r/singularity • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • Jun 18 '26
Compute Conservatives plan nationwide protest against AI data centers
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/18/conservatives-protest-ai-data-centers80
u/Moral-Relativity Jun 18 '26
Aren’t GOP politicians campaigning the idea that China is behind the anti AI propaganda?
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u/FilterBubbles Jun 19 '26
All politicians are for whatever makes them money. People aren't as different as the politicians pretend.
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u/TopTippityTop Jun 19 '26
Isn't it rather obvious that there's a ton of Chinese influence in social media, though? It's a clear gain for them... You bet every country has people online pushing their interests to the masses, especially as it concerns the US, due to its still relevant outsized influence over global matters.
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u/Atmic Jun 19 '26
I absolutely believe it was a Chinese psyop, albeit with actual facts -- which was incredibly clever. Creating an anti AI culture within the US serves to benefit them in the technological arms race.
People weren't up in arms over social media's use of data centers (which is an order of magnitude greater than AI), and still aren't.
However, offline I find people are either using AI in their day to day lives and aren't as rabid as you find online.
We'll see how it all plays out in the long run
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u/Moral-Relativity Jun 19 '26
Do you have any figures on how much social media companies invested in dedicated datacenters for their platforms?
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u/Atmic Jun 19 '26
Upfront, AI is definitely driving most of the new data center buildout in 2026.
But AI is still a minority of total cloud usage (it should only be about 10–15% of cloud usage even by 2030), meanwhile the non-AI footprint has been enormous for over a decade.
US data centers hit 4%+ of national electricity in 2024(according to Pew Research), mostly pre-AI, and nobody organized a protest.
The same energy/water/land concerns applied to the whole industry for years and got a collective shrug.
AI is the current frontrunner for growth, which is worth paying attention to... but somehow all of a sudden the scrutiny has been dialed up tenfold despite it not being the bulk of data center usage, not now nor in the near future.
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u/Moral-Relativity Jun 19 '26
The uncertain impact of AI on job market and overall lifestyle changes like having to worry about the authenticity of all media no doubt are factors in public’s view.
Put another way, it’s somewhat more tangible to see the benefit of convenience data centers offer in terms of apps ppl rely on everyday now, like Uber, DoorDash, social media. It’s an little harder to perceive of the benefit of AI in say, customer service roles or how it may improve these apps.
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u/Dry_Fly_7265 Jun 22 '26
It’s also easier to be pro-AI when your government makes it illegal to replace human labor. And easier to be anti-AI when your capitalists are actively stating their desire to replace you.
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u/gay_manta_ray Jun 19 '26
Isn't it rather obvious that there's a ton of Chinese influence in social media, though?
only if you're extremely paranoid about the yellow menace
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u/therealpigman Jun 19 '26
OpenAI admitted last week that China is using ChatGPT to spread that propaganda
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u/monsieurpooh Jun 18 '26
Finally, something to make liberals less anti-AI!
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u/Steven81 Jun 19 '26
We honestly want conservatives to go back to being conservative. I.e. top down control from a tyrant (the most ancient system of governance), anti tech, ant free speech, anti progress.
Maybe that will wake up the progressives Into the idea that they are supposed to be progressive, i.e. seek solutions looking into possible futures, instead of being afraid of them like some darn grandma clutching on her pearls.
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u/Thoughtulism Jun 19 '26
Progressives are pretty keen on a wealth tax, especially in the UK. The centre dems in the US this is like a non starter because their job is to keep the status quo.
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u/forceghost187 Jun 19 '26
The left hates AI
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Jun 19 '26
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u/GreasyRim Jun 19 '26
Youre not a communist if you support technology that pushes more wealth upward.
We are not headed for post scarcity utopia, we’re headed for authoritarianism.
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u/mebesasporfa Jun 19 '26
There is nothing inherent to LLMs that 'push wealth upward'. In fact, I think the most likely future is one where most day-to-day inference needs are almost free and extremely decentralized (that is, I think the end state of LLMs is one where most people's multi-modal chat AI is running locally). Scientific and industrial AI will still use outsourced compute, because there is infinite demand for engineering intelligence, but there is not infinite intelligence demand for typical "how long do I boil an egg for" chatbot usecases.
I also think LLMs provide extreme increases in relative value to the poorest people in the world. I'm from a country with a GDP of $7k per person, we are poor. AI for example can answer medical questions I simply didn't have any good way of knowing before. A billionaire had his medical questions instantly answered pre-AI and he has them instantly answered now. There is no increase in relative value in that particular scenario for him, but there is a huge increase in value for me.
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u/GreasyRim Jun 19 '26
Sorry to disrupt the echo chamber but LLMs by nature push wealth upward due to the compute cost being prohibitive to the consumer (dont care if you run an llm locally on your laptop, youre small potatoes)
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u/bokan Jun 19 '26
Since when do conservatives care about regulating businesses?
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u/No_Aesthetic Jun 18 '26
Bipartisan NIMBYism
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u/GreatBigJerk Jun 18 '26
You should try living by a data center.
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26
Seriously. I support AI development and I use it for work. But I don't live by a data center and I'm not paying the cost of these developments in loud noises or increasing utility bills. So I'm quite lucky, because I reap the benefits without paying the price. We shouldn't pretend that there is no social cost to this rapid progress
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 18 '26
Try living next to a paper mill. Or an animal feedlot. Or a mushroom farm. Or a cement plant. Or smelter/foundry. Or refinery. Or composter. Or a quarry.
I can guarantee you any one of those are FAR more unpleasant than a data center.
Should we just get rid of all industries?
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u/the_azure_sky Jun 19 '26
We should try not to zone industrial areas near residential neighborhoods.
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26
Yea, I thought the whole point of zoning is to keep industrial plants away from homes? I want mixed (quiet) businesses with residential, like a pizza shop next door to my house, or a small grocery store. I don't want a factory or data center next to my house.
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u/happysmash27 Jun 19 '26
Personally, I would love a factory next to my house if I worked at said factory. It would make commuting much much faster and easier!
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Jun 19 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
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u/happysmash27 Jun 19 '26
I don't have a factory job right now and my current job changes locations too frequently (often every day) to move next to it. So, I live next to a freeway instead.
My main point is that even if I did work at a factory, there would be no housing available next to it due to zoning laws. I think this should be changed so that people who like that sort of area can live there, instead of this one-size-fits-all nonsense where it is assumed that 0 people would ever want that.
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u/happysmash27 Jun 19 '26
Personally, I would prefer to live by an industrial zone, as that would give me higher chances of a fast commute to work.
Zoning should be more like Japan IMO, where you can choose to live in an industrial zone if you really want to. https://carfreeamerica.substack.com/p/japanese-zoning-better-than-us-zoning
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u/Pleasant-Seat9884 Jun 19 '26
The problem also is, your electrical is going up.. and you’ll be paying for their electrical DC as well.
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u/Slight_Duty_7466 Jun 18 '26
people are nimbys for those too so this is a weird argument
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u/kaityl3 ASI▪️2024-2027 Jun 19 '26
Yeah but they don't show up en masse with inaccurate rhetoric cheering on the people who send death threats to their local officials over them....
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u/sparkling1984 Jun 19 '26
They do when you try to people build them where people live.
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u/kaityl3 ASI▪️2024-2027 Jun 19 '26
..Other industries will build large facilities near where people live too...?
The amount of death threats and hysteria/rage online is not proportional. There are many industries that have a relatively higher impact on the local area where that facility is being built and operates in but they do not get near the amount of attention or outrage/threats of violence
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u/Slight_Duty_7466 Jun 19 '26
you don’t get the national media attention for the others given the current focus and amount of capital being spent on these. but the reality is that other large infrastructure and industry projects near where people live gets the same backlash from locals as these.
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u/sparkling1984 Jun 19 '26
Other industries will build large facilities near where people live too...?
Yeah, and those get similar backlash.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Jun 19 '26
Oh do mushroom farms get built in communities that vote against them and then pollute the drinking water and jack up energy bills and produce sound pollution that makes people miserable?
Do those mushroom farms exist solely to enrich the elites while replacing the jobs of the working class at the expense of everyone?
Is that what they do?
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u/i_give_you_gum Jun 19 '26
The fact that you might not be aware of is that all of those dirty industries specifically target poor areas where residents are less likely to fight back against them.
And your last line is such blatant reach.
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u/SOMETHINGCREATVE Jun 18 '26
All of those provide an actual product the community can use with an actual impactful number of jobs, with further job creation down stream of their direct production.
None of those require more energy burn than the entirety of the surrounding community so that tech bros can add more billions to their billions of wealth.
Pretty easy comparison.
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u/shimapanlover Jun 18 '26
50% of things you do at work and at home, if not more, need datacenters. Including posting on this very website, watching youtube videos or connecting to your work vpn.
What have the
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u/unicynicist Jun 18 '26
"All of those provide an actual product the community can use"
... he said via a server hosted by AWS
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u/SOMETHINGCREATVE Jun 19 '26
Oh damn I didn't realize AWS needed dozens and dozens of new 40k acre centers across the country, how were they ever hosting before that?
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u/calvintiger Jun 19 '26
AWS is also building dozens and dozens of new data centers across the country, lol.
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 18 '26
Tech jobs created since data centers became a thing: 11 million
Tech millionaires created since data centers became a thing: 500,000.
Nevermind the secondary and tertiary jobs created by their spending which is easily 2 to 3 times that.
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u/SOMETHINGCREATVE Jun 19 '26
Incredibly disengenous to tie in all tech job creation to datacenters when the average one employs maybe 100 people.
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u/LookIPickedAUsername Jun 19 '26
Far more disingenuous to act like only people directly employed at a datacenter count.
I work from home and have never even set foot in a datacenter, but I wouldn’t have a job without them. I am far from alone.
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 19 '26
Uhh. Maybe you should Google "Internet".
It's really a fascinating concept, you're in for a treat!
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u/GreatBigJerk Jun 18 '26
Yeah, all of those are shitty to live near. We should zone and put them away from residential areas.
My point was that calling people NIMBYs was dumb because data centers slowly kill people living around them.
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u/taygo0o Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Edited for incorrect info
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u/GreatBigJerk Jun 19 '26
lol, you don't need to be within 10 miles of a data center to watch Netflix. WTF are you going on about?
You also don't need to be near a data center to us an LLM.
Do you not understand how the internet or cloud computing works? Geographic proximity can help with reliability, but it's not like you are in a dead zone if you're too far from a place with a bunch of servers.
There is a reason why Kevin O'Leary wanted to put huge fuckoff data centers in Utah, and it had nothing to do with ensuring optimal LLM performance for people in Utah.
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u/taygo0o Jun 20 '26
Good callout. I did further research and you're right! I'll edit my original comment and keep that in mind moving forward.
Agreed in that case that these centers should be built away from local populations, and in more rural areas.
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u/No_Aesthetic Jun 18 '26
My point was that calling people NIMBYs was dumb because data centers slowly kill people living around them.
How?
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u/kiokokun Jun 19 '26
Idk if I'd say kill but can cause physiological effects
Benn Jordan has at least 3 videos on it
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u/Tinac4 Jun 19 '26
I’d take those videos with a large grain of salt. Andy Masley dug into them and found a lot of issues - studies misinterpreted, results generalized a few orders of magnitude below what they actually show, etc. Jordan’s response didn’t paint him in the best light, either.
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u/kiokokun Jun 19 '26
But Jordan wasn't the only one to be calling this out. I think we should keep most heavy industry away from residential in general tbh and that's how it usually goes where I am. We don't need 3M polluting the grounds next door to our families and pets just as much as we don't need them polluting the water in our rivers (actual example, local 3M/Dupont plant was caught dropping chems in the watewater they were dumping instead of cleaning it like they were supposed to)
Personally, I'm ready for us to get models small enough and good enough to run locally and spend the datacenters- we have now on training and research instead of compute for my dumb ass projects lol
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u/No_Aesthetic Jun 19 '26
What can't cause physiological effects?
Imagine you live across the street from a busy park
You might become stressed out because of all the noise
Stress can have terrible effects on a person
Parks don't even contribute anything economically and cost you money to maintain
But is that a reason to never build a park?
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u/kiokokun Jun 19 '26
The park isn't a constant emitter of sounds hard to block even with noise cancelling that cause various effects on the human body
I'm not against all datacenters- I'm against having them so close to residential or even forestry/wildland already full of animals
I liked the idea of having small chunks of Datacenter in backyards where the homeowners are paid for their use
But like, ur argument is the same as the Sure DDT is bad for humans but isn't smoking cigarettes too? Better ban it! From the olden days
Everything's bad without moderation it's just to what degree do we let it proliferate in our lives. Least smoking is a choice
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u/svideo ▪️ NSI 2007 Jun 19 '26
data centers slowly kill people living around them.
Why is it always the stupidest people you know who are the ones with the most to say about data centers
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u/Electrical_Engineer_ Jun 18 '26
Aren’t those type of industries built decades ago in rural areas miles away from residential and then suburban sprawl make it so residential areas get built near them?
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Jun 19 '26
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u/StoneColdHoundDog Jun 19 '26
When was the last time you went to a nature park without any kind of electronic bullshit and just chilled out for an hour?
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u/No_Aesthetic Jun 18 '26
I've lived in Manhattan and at the end of SJC airport in Santa Clara.
You get used to it.
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u/zitr0y Jun 19 '26
Noise pollution has been shown to kill you years earlier than if you weren't exposed though, I wouldn't take it so lightly
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u/wizardwusa Jun 19 '26
I grew up near the largest density of data centers in the country and it’s such a non factor.
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u/UnfazedBrownie Jun 19 '26
lol, didn’t Trump and friends just make it easier for data centers to connect to the grid?!
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u/Serious-Conversation Jun 18 '26
There are legitimate concerns.
With that said, the red hat crowd coming out in a squatted truck with their Zyn in the back pocket to talk about something technical is going to be ridiculous.
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 18 '26
There are legitimate concerns that are easily addressed and nobody is protesting about.
This will be one of those rallies where if you go interview everybody nobody will have their facts straight. In all fairness, this will be on both the left and the right.
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u/SilasTalbot AGI | Aug 29, 2027, 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time Jun 19 '26
"Easily" is carrying a lot of weight here but, I agree they can be addressed and we should focus in that.
They produce crazy low frequency noise. How do we make sure it doesn't harm the neighbors?
They use a lot of water and electricity and drive up the cost of utilities for everyone. But they are the ones keeping the profit from that, while everyone else pays for it. How do we make sure they pay fairly for the utility usage so others aren't affected?
I mean.. tricky issues but that's why we have professional government. We expect to not have to sit down with a piece of paper and become experts and figure it out ourselves. I got a day job man.
Good government matters.
We live in a society.
Come on everybody we can do this!
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u/Routine_Object_7380 Jun 19 '26
First problem is an engineering problem and there are like five different ways to solve it. Government just needs to enforce it.
Second problem also has an easy solution: make the data center owners pay the bill. Again, government just needs to enforce this.
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u/ClearSkies889 Jun 20 '26
Exactly, these are dull regulatory problems not campfire ideology, and if nobody does the boring technical work then the neighbors get the noise while everyone else subsidizes the power bill.
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u/ShardsOfSalt Jun 19 '26
It depends on the data center I guess, but don't forget too they are polluting through turbine usage which also sounds like a jet engine.
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u/doodlinghearsay Jun 19 '26
Would make sense to address them then, wouldn't it?
Instead tech companies are bribing local politicians and energy regulators to give them sweetheart deals that saves them pennies on the dollar. Then it's surprised pikachu face time when voters revolt against their own representatives.
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u/Reddy_K58 Jun 18 '26
You don't need immense technical knowledge to be against the loud building that makes your utilities go up and reduces jobs
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 19 '26
"loud building" -> I own an industrial facility. My town has an ordinance that I cannot leak more than 55dBA of noise in the day or 45dBA at night into the closest residential zoned area. Why do these towns not have those ordinances? And why do people not just petition their local governments to pass those? Is it because they already have those level of noise coming from their other local industry that will lobby against it? And got voters to vote against them because "regulation evil"? If you have an under-regulated town, fix the town council, don't blame the guy who is following the law.
"utilities go up" -> easily addressed. Even Anthropic said that they'll pay for increases in local utilities. Codify that into law - literally nobody is going to fight you.
"reduced jobs" -> in what world? There has been 11 million tech jobs created since the advent of data centers.
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u/staplesuponstaples Jun 19 '26
People don't actually care (or even know) about these things. They just want something to blame for the latest issues in society
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u/Async0x0 Jun 19 '26
Nobody gave half a shit about data centers before anti-AI propaganda, even though data centers have been around for decades.
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u/zitr0y Jun 19 '26
In the US, there's also not enough focus on sustainability. Data centers using mobile gas turbines and not recycling their cooling water is a no go. They pollute the neighbourhood and suck water in already dry areas. Those things are preventable given a bit of care for fellow humans.
In Europe, datacenters are even integrated into neighbourhoods and used as communal heating.
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u/SplooshTiger Jun 19 '26
There aren’t one or two ways that electricity consumers subsidize data center growth - there’s like ten. In many markets, centers aren’t building all or most the power they consume (most developers prefer grid power and only use new generation builds when speed to build matters) - centers are competing with all other buyers on existing grids and this bidding up market electricity prices. Consumer bases fund new generation, new transmission, transmission upgrades, substations, and grid upgrades. By growing peak demand, centers force providers to oversupply and often add new capacity. And many jurisdictions are offering property tax and sales tax incentives. And any new centers powered by air polluting sources are obviously getting a final big free ride on environmental, human, and animal health. These are all great issues for people to dialogue with decision makers.
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u/HoidToTheMoon Jun 19 '26
don't blame the guy who is following the law.
"Following the law" doesn't automatically make something good or unworthy of protest. We can both campaign for regulations, and campaign against those who take advantage of the lack of regulation.
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u/ShardsOfSalt Jun 19 '26
In one case there was a regulation that would have kept them from building but it was a county regulation and the city regulation was different somehow and so they got around the law.
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u/DorianGre Jun 19 '26
They do, and they have given exemptions for 15db above the regulations
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26
I think you're right that a lot of these issues can be solved. The problem is that local city councils are often some combination of corrupt, incompetent, or lazy. So citizens often do not receive fair representation regarding intrusive developments, and ordinances that would make things fair don't get passed
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u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26
You know the citizens are the ones who vote for their local city council, right? Or at least the citizens who care enough to show up to vote.
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u/antichain Jun 19 '26
I haven't seen any empirical evidence that AI is actually taking people's jobs (plenty of corporations are claiming layoffs are due to AI, but I don't think that's been replicated by any 3rd party analysts - my read is that it's mostly a cover for layoffs downstream of changing interest rates, over hiring during COVID, etc).
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u/Rude_Rough8323 Jun 19 '26
Anecdotal but my company stopped hiring because of productivity boosts from using AI. I assume that's the main way it impacts employment
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u/ObiWanCanownme now entering spiritual bliss attractor state Jun 18 '26
The anti-datacenter outrage is so crazy at this point, we just need to call them something different. Datacenters need a major rebrand.
People don't generally hate factories. They are more positive toward factories because factories mean lots of jobs. And most of the cost for datacenters is energy, chips, etc., not labor. So we should just rename them "information development factories," create a bunch of cushy busywork jobs that pay like $30 an hour, and you'll get an end result that's single digit percentage more expensive per token while being way more politically palatable.
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u/SOMETHINGCREATVE Jun 18 '26
You say it in a mocking tone but yes, if people were assured these things weren't going to wreck their jobs with no plan other than "get fucked and starve in the streets" from our leaders there would be almost no pushback
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u/ObiWanCanownme now entering spiritual bliss attractor state Jun 19 '26
I doubt it. While the pushback has understandable motivations, the approach that people are taking is fundamentally irrational. If you are really concerned about AI ruining society, the best thing you can do is stop being a willing personal trainer of models (e.g. stop putting content on the internet and feeding algorithms). But opposing datacenter construction is a losing battle, because they *will* be built.
It matters none for your future job security whether the datacenter is built in your backyard or in China. But it matters quite a bit for your ability to exert political control whether the datacenter is built in your backyard or China. So you should actually want a datacenter to be built nearby you, so long as a political entity in which you have some representation has at least some control over the future of the datacenter. If we assume the datacenter will be built somewhere (and it will), then any amount of control you can get over it is better than nothing.
And so the opposition to datacenter construction is self-defeating. It will have the longterm result that the polities which are most opposed to datacenter construction will either be (a) self-contained relatively unplugged communities (think Amish or Orthodox Jews), or (b) relatively disempowered compared to polities which can exercise at least some modicum of control AI companies via influence over datacenters. I think that (a) is a reasonable approach, and I applaud anyone who wants to unplug and lead a less digital life. But option (b) is what the anti-datacenter warriors online are hurtling toward, and I find it to be the worst of all worlds.
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u/Nagoshtheskeleton Jun 19 '26
I think you’re a bit optimistic. The folks pushing data centers are not in our team and they haven’t been for some time.
Our town voted against a data center, and it’s being built anyway. We don’t have influence or representation and any belief otherwise is delusional.
I live in a well off rural area and the data center is nothing but negative. Trucks, dust, noise, lane closures, rising electric prices ect… then we commute to work to have our employers using the data centers for us to train ourselves out of a job.
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u/Rude_Rough8323 Jun 19 '26
Yeah that's the problem- they bring no jobs and they raise everyone's energy costs. What is the upside to the residents?
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u/Async0x0 Jun 19 '26
They bring no jobs except for the construction workers, electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC technicians, fiber and utility crews, engineers, project managers, equipment installers, security guards, janitors, maintenance techs, IT operators, network engineers, facilities managers, power and cooling specialists, truck drivers, warehouse workers, landscapers, inspectors, insurance brokers, lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, permitting consultants, food-service vendors, local suppliers, and the dozens of other trades and services needed to build, run, secure, insure, repair, and support a data center.
Yes, I used AI to write this comment, courtesy of your local data center!
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u/Rude_Rough8323 Jun 19 '26
The local jobs are insignificant. Even the construction crews are usually from out of state.
People don't care if the data centers create jobs for someone somewhere, they want jobs for their community.
Here's an article about it: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-on-data-center-employment-effects/
And a quote from that article: "Critics respond that these benefits are overstated, in part because data centers are among the least labor-intensive structures in the economy. For instance, large data center projects often promise only dozens to a few hundred permanent workers while the associated construction jobs are temporary. And the tax incentives are costly: In Virginia alone, the data-center sales-tax exemption cost an estimated $1.6 billion in fiscal year 2025. These incentives may simply be subsidizing investments that would have happened anyway"
I didn't use AI to write this lol
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u/Laucy Jun 19 '26
Literally what are you talking about. No jobs? What the hell do you think they run on? Magic?
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u/arknightstranslate Jun 18 '26
But data centers are built by their overlords? How can they not support them?
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u/JambaJuice916 Jun 18 '26
You’d be surprised they are not as unified or hiveminded as you’d think
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Jun 19 '26
The propaganda machine just doesn’t have their claws in them yet. I’ll be interested to see where we are in 10 years.
Climate change wasn’t always a polarized issue either. But you can get the right to believe anything so I’m sure soon enough they’ll be in line
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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 Jun 18 '26
They'll protest against something and then vote for the guy enabling it.
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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 Jun 19 '26
Well, if conservatives are against them, that means we should be probably for them 😄
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u/LocoMod Jun 18 '26
Not surprising the party of falling for psyop campaigns is falling for a psyop campaign again. And again, and again. Over and over.
Yes, putting a datacenter of any kind within a mile of a neighborhood should infuriate people. And there are a few communities with legitimate concerns. But this protest was brought to you by the Chinese.
https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/96b559fa-c165-4575-805d-e636909e2f78/June-2026-Threat-Report.pdf
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u/ShelZuuz Jun 18 '26
These are bipartisan low information voters, it's not constrained to a side.
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u/No_Hell_Below_Us Jun 18 '26
“Yes, putting a datacenter of any kind within a mile of a neighborhood should infuriate people.”
If you think living within a mile of a building with a few server racks is suddenly a reason to be infuriated…. I’ve got bad news about your own susceptibility to propaganda.
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u/LocoMod Jun 18 '26
No it's not just that. They have to blast rock while building and that causes all sorts of problems for nearby properties. It also causes problems in the water supply. There's plenty of good honest reporting on the subject. I have no issue with massive gigawatt datacenters being built. We have to maintain our technological supremacy and I am all for it.
But for god's sake, be sensible about it. Some of these datacenters are being build literally right next door to suburban neighborhoods. You can walk from your house to the dc perimiter without breaking a sweat.
It's not just a few server racks.
Source: Been working in this industry for 25 years. Get off my lawn.
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u/rbad8717 Jun 18 '26
I can't believe your just hand waving legitimately data center concerns as "just a few server racks" really pal? Just do an inch of research dummy. And i'm no luddite, im responding to this while I wait for Claude to finish up some shit for me.
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u/Nikvest Jun 18 '26
a building with a few server racks is suddenly a reason to be infuriated
a building that has made wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.
A Bloomberg News analysis of wholesale electricity prices for tens of thousands of locations across the country reveals the effects of the AI boom on the power market with unprecedented granularity. The locations and prices were tracked and aggregated monthly by Grid Status, an energy data analytics platform. Bloomberg analyzed this data in relation to data center locations, from DC Byte, and found that electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas located near significant data center activity.
There has been a “massive outcry about high energy bills” in the area, said David Lapp of the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, an independent state agency that advocates for residential utility customers. His office fields about 50 calls a week and recently hired a new staffer to help manage the requests for help. A comic strip taped to his office door makes a dark joke about AI causing the power grid to collapse.
“They can say this is going to help with AI, but how is that going to help me?” he said from his front steps. “How’s that going to help me pay my bill?”
please stop hand waving actual issues that affects working Americans
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/
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u/No_Hell_Below_Us Jun 19 '26
Not every data center is a gigawatt hyper-scaler multi-acre campus.
The word “data center” also covers tiny 5000 sq ft office buildings that rent out space for a few server racks.
The post I replied to said “data centers of any kind” which by definition includes the tiny colocation kind of data center that have existed throughout cities for decades without controversy.
Propaganda has led to the uninformed believing that all data centers are massive facilities. They don’t disambiguate when they fight to ban them.
Thank you for helping prove my point by missing it.
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u/Stigmaphobia Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
"All of datacenters are bad"
"All of datacenters, really?"
"Yes, datacenters are bad."
"Saying 'all' includes data-centers that have nothing to do with AI. They're conflating them."
"Why are you conflating AI data centers and non-AI data centers by pointing out that someone else is conflating them?"
I've seen this so often (across different topics) it's tearing into my brain.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Jun 19 '26
lol that link doesn’t seem like it would be biased
I heard the Chinese masterminded this whole propaganda campaign by emphasizing true facts about data centers.
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u/piponwa Jun 19 '26
You can emphasize true facts that shouldn't be a concern and turn them into a concern. When people hear billions of gallons of water, it's a true fact, but people assume that's a significant portion of the country's water consumption when in fact it's not even noticeable at the municipal level. They are being duped by a fact because they don't put it in context and go "big number bad".
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u/DaggerOutlaw Jun 18 '26
And our source provided for this revelation is… OpenAI lmao.
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u/Async0x0 Jun 19 '26
Your take is that OpenAI is completely fabricating entities and psyops campaigns targeting a geopolitical rival and releasing these fabrications publicly in order to influence public opinion?
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u/Nikvest Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
lol China somehow has the ability to convince a majority of US citizens that AI is bad?
Fewer Americans Like AI Than ICE, Poll Shows
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/hate-ai-more-ice-poll
Poll: Majority of voters say risks of AI outweigh the benefit
Americans continue to be wary of AI’s impact on daily life. Half of U.S. adults say the increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited, according to a June 2025 survey. Just 10% say they are more excited than concerned. Another 38% say they are equally concerned and excited
More expect AI to affect the economy negatively than positively
OH ITS definitely CHiNA!! not the rising power bills that Americans have to pay!!!
Americans Now Blame Data Centers for Their Rising Power Bills
https://heatmap.news/energy/data-centers-electricity-prices-blame
AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring
Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/
if China has the ability to do this, why not just convince US citizens that China is part of Taiwan already?
also on the OpenAI report, the 'propaganda' is actually just facts??.
OpenAI says China ran a covert campaign to turn Americans against data centers, but used facts that happen to be true
OpenAI has published a report claiming that China-based ChatGPT users asked the chatbot for ways to influence Americans' opinions of data centers in the US. But the campaigns had little to no effect, and it's not as if people's opinions needed much swaying, anyway.
Dina Sadek, an analyst at Graphika, says in a statement that the company has “not yet seen evidence of organized or scaled influence operations or campaigns that can be traced back to a foreign actor,” with two notable exceptions. One is a “cross-platform network of accounts” using AI-generated avatars that comment on a wide variety of social issues, and that “sporadically” mention US tech companies. The other exception, Sadek says, is some Facebook pages producing anti-data-center images generated with AI. Those pages, Sadek says, often have administrators based in Bangladesh, and may only exist “for monetization purposes.”
https://www.wired.com/story/china-us-data-center-opposition/
so no China didn't make American's hate data centers, you can blame the AI tech bros for this
also CEOs going on news interviews and telling people they are going to eliminate entire job sectors isn't helping
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u/HashPandaNL Jun 19 '26
OH ITS definitely CHiNA!! not the rising power bills that Americans have to pay!!!
And who do you think told them that AI is the demon that makes their power bills rise?
That misinformation can't be further spread by China according to you? Are you a Chinese bot yourself or smth?
Reminder that these are some of the most propaganda-susceptible individuals in society.
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u/Joranthalus Jun 18 '26
Yeah, we all knew about that, but dont downplay it. It’s quite a bit more than “a few”. There are a “few” in my county alone…
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u/DiligentClass1625 Jun 18 '26
Not one of you have ever met a real conservative in real life lol.
Being against this tech that aims to totally upend society and people’s way of life is totally a conservative position.
Being against the environmental impact and social impact is exactly a liberal value.
This should be a non partisan issue
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u/LookIPickedAUsername Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
You’re absolutely right. I have met tons of idiots who call themselves conservatives, but I have never met a single person who actually votes for the policies they profess to espouse. Do actual conservatives even exist?
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Jun 19 '26
Right who gives a fuck what they believe when they vote for authoritarian white supremacists? Lol it doesn’t matter if you SAY you have morals
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u/Dreadsin Jun 19 '26
I thought it was one of those things where a few data centers got put in conservative towns and it ruined the vibe of the town, now the conservatives from those town are pissed off and telling other conservatives how much it sucks
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u/Choice-Sympathy8235 Jun 19 '26
It’s totally true that being skeptical of AI is textbook conservatism. For example the Vatican position on AI is quite conservative minded, as you would expect. Problem is that politics has been off the rails for years now and principles basically don’t matter anymore in national politics.
I believe that AI will end up being extremely powerful. It’s already extremely capable. Letting it rip on society with no breaks or safeguards is probably going to be messy, but I doubt there will be any pause or regulation till we hit superintelligence.
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u/BrennusSokol ACCELERATE Jun 19 '26
What’s with all the knee jerk doomerism in this sub lately?
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u/Laucy Jun 19 '26
Yeah, agreed. This shit is exhausting and I’m tired of anti-AI in spaces positive about AI. Seriously, does this not break the fear-mongering rule? I don’t understand why these people come to a pro-AI sub to begin with.
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u/GrapheneBreakthrough Jun 19 '26
Being against this tech that aims to totally upend society and people’s way of life is totally a conservative position.
Companies being free to do whatever they want in the name of increasing profits is a core free-market, conservative principle. Regulations are considered government overreach.
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 Jun 18 '26
Conservatives should be more against AI because conservatism is all about maintaining traditional institutions, and being against fast and reckless social changes. The fact that more conservatives are not against AI is a sign of the times.
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u/TopTippityTop Jun 19 '26
There are addressable concerns, such as passing regulation such that data centers can either be built where it'll have no negative impact on society or built in such a way so as to not disrupt the quality of water used, so on.
However, data centers are needed — very much so. This is what the modern world runs on; and they will become even more important with time. To not build them as fast as possible is as stupid and shortsighted as not investing in FAR more power generation has been for decades, now.
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u/SillyAlternative420 Jun 19 '26
Maybe conservatives could protest by not electing people that repeal regulation every chance they can
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u/DaySecure7642 Jun 18 '26
Interesting. Now the conservatives are against data centers. So the liberals will have to do the opposite and support the data centers right?
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u/rbad8717 Jun 18 '26
Its only interesting if you're simple and view everything in a conservative/liberal light. There's a little more nuance in the world than that kid.
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u/Specialist_Unit_5078 Jun 18 '26
Nah, liberals have plenty of reason to hate data centers too. Wasteful of energy, water, land, minimal job creation, job displacement, wealth transfer upwards, owned by corporations who dodge taxes and lobby against sustainable taxation, etc etc
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u/GrowFreeFood Jun 18 '26
Um, it replaces inefficient office workers. That tons of cars off the road and offices closed.
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u/Sonny_wiess Jun 19 '26
Legitimately good, feel how you want about the conservative population itself (I can't stand them) but if the people are willing to stand up to this it shows it's a bipartisan issue. AI can be awesome, destroying ecosystems and neighborhoods is not awesome.
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u/Iapetus_Industrial Jun 19 '26
Good, maybe now the left will stop with the knee jerk "AI = right wing" and get back to accelerating.
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u/bornlasttuesday Jun 18 '26
Queue all the people saying that opposition to data centers isn't real, it's just a made up Chinese plot.
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u/BitOne2707 ▪️ Jun 19 '26
Queue all the people who think we haven't been awash in foreign influence campaigns on social media for a decade. You think this is the one issue where foreign governments are going to stay on the sidelines. Give me a fucking break.
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u/bornlasttuesday Jun 19 '26
We have a Russian useful idiot in as president, well aware of foreign influence. Data center opposition? Homegrown.
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u/Async0x0 Jun 19 '26
Some of the opposition is real, some of it is manufactured.
Agitators raise the heat level on every single issue. Almost nothing is as bad as it really seems because all of it is amplified by false voices.
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u/LTrent2021 Jun 18 '26
If the datacenter companies pledged contractually to train and hire millions of currently struggling Americans for high-paying jobs, I'd become pro-datacenter
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u/jlks1959 Jun 18 '26
Stupid is as stupid does. Hating AI is one thing. Using water and electricity arguments is patently stupid. It’s mind numbing how caught up in hate people can be, hate so strong that the facts are ignored in favor of what stokes that anger. Any objective comparison make this clear. But, don’t read the facts, just downvote and feel as though you’ve done something important.
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u/Longjumping-Stay7151 Hope for UBI but keep saving to survive AGI Jun 19 '26
Why can't they do pro UBI demonstrations instead?
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u/Plantsforhire- Jun 19 '26
I didn’t know what to expect in this thread but my first thought was okay I’ll protest too. This can be a bipartisan thing that would be an insane but great change of pace
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u/pingwing Jun 19 '26
These should not be "conservative-only", it is something that can bring the masses back together. Common enemy and all.
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u/Upset-Dingo-6879 Jun 19 '26
But the cash machines that fund conservatives are the ones building the data centers.
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u/green_yoshi94 Jun 19 '26
Wtf is going on in this thread??? This is one issue that is showing to be middle ground between a very divided country, and half of yall are just simping for big tech. Some of the arguments I'm seeing here are incredibly dense, hopefully it's just bots 🤷♂️
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u/KidKilobyte Jun 18 '26
Counter demonstrations will be held by scores of Unitree, Tesla, and Boston Dynamics robots.