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Comment by october8140 | Hacker News Reader

I take it you don't live next to a data center.

Most of the datacenters in my city are concentrated near the warehouse zoned area by the expressway, railroad and interstate leading to the airport. Basically nobody lives there, and those that do are probably much better off now that the diesel trains no longer running.

It does seem most of the pro-AI people aren't actually affected by any of the negative aspects of it. It's a lot easier to be in favor of something that doesn't actually affect you or anyone you care about.

Most everybody isn't affected by data center build outs.

It appears to be not so much about the datacenters themselves as it is limiting the growth capabilities for the LLMs. From their understanding fewer datacenters means more congestion which means less possibility LLMs can be shoved into more places where the public thinks they are intrusive. Which seems to be everywhere.

Can't put new technology back in the box.

We don't build the chips or even the machines that build the machines that build the chips. We don't own all the rare earths and our ability to generate electricity isn't anything special.

The data centers are getting built. Up to us if it's in Utah or overseas.

Everyone pays for the negative externalities of these outsized water- and electricity-sucking, noise- and heat-generating monuments to greed and charlatanism.

Maybe not, but the people near them sure are. And the majority of people are definitely impacted by the downstream effects.

They really aren't.

Very well thought out argument, I'm sure spamming it some more will really convince people. You're telling me people aren't affected by AI in any way whatsoever? That's a very bold and obviously untrue claim. No wonder people don't trust AI sycophants, you can't even keep your story straight.

The water usage is floating point error compared to ethanol and the electricity prices near the centers are some of the cheapest you can get. In terms of the physical world this is maybe the lowest impact industry in history.

Some people have empathy for those who are, even if they are not.

I don't live anywhere near SpaceX's methane monstrosity in Memphis, but I still think it shouldn't exist because of the negative impact it has on the people who live near it.

And I still think Anthropic became fully complicit by renting it out.

What negative impact is that? For context there are only five houses within half a mile of xAI's data center, the building for which has been there for decades, and any homes in the area have been living by the existing giant natural gas power plant next door to the data center for 20+ years. It's really not introducing anything that hasn't been there forever

I often see empathy being mentioned in places where I can totally see the self-preservation link: if other people are negatively affected, it will sooner or later also affect me personally negatively. I am totally fine with seeing empathy and compassion as tools for self-preservation, without assigning any morality to it. Unless I kill you and all of your tribe and anyone else who cares about you, not caring about your needs will backfire on me. It simply makes rational sense to see what you need and make you happy so I can stay happy too.

Except the people living next to them but they don't count because reasons.

No they aren't.

Very similar to the pro-illegal immigration crowd

I live near a datacenter, well, technically, there's a farm on one side and an abandoned factory on the other side. Tell me, is living in one or the other optimal to be able to participate in this discussion without being dismissed?

How would you know? I mean, I'm surrounded by lots of buildings, but I'm not usually aware of what's going on in ones I don't go inside of. There are lots of warehouse-sized buildings all over, and whether those buildings contain racks full of servers or something else entirely isn't something I'd immediately discern.

That's a zoning issue the local residents should take up with their town/city.

But isn't the parent post implying objections to datacenters is just "populist brainrot"?

The stated reasons are "populist brainrot". They aren't scientific or based on reality at all. What has happened is the AI folks have made themselves very very disliked. Saying you are going to take everyone's jobs will do that. So whatever they try to do, people will oppose it. It doesn't matter if the reasons are based in reality or not.

Sure, lots of people parrot the water wasting and it's often not true, but it came out of truth.

There are communities that are on water restrictions where datacenters have no such restrictions (and pay less).

It's also true after some datacenters opened the local aquifers were polluted.

Then there are legit concerns about noise, air quality from LNG generators, etc

Plenty of very legitimate reasons to dislike them, and each community likely has a different set of concerns.

The average person's inattention to nuance could be labeled as "populist brainrot" in this case, and the cases of poor zoning could be used as examples of the issues with datacenters that the average person does not evaluate with the proper attention to nuance.

Sure, the water use is often a simplified argument against these data centers, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons but they are in fact more nuances and context dependent based on the specific location.

When they aren't located out in remote areas, data centers, like most undesirable industry, get located near communities of poor minorities.

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