Comment by fleventynine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fleventynine | Hacker News Reader

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers.

1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount.

2. Construct a public swimming complex nearby, heated with waste data center heat.

3. Local governments can enforce strict limits on environmental noise at the property boundary. I've personally stood right next to a 150MW-class datacenter and experienced sound levels less than traffic from a typical suburban 4-lane street; making the datacenter quieter than any other industrial use is a choice the builder can make if they have the right incentives.

Setup directional microphones around the perimeter, and fine them $25,000 per minute per dB above the agreed threshold. Distribute the fines to the neighbors. Failure to pay promptly means the sheriff shuts down the power.

All of these options are far cheaper than launching the data center into space...

None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk.

I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid.

In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.

In my area (South Carolina) - the opposition seems hyper fixated on “water use” with little or no conversation around electrical usage or even equitable utility rates. AI itself largely absent from the discourse.

Data centers use miniscular amount of water. Data center water use is a fake issue.

I've long suspected that monied interests are seeding social media with weak arguments about water as a distraction, and people mindlessly re-share that as part of their identity. Then the other half can come along and "correct" them while the main issue of power is forgotten. Social media gets engagement, and capital gets its data centers.

It's the same tired distraction pattern we've seen for a long time now in politics, and they keep rolling it out because it works.

What makes their actions mindless, exactly? Is the implication that what they've read is easily falsifiable by the average person? One of the fundamentals to society-scale problem solving is not to dismiss the masses as morons, as much as we often enjoy doing that. You must accept who society is composed of, or else you, by definition, can't fix their problems.

Social media fosters that kind of behavior. Plus, people usually don't look into issues before deciding which "side" to be on, and more importantly don't examine if the sides are a manufactured false dichotomy, as they often are.

I suspect rather foreign actors seed some of the anti data center narrative in order to try and reduce American capability to compete in the space, just like the Soviets did with nuclear in the 60-80s.

If they wanted to do that, they'd pick stronger arguments for starters. But either way, social media updoots and shares aren't going to change anything with capital's plans, so it'd be weird for a foreign power to think that it would.

They don't need strong arguments they need emotionally resonent ones, "AI is using all your water" is a more primal, plus doesn't matter they just flood with a thousand different arguments.

And updoots might not but plenty of people now are protesting and pushing against allowing data centers to be built near them so it is working.

Like everything else, it's only a matter of time before capital gets its way. Democracy is illusory in case you haven't noticed.

updoots == upvotes

(slang from reddit)

This is a great data-backed resource to refute made-up claims about data centers:

https://www.andymasley.com/visuals/ai-prompt-footprint/

Nobody's gonna change their mind about AI wastefulness from an obviously AI-generated infographic. The author should have realized this with about 5 seconds of thought.

The medium is the message.

Many communities are water limited. Many communities limit housing construction permits to available sewer hookups. Many communities are carrying expensive bonds that citizens are paying off to fund water expansion projects.

I do not want one penny of infrastructure that I have paid for in order to grow/better my community going to subsidize infrastructure for datacenters.

AI is not leading to job losses.

It's pretty clear to me that coding agents are a significant cause of the current glut of comp-sci graduates unable to find their first job...

> with a side of extinction risk.

My proposal would be to require data-centers to provide enough clean energy to power themselves for years to come. That would help humanity survive. Plus it would lower energy costs when there is more power-generaion available. Lowering your power-bill would make people love AI.

That addresses the extinction risk caused by climate change, but not the extinction risk caused by an AI's turning out vastly more capable than expected, then the lab's losing control over it.

Maybe it's semantics, but I feel like local QoL concerns (mainly noise and electric bills, plus an overblown focus on water) are the primary driver for in-community resistance. Shoving AI into everything is annoying, and there's real ideological opposition amongst a lot of online tastemakers, but not enough to motivate John Q. Public to show up to county zoning meetings. If hyperscalers were tactful enough to limit impacts on their neighbors, I think opposition would be a much more niche issue.

All of these options require “extra” money to be spent, which even if it logically makes sense, will not happen when it’s shown companies can buy local politicians and continue anyway

Politics in the US reliably fail to arrive at reasonable conclusions like this. I don't know why.

With low pitched data center noise does the decibel level tell the whole story? I thought it carried better and penetrated better than the db level would indicate.

What about fan noise is low pitched?

I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live within such a distance currently do not have a clue. At that point I would not even worry about the noise from the backup generators.

It's the gas turbine generators at the massive DCs causing the big issue. There are dozens of them. Not your typical historical DC/colo or even 5yr ago hyperscaler DC.

These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme. And I agree these specific projects are a major problem.

It’s just not representative of the bigger picture when there are a dozen horrible projects against say 1000 total.

The hyperbole is what gets my mom terrified of moving to a city that might allow a datacenter to be built 8 miles away from the place she was looking at.

> These sorts of things done remotely close to residential areas are very rare in the grand scheme.

I'm sure that will be a great consolation to the thousands of people who have to live near them. "Don't worry, your situation is very rare! That's why we don't have to do anything about it."

The engineer style snap to solution with no interest in the actual reasons many Americans are opposed to AI is one of the reasons Americans are opposed to AI

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