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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

It’s as productive as people who glue themselves to roadways. It irritates drivers/commuters (who are then more likely to have a negative view of the cause) and it slows traffic resulting in even more fuel usage. Yet, they think they are doing something good.

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Yet here we are talking about the environmental impact of Microsoft data centres in NL. We wouldn’t otherwise be.

Are we talking about the environmental impact? Or are we talking about the vandalism perpetrated by activists? Attention on the protestors is not necessarily attention on the protestors' cause.

> Are we talking about the environmental impact?

Yes, obviously. Scroll up or down.

I mostly see commenters quipping about how this will just mean the concert will have to be re poured, resulting in yet more emissions. The bulk of the comments are about the protestors, not the environmental impact of this data center.

Emphasis on "mostly" meaning that you do see people talking about the impact. There you go.

And talking about why climate protestors glue themselves to roadways!

It's literally a building that turns electricity into reasonably intelligent text and we're still here talking about environmental impacts. Is this where we're at with NIMBYism in the West now? Will there ever be popular support to build industrial production any more?

Roadway gluing is designed to sway public opinion -> change politics -> affect the corporations.

This is designed to... affect the corporations. (Swaying public opinion could be seen as a secondary effect.)

I also realize it's not that simple. They probably didn't affect Microsoft here, rather a construction company, who are now calling their insurance company? Or the construction company is eating the cost for the damage, because it's deemed that the site wasn't adequately secured?

Yeah people will hear about this and subscribe to chatgpt pro in spite.

You have to be special to think this is comparable to paint throwing on works of art or blocking public roads. Everyone outside tech hates AI.

The people around me who seem the most enthusiastic about AI are specifically the non techies using it to make slop images, event flyers, stylized selfies, and asking it if drinking glue is bad for their health.

I don't know a single person under 80 outside of tech who isn't using ChatGPT or more on a regular basis. If you really think everyone hates it, you are being very selective in your information/opinion sources. Yes 100% of lefty journos probably hate it, but they are an unrepresentative elite, jockeying for cultural power.

Everyone uses it, but how much of the AI opposition do you think pays to use it?

No matter how much HN users want to deny it, the cultural zeitgeist is that using AI is immensely uncool. If you only read HN, you'd think that everyone is already on board and the opposition consists of their favorite ivory tower stereotype of the day.

LLMs are still a very convenient shortcut, so most people can and will use them for small things. But don't make the mistake of extrapolating that and concluding that they then must also be OK with consuming AI-generated media, generating correspondence with their friends and family, accepting the new garbage-filled internet or permitting giant AI infrastructure projects. Young people especially don't tolerate it.

They probably use Apple Intelligence and Siri inside their iPhones, which are now powered by ChatGPT as well.

So that's pretty much everyone

Weirdly the only people I know who hates AI wholeheartedly is in tech.

Do you know anyone in the arts? Musicians? I see more AI hatred on average in those sorts of communities than in tech, where there's a pretty even split.

I suppose if you're one of the people that live near where it would be built it might be worth sabotaging it if only to go another week without the incessant hum and brown, filthy tap water.

It’s port area. Are you certain the protestors/saboteurs were locals?

A port area that uses the same water infrastructure that runs to residential areas, yes. The saboteurs are not named but I would wager that the Dutch group talked about in the article recruited from the area, yes.

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