.
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?
> Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..."
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.
I'm curious how the HN zeitgeist hates datacenters so ferociously yet every third article posted to the front page is 800 comments beating off to a new Claude feature. It's mind-boggling.
Half the traffic on this site are real, intelligent humans (among whom opinion is split different ways on the AI topic), a quarter of the traffic is propagandists trying to destroy western tech/infrastructure/society (notice how China apparently doesn't have to stop AI development or datacenter development, only the West does), and the remaining quarter is real humans who have been utterly consumed by the previously mentioned propagandists and are parroting the same messaging.
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...".
Don't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
And a wall between the two was built a decade ago. Considering it was hit on day one, obviously it was considered an important target, which makes it inexcusable that nobody checked it in a decade.
The DCs are going up across middle income countries: industrial zones in South East Asia, India and Morocco, and also UAE/Saudi.
Anger towards DCs are pertinent from a politics-in-rich-country angle, but it has no relevance on the overall trajectory of where we are heading.
If DCs get banned in the US, there are still many middle income countries who want them in their special industrial zones, due to the FDI and employment opportunities they bring, and these countries provide generous tax breaks to hyper scalers to compete for their business.
Malaysia and India are recent examples of this policymaking. The new US funded DC zone in Philippines is another example.
There's an interesting geopolitics (emphases on "geo") angle to this if these critical assets are going to increasingly be built overseas.
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.
A random people on hn, presumably not a data center manager, is not "making a threat" by talking about potential second order effects of data center policy.
No despicable data center apologist has ever suggested that communities shouldn't negotiate the best deal they can get to compensate for the incurred costs and externalities.
Why do you feel justified defining what terms a community can agree to when considering hosting a data center? Do you not believe the democratic right for them to self-govern.
Still very few for deserving a tax break based on potential employment opportunities. A DC simply doesn't help the local economy, it's very often a net-negative: it's very resource-intensive while not generating much in terms of economical activity for where it sits at.
In a sense it's purely extractivist consuming land, water, and energy without benefits to the community.
Yeah, the only point where DCs employ a lot of people are during the construction period. Maybe good if you have a ton of excess electricity and you need to prop up your local construction industry for the next five years.
I believe framing this as people being against "data centers" is missing the target. Data centers have existed for decades, ever since business started using computers. What people really have an issue with is data centers designed for AI, using far more power than prior data centers.
Honestly, I think we should just ban "AI" of all forms and get it over with. Rip the bandage off before the wound underneath turns into gangrene
This latest round of projects are often located within or next to communities too, where most pre-AI projects were more out of the way, increasing immediately visible impact dramatically via noise and air and water pollution.
I've been flagging nearly every HN post that has anything to do with AI, even negative. The quicker we get "AI" out of our zeitgeist, the better. AI isn't even a solid term, the term "artificial intelligence" is almost 100 years old at this point, and the definition has changed so many times that it's a useless term.
ELIZA was "AI". But it didn't have the same level of societal damage. HAL 9000 was "AI". Games have "AI" for decades. But "AI" today has been coopted by corporations who seek to lock people into their AIaaS. Local LLMs exist, and I have a few models on my computer for fun. Those models still probably used more power than I would like to be generated. But I will never, ever, ever use cloud AI to even so much as ask a question. If there is a long-term future in AI, it's in local models
I feel that the resentment to be short sighted. Datacenters do not vote, but people do. If a datacenter is in a locale, it gives those voters a de-facto, outsized, soft power.
You, via your electeds, (in theory) have more power over a datacenter in your own jurisdiction than not. Though that does depend a lot on your electeds not being in the pocket of the datacenter's owners, and on the regulatory environment of the country/state leaving power available to city/county officials to do anything.
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.
If you go in with the assumption that democracy does not work, then there is also no point in protesting, as being angry about datacenters would mean nothing anyway.
People aren’t mad about technology. 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.
Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having.
Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.
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.
> property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year
Those are staggering numbers. In my town a single family home pays about $12K/year in property taxes. To collect a billion in property taxes would be 85,000 homes!
> 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. Lenox is just a short distance from Flint, where they know all about how a city and its population can be left behind by an industry.
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.
When do enterprises ever proper pay tax? If they did we all would be better off.
They will pay the minimum tax and that will then be pocketed by the local politicians who pushed for the DC. The town gets a pittance compared to the profit produced from these DCs.
One of the incentives to build in these areas are that they can pay low tax in the first place.
My understanding is that local governments often get more in tax revenue than they spend on additional services. Which explains why they want to do it. Example:
> In January, Loudoun County estimated about $895 million in data center real and personal property tax revenue, and the county’s entire operating budget was projected to be $940 million, according to County Supervisor Mike Turner (D-Ashburn).
> Loudoun County’s next budget will spend $4.7 billion in the next fiscal year which includes funding for LCPS, according to the county.
…
> Loudoun County Public Schools will be getting $111.8 million more than last year, and county employee compensation will increase, according to the county.
They’re getting lots of money from data centers and spending it on things like employees and schools, while lowering residents’ taxes slightly.
Apparently you believe differently but where did you learn that?
What's driving the need for datacenters All over the world?
Aren't there only a handful of companies need compute and can build datacenters? This isn't aws building more regions is it?
Also recently I was surprised and not surprised to find people are making anti ai like their identity now. Like there's a reddit community dedicated to this
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.
How do you extract wealth from building a highly capital-intensive physical plant? Construction crews and building material suppliers do not work on a promise of future payments.
You get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.
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.
I get that, I mean who are the investors? Random colo companies? Are The big cloud providers are bringing up new small regions in all of these random towns? Only so many companies can even get the hardware to fill it. And there are only a handful llm providers.
There's only so many companies involved as far as I can tell,but these datacenter stories seem everywhere?
There’s a whole layer of companies providing these data centers. CoreWeave is one example, and there are many others. SpaceX is in this business in their gross Memphis facility.
The big providers lease capacity in addition to their own capital investments. It helps them hedge risk. When the merry go round stops on AI, these will all go bankrupt, and H100s will be like a circa 2001 Aeron chair.
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 all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. National governments are largely viewing AI as a strategic capability.
That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity.
I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…
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.
The noise is often from backup power solutions like diesel generators that need to be turned on regularly. Maybe that’s what the turbines are? I can’t imagine a data center getting provisioned with a turbine as its primary power. But yes a data center can be silent most of the month.
Very open to being corrected on any of this, it’s just my own understanding but I’m not in the industry.
To my understanding (which can be wrong) these gas turbines are not backup generators, but used as primary or supplementary power sources during normal operation where the grid cannot supply (or when grid cost is unfavorable). In one clip (which is a bit sensationalist so I'll refrain from posting it as it may derail) shows a park of some ~24 large gas turbines - each of which sized like a small building - with about half in operation at that time.
Indeed, there is some noise from backup generators when tested (or in use), but with a bit of preparation, good palcement and sequential testing you can make that not too disturbing.
> Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers
The others I agree with, but Im not sure this is true. The US government has proven itself completely incapable of expanding electricity production and grid infrastructure. How exactly are you supposed to power your datacenter when you cant access any electricity?
1. Build your datacenter near supply. If there were consequences to ignoring the rules or being a bad neighbor with municipality, state or federal government baring their teeth, more optimal locations with regards to supply and noise would also end up being the cheapest and safest location for them.
2. Build supply near your datacenter. Solar and wind are both very cheap right now, but requires buying more land, same for a proper gas power plant in its own building with appropriate noise and pollution treatment.
3. Make investment into infrastructure a prerequisite for the project instead of just complaining about it and making into an excuse for cutting corners.
Even if you need to have local supply, "mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits" is never a necessity.
The US govt does not build out infrastructure. They at best subsidize it over long periods of time.
To answer your question, you build your datacenters where there is capacity or you plan with the utility in the area you want to build. This process takes years.
They are not doing that. They are building them as fast and as cheaply as possible.
As a result they are cutting corners and are leading to all of the complaints.
They are as a result stealing from the future to make a profit today.
The grid does not have gigawatts of extra base load capacity available as that has always been looked upon as wasteful.
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.
Oh, they're trying alright. Google has been spamming Twitch with ads of teens and 20-somethings talking about how Gemini helps them study or "research" their paper, and the casting call clearly was for urban progressive LGBTQ types
> 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.
If it were true that data centers are building "American dynamism" and China wants to suppress that, surely they would be building data centers the way they build trains.
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
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.
Probably the lack of water. I don't know why they need to continually pump it instead of doing a closed loop and cooling it through a few miles of pipe underground which is practically free, after you install the plumbing. Sure evaporative cooling is good, but certainly there are workable alternatives.
That or latent heat cooling, the other end of the phase-state spectrum: Instead of evaporating water during the day, make ice all night when ambient air temps drop and then use it to cool a closed-loop system during the day.
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.
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.
Nice. It's great to see democracy work. Now do the California officials everywhere.
Simply change the pricing so that the datacenters pay a higher rate to subsidize everyone else.
The handwriting was on the wall with this issue since the O'Bama administration: he had been convinced that putting all health care records in one central repository i.e. server famrs, and then unleash AI-systems on all that data, would come up with a cure for cancer. And at that time, there was an electricity shortage problem.
Another server farm is the one that the NSA built in Utah where the local power grid has been unable to keep powered-up. That's the one purported to have the backdoor on everyone's internet traffic kept. But some people prefer I go away with my foil hat.
The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.
Demand crunches spur supply chain capacity improvements when the market is left alone from populist interventions.
Sounds like a certainty stated like that. So not like toilet paper during covid?
what if the market was hard to enter?
What if the inputs aren't available?
What if the costs of the inputs rises?
What if the capital for expansion isn't available?
What if the manufacturers don't expect demand to persist?
What if there's a shortage of skilled labour?
What if it takes years to expand supply?
What if there wasn't effective competition?
Do you regard delusional billionaire circular funding as populist intervention too?
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.
There is no cloud capacity crunch, what a bunch of hog wash. What we've mostly got are some of the most inefficient systems on the planet where consumers are also building some of the most inefficient projects on top of it.
There is no real effort being put towards maximizing the amount of resources you can get out of hardware, the game for the entire duration of our industry has been throwing more money to buy more hardware.
Now that there are actual limits happening, there still isn't any major motivation to truly rewrite things to be better or more efficient. What they're trying to do instead is force the US government to bail them out via corporate welfare or to threaten allies into buying their wares.
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.
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?
> Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..."
You can't make this up.
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.
Did our demand for social media apps suddenly blow up? Because our DC demand seems to be blowing up.
I'm curious how the HN zeitgeist hates datacenters so ferociously yet every third article posted to the front page is 800 comments beating off to a new Claude feature. It's mind-boggling.
Half the traffic on this site are real, intelligent humans (among whom opinion is split different ways on the AI topic), a quarter of the traffic is propagandists trying to destroy western tech/infrastructure/society (notice how China apparently doesn't have to stop AI development or datacenter development, only the West does), and the remaining quarter is real humans who have been utterly consumed by the previously mentioned propagandists and are parroting the same messaging.
This violates Occam's razor despite it being sort of an obvious thing I would do if I was ccp
There are differences in types of data centers and hyper scale data centers are extremely different than what you're imagining.
I'm sure the protesters are well-versed on the technical differences.
Not that it matters. A building is a building and has to meet local zoning regulations.
Your elected representatives are approving them left and right and issuing variances.
We need more locally-sourced, sustainable datacenters?
Complains about pollution, but still breathes the air, eh? What is your suggestion, a strongly-worded letter to the editor of your local newspaper?
Arming the dumbest among us...
Conveniently leaving yourself out of that group, I'm sure.
Pointing out hypocrisy is a losing strategy in politics.
I implore you to continue with this strategy.
And yet here you are, chilling with the dumbs.
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 person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care.
Budget phones are a category are getting fucked, and there's a pretty good chance the next iPhone is gonna cost even more than it does now.
Don't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
The school used to be a military base office. Acting on stale data is common for both humans and ML models.
And a wall between the two was built a decade ago. Considering it was hit on day one, obviously it was considered an important target, which makes it inexcusable that nobody checked it in a decade.
https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de...
The DCs are going up across middle income countries: industrial zones in South East Asia, India and Morocco, and also UAE/Saudi.
Anger towards DCs are pertinent from a politics-in-rich-country angle, but it has no relevance on the overall trajectory of where we are heading.
If DCs get banned in the US, there are still many middle income countries who want them in their special industrial zones, due to the FDI and employment opportunities they bring, and these countries provide generous tax breaks to hyper scalers to compete for their business.
Malaysia and India are recent examples of this policymaking. The new US funded DC zone in Philippines is another example.
There's an interesting geopolitics (emphases on "geo") angle to this if these critical assets are going to increasingly be built overseas.
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.
A random people on hn, presumably not a data center manager, is not "making a threat" by talking about potential second order effects of data center policy.
No despicable data center apologist has ever suggested that communities shouldn't negotiate the best deal they can get to compensate for the incurred costs and externalities.
Why do you feel justified defining what terms a community can agree to when considering hosting a data center? Do you not believe the democratic right for them to self-govern.
> 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.
They can be taxed. There should be a point where the price is right for the community hosting.
Why does Malaysia give tax breaks to data centers?
Definitely not because of long-term employment, even very large DCs only employ about a hundred staff on-site.
A hundred is a lot bigger than five
Still very few for deserving a tax break based on potential employment opportunities. A DC simply doesn't help the local economy, it's very often a net-negative: it's very resource-intensive while not generating much in terms of economical activity for where it sits at.
In a sense it's purely extractivist consuming land, water, and energy without benefits to the community.
They provide very few employment opportunities.
Yeah, the only point where DCs employ a lot of people are during the construction period. Maybe good if you have a ton of excess electricity and you need to prop up your local construction industry for the next five years.
I believe framing this as people being against "data centers" is missing the target. Data centers have existed for decades, ever since business started using computers. What people really have an issue with is data centers designed for AI, using far more power than prior data centers.
Honestly, I think we should just ban "AI" of all forms and get it over with. Rip the bandage off before the wound underneath turns into gangrene
This latest round of projects are often located within or next to communities too, where most pre-AI projects were more out of the way, increasing immediately visible impact dramatically via noise and air and water pollution.
I've been flagging nearly every HN post that has anything to do with AI, even negative. The quicker we get "AI" out of our zeitgeist, the better. AI isn't even a solid term, the term "artificial intelligence" is almost 100 years old at this point, and the definition has changed so many times that it's a useless term.
ELIZA was "AI". But it didn't have the same level of societal damage. HAL 9000 was "AI". Games have "AI" for decades. But "AI" today has been coopted by corporations who seek to lock people into their AIaaS. Local LLMs exist, and I have a few models on my computer for fun. Those models still probably used more power than I would like to be generated. But I will never, ever, ever use cloud AI to even so much as ask a question. If there is a long-term future in AI, it's in local models
I feel that the resentment to be short sighted. Datacenters do not vote, but people do. If a datacenter is in a locale, it gives those voters a de-facto, outsized, soft power.
>gives those voters a de-facto, outsized, soft power
How?
You, via your electeds, (in theory) have more power over a datacenter in your own jurisdiction than not. Though that does depend a lot on your electeds not being in the pocket of the datacenter's owners, and on the regulatory environment of the country/state leaving power available to city/county officials to do anything.
>(in theory) >leaving power available
This just sounds like 'no' but with extra indirection.
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.
If you go in with the assumption that democracy does not work, then there is also no point in protesting, as being angry about datacenters would mean nothing anyway.
On the contrary, if democracy works, then there is no point in protesting, as you would just vote (or campaign and run for office) instead.
Most large scale protests are in fact because democracy failed to give the people a voice, and decisions were made without the input of the people.
If democracy does not work, the consequences for that are broader than considering the pros/cons of data centers.
And those consequences are happening
the bull case for industrial AI looks a lot like turning the whole planet into paperclips
People aren’t mad about technology. 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.
Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having.
Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.
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.
> property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year
Those are staggering numbers. In my town a single family home pays about $12K/year in property taxes. To collect a billion in property taxes would be 85,000 homes!
> 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. Lenox is just a short distance from Flint, where they know all about how a city and its population can be left behind by an industry.
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.
When do enterprises ever proper pay tax? If they did we all would be better off.
They will pay the minimum tax and that will then be pocketed by the local politicians who pushed for the DC. The town gets a pittance compared to the profit produced from these DCs.
One of the incentives to build in these areas are that they can pay low tax in the first place.
My understanding is that local governments often get more in tax revenue than they spend on additional services. Which explains why they want to do it. Example:
https://wjla.com/news/local/loudoun-county-virginia-taxes-da...
> In January, Loudoun County estimated about $895 million in data center real and personal property tax revenue, and the county’s entire operating budget was projected to be $940 million, according to County Supervisor Mike Turner (D-Ashburn).
> Loudoun County’s next budget will spend $4.7 billion in the next fiscal year which includes funding for LCPS, according to the county.
…
> Loudoun County Public Schools will be getting $111.8 million more than last year, and county employee compensation will increase, according to the county.
They’re getting lots of money from data centers and spending it on things like employees and schools, while lowering residents’ taxes slightly.
Apparently you believe differently but where did you learn that?
What's driving the need for datacenters All over the world?
Aren't there only a handful of companies need compute and can build datacenters? This isn't aws building more regions is it?
Also recently I was surprised and not surprised to find people are making anti ai like their identity now. Like there's a reddit community dedicated to this
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.
How do you extract wealth from building a highly capital-intensive physical plant? Construction crews and building material suppliers do not work on a promise of future payments.
You get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.
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.
I get that, I mean who are the investors? Random colo companies? Are The big cloud providers are bringing up new small regions in all of these random towns? Only so many companies can even get the hardware to fill it. And there are only a handful llm providers.
There's only so many companies involved as far as I can tell,but these datacenter stories seem everywhere?
There’s a whole layer of companies providing these data centers. CoreWeave is one example, and there are many others. SpaceX is in this business in their gross Memphis facility.
The big providers lease capacity in addition to their own capital investments. It helps them hedge risk. When the merry go round stops on AI, these will all go bankrupt, and H100s will be like a circa 2001 Aeron chair.
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 all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. National governments are largely viewing AI as a strategic capability.
That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity.
I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…
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.
The noise is often from backup power solutions like diesel generators that need to be turned on regularly. Maybe that’s what the turbines are? I can’t imagine a data center getting provisioned with a turbine as its primary power. But yes a data center can be silent most of the month.
Very open to being corrected on any of this, it’s just my own understanding but I’m not in the industry.
To my understanding (which can be wrong) these gas turbines are not backup generators, but used as primary or supplementary power sources during normal operation where the grid cannot supply (or when grid cost is unfavorable). In one clip (which is a bit sensationalist so I'll refrain from posting it as it may derail) shows a park of some ~24 large gas turbines - each of which sized like a small building - with about half in operation at that time.
Indeed, there is some noise from backup generators when tested (or in use), but with a bit of preparation, good palcement and sequential testing you can make that not too disturbing.
> Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers
The others I agree with, but Im not sure this is true. The US government has proven itself completely incapable of expanding electricity production and grid infrastructure. How exactly are you supposed to power your datacenter when you cant access any electricity?
Three ways:
1. Build your datacenter near supply. If there were consequences to ignoring the rules or being a bad neighbor with municipality, state or federal government baring their teeth, more optimal locations with regards to supply and noise would also end up being the cheapest and safest location for them.
2. Build supply near your datacenter. Solar and wind are both very cheap right now, but requires buying more land, same for a proper gas power plant in its own building with appropriate noise and pollution treatment.
3. Make investment into infrastructure a prerequisite for the project instead of just complaining about it and making into an excuse for cutting corners.
Even if you need to have local supply, "mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits" is never a necessity.
The US govt does not build out infrastructure. They at best subsidize it over long periods of time.
To answer your question, you build your datacenters where there is capacity or you plan with the utility in the area you want to build. This process takes years.
They are not doing that. They are building them as fast and as cheaply as possible.
As a result they are cutting corners and are leading to all of the complaints.
They are as a result stealing from the future to make a profit today.
The grid does not have gigawatts of extra base load capacity available as that has always been looked upon as wasteful.
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.
Oh, they're trying alright. Google has been spamming Twitch with ads of teens and 20-somethings talking about how Gemini helps them study or "research" their paper, and the casting call clearly was for urban progressive LGBTQ types
> 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.
If it were true that data centers are building "American dynamism" and China wants to suppress that, surely they would be building data centers the way they build trains.
They're not. And that should make you go hmmm.
The Chinese are using AI in a fundamentally different way from the west.
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.
Two things can be true.
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.
Probably the lack of water. I don't know why they need to continually pump it instead of doing a closed loop and cooling it through a few miles of pipe underground which is practically free, after you install the plumbing. Sure evaporative cooling is good, but certainly there are workable alternatives.
That or latent heat cooling, the other end of the phase-state spectrum: Instead of evaporating water during the day, make ice all night when ambient air temps drop and then use it to cool a closed-loop system during the day.
Don't they also need plentiful water?
Only open loop systems, the dumbest loop systems.
> 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.