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Comment by kleiba2 | Hacker News Reader

What?

Heavy fossil fuel use leads to health problems and given a large enough population deaths. Lung cancer, Asthma, heart issues etc

Guessing that is what GP means by body count

Emitting as much greenhouse gas as a country?

That has a body count. It's hard to know which people you're killing, but there's no doubt that at that point there's a number. Maybe... 10,000 or so? They'll die in heat waves and floods and tornadoes and food shortages in dry, poor countries. Obviously 10k is a tiny fraction of the full list of climate fatalities.

But isn't it kind of one-sided to single out data centers like that?

Most emissions are harder to reduce because industry isn't electrified (it runs directly on oil/coal not electricity). This is electricity usage. Electricity emissions are the easiest to avoid.

AI industry also promises to replace everyone, and they have access to large amounts of capital they could use for renewables.

That they punch down on everyone, including people outside of their country who don't benefit from the tax revenue they'll generate, with massive amounts of emissions, is a slap in the face.

It doesn't help that I think datacenters are the means of digital oppression rather than the means of digital empowerment.

Oppression is where you get people hooked on something but then lock it away and use your complete control over supply to extract rent. Gradually the rent will become so high that only the most abusive profit-seekers can afford to pay it.

Empowerment is owning technology so that its purpose is to work for you, rather than to extract rent from you. Tech that empowers individuals usually doesn't need giant chain-link fences around it.

Sure. But a race to the bottom isn't a vision for the future.

Tech used to offer society a vision for the future.

That's not to mention talking people to suicide, which by the way is the far more likely way that it would kill your son or daughter, should you have or ever have one.

And for all that cost, are they bringing us real hope? The most ambitious people talking about this technology basically say that when it takes over all thought, there won't be much point in humans anymore.

We went from being evangelists of a message of hope to evangelists of a message of doom.

I'm not going to be one of those people. Fuck those people. I believe in the future. I will stand up and tell the next generation there is still hope, still compassion, still community and humanity and love out there. I fight for the users!!!

Have you ever been in India while they have those incredibly hot heatwaves in the summer? That kills thousands of people every year. This will only get worse the more greenhouse gasses we emit so slop machines can generate funny videos of the pope breakdancing.

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