I've long been saying that the data center is a container for populist left and right Americans grievances. Their grievances are quite valid, which is why I stopped correcting people about this. It's also an issue of their own identity. I'll have to blame the ai companies awful PR completely out of touch with the everyday working person.
Stopping American AI with NIMBYism while making no international agreement to stop Chinese AI maybe decreases AI loss of control risk (though that becomes entirely up to China), and it significantly increases the chances of permanent global totalitarianism. It's not clear that's a positive trade.
Your solid analysis of public sentiment towards AI reminds me of the place of nuclear energy back in the 1970s and 80s. This is really helpful for me, because I gave that a good bit of thought in college (and I have been working in clean energy since then).
Nuclear energy pressed these buttons for people (rightly). 1. Nuclear power is unseeable. It happened on the atomic level. The vagueness was unsettling. 2. The risks were seen as devastating on an unprecedented scale: a "whoops" could render a region uninhabitable for 10,000 years. I say that casually and flippantly. There was nothing casual or flip about it to a new mom or an old patriarch. Anyone who cared about their community could see that there would need to be a big payoff to accept the risk. 3. There was not a big payoff. At best, it would generate electricity "too cheap to meter" (or so the proponents had claimed, 20 years earlier). But the reality was whopping overruns in cost and time. A unit was installed backwards in California. There was nothing too cheap to meter about it. And finally, and most importantly: control remained completely outside of local residents. The lack of control meant that there could be no comfort; only potential catastrophic downside and locked-in electric bill increases.
As with AI: 1. It is unseeable. We don't know how it comes up with what it comes up with; or what it makes up. 2. We are just starting to recognize civilization-threatening risks with it. But even on a less catastrophic scale, why would a community welcome a data center that is going to eliminate jobs without making any (to speak of)? 3. This is the one that I think is most pertinent to data center development today. There is not a big payoff to host communities. There is not much juice from the squeeze. 4. The data centers are so massive and self-contained that local communities have very little control over them.
If you're looking for a symbol for AI safety, what about the shoggoth? What about any of those buttons or popups for AI features that have been annoyingly shoved into every piece of software, including Notepad?
This article is exactly what I needed. Thank you for writing it!
I've long been saying that the data center is a container for populist left and right Americans grievances. Their grievances are quite valid, which is why I stopped correcting people about this. It's also an issue of their own identity. I'll have to blame the ai companies awful PR completely out of touch with the everyday working person.
Stopping American AI with NIMBYism while making no international agreement to stop Chinese AI maybe decreases AI loss of control risk (though that becomes entirely up to China), and it significantly increases the chances of permanent global totalitarianism. It's not clear that's a positive trade.
Your solid analysis of public sentiment towards AI reminds me of the place of nuclear energy back in the 1970s and 80s. This is really helpful for me, because I gave that a good bit of thought in college (and I have been working in clean energy since then).
Nuclear energy pressed these buttons for people (rightly). 1. Nuclear power is unseeable. It happened on the atomic level. The vagueness was unsettling. 2. The risks were seen as devastating on an unprecedented scale: a "whoops" could render a region uninhabitable for 10,000 years. I say that casually and flippantly. There was nothing casual or flip about it to a new mom or an old patriarch. Anyone who cared about their community could see that there would need to be a big payoff to accept the risk. 3. There was not a big payoff. At best, it would generate electricity "too cheap to meter" (or so the proponents had claimed, 20 years earlier). But the reality was whopping overruns in cost and time. A unit was installed backwards in California. There was nothing too cheap to meter about it. And finally, and most importantly: control remained completely outside of local residents. The lack of control meant that there could be no comfort; only potential catastrophic downside and locked-in electric bill increases.
As with AI: 1. It is unseeable. We don't know how it comes up with what it comes up with; or what it makes up. 2. We are just starting to recognize civilization-threatening risks with it. But even on a less catastrophic scale, why would a community welcome a data center that is going to eliminate jobs without making any (to speak of)? 3. This is the one that I think is most pertinent to data center development today. There is not a big payoff to host communities. There is not much juice from the squeeze. 4. The data centers are so massive and self-contained that local communities have very little control over them.
If you're looking for a symbol for AI safety, what about the shoggoth? What about any of those buttons or popups for AI features that have been annoyingly shoved into every piece of software, including Notepad?
Really good article, only that it seems to ignore the main concern people really have about AI: who controls it.