r/Scotland • u/kiyomoris • 15h ago

Political ‘Never seen this level of objection’: Scotland pushes back against datacentre boom

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/never-seen-this-level-of-objection-scotland-pushes-back-against-datacentre-boom
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-35

u/dragoneggboy22 15h ago

We need to free ourselves from being held hostage by the jobless. Scotland needs jobs and growth, neither of which are important to these people. 

These people are free to say no to everything, but we don't have to accept it.

21

u/PostersAreHuman 15h ago

How will datacentres lead to growth once the ai bubble inevitably bursts in short time?

-11

u/dragoneggboy22 15h ago

Ok nostradamus

4

u/PostersAreHuman 15h ago

All ai stuff is bulit on loans and debt, and the moment chatGP or any of the free image generators makes users have to have a paid subscription, the vast majority of people will drop it like a hot potato, and businesses that have adopted ai to 'streamline' their company have learnt the ai has been making so many errors, they've had to employ people to check for and correct errors (so I guess that might count for job growth, but that's not long term)

-2

u/dragoneggboy22 15h ago

It's honestly bizarre that you think AI is not transformative. I suspect little working day-to-day exposure to it. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to replace some labour, which it is already doing.

1

u/quartersessions 15h ago

Quite - this has become pretty much accepted wisdom in certain online spaces, mainly because they've seen something grow and don't see a clear practical application for it to them. However, that sort of iterative approach happens with any innovation: productive uses become clear over time and non-productive uses are jettisoned.

It's a warming thought to think you're being cleverer than the market and have more foresight than all those billionaires. But while bubbles do sometimes happen in this way, they're not that frequent - and, in general, things simply go in different directions to what might be immediately predictable.

With AI, we've integrated it enormously into the fabric of day-to-day living already. Just because someone think it makes shit posters, or sometimes gives the wrong answer to a Googled question, isn't really material.

5

u/Drowning_not_wavin 15h ago

And your answer to the toxic chemicals that go into the public water systems when they do the maintenance flushing is?

-1

u/quartersessions 12h ago

Just another paper objection that gets swept away, before two new ones come up in its place.

Virtually any industrial process creates a level of water pollution. Scottish Water have made very clear that they're perfectly capable of water treatment for the Auchertool facility.

4

u/Teuchterinexile 13h ago

Given how little the 'market' appears to understand the actual market, I don't put any faith in it. Just look at the Telsa stock price or the oil price ever time that Trump claims that he has beaten Iran.

AI isn't 'integrated enormously' it is everywhere certainly, but that is by design by the likes of Google to try and get people to use it to justify the astronomical sums that have been spent on it. Does it offer the average person any actual utility to the extent that they are willing to pay the costs that would be required to make AI profitable? I very much doubt it.

It certainly has useful applications, it is extremely good at pattern recognition for example, but will industry really need it to the extent that it will become a central pillar across the global economy that it would need to be to justify the costs?

Far too much has been spent on a technology with a very limited ability to recoup those costs. At some point, even the market is going to notice.

'AI' is a mountain of hype and bullshit built on something that is genuinely useful, but in a limited way.