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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I operate in at least one social circle that is heavily not-technical (local politics) and I do not see this at all.

My experience is somewhat in the middle -- I see educated non-technical people who are strongly against AI because they see it as polluting, "wasting water", and harmful to society. Although many use it anyway.

I could totally believe uneducated or less well-adjusted people reacting in the above way, though.

Non-technical indeed. The wasting water or pollution argument is getting really tiring.

I would be careful about this one. While the overall impact (in the global/national aggregate sense) may not be massive, the impact to individual communities nearby these new hyperscale datacenters is far more impactful than most people on this site might think.

Look at the grok datacenter in Memphis for one example. The "move fast and break things" mentality in this arena isn't about code anymore, it's being applied to communities.

Let’s say we grant the grok example.

A) How many other datacenters with similar problems can you name?

B) How does this industry compare to every other one on earth, and then look at the disproportionate hate this gets compared to other industries that are substantially worse.

I'm going to flip this around, I know about the grok data center because I am under the impression it is unusual in terms of approvals and pollution.

How many other datacenters with similar problems can you name? If it is indeed not unique, I would appreciate you pointing out some other examples of the same behavior from non-AI related datacenters.

The hatred is particularly intense on reddit. I lost a couple of accounts there to suspension, just for speaking a civil way about the positive aspects of AI.

What do you see?

People in politics aren't that dissimilar to tech bros (especially AI ones) in terms of world view.

People in "local politics" are random neighbors, almost none of whom are "in politics" in the colloquial sense.

Fair enough, but I still think it at least somewhat applies to people who are willing to get involved in any kind of political process beyond the very basics or perhaps some special interest groups.

They are nothing remotely like "tech bros", is my point.

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