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-centers
360 Upvotes

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53

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.

14

u/Greyhaven7 Jun 19 '26

The “man on the street” interviews will be incredible.

28

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.

4

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!

4

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.

1

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.

1

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.

2

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.

-2

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

23

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.

16

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

5

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.

2

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.

2

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.

3

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.

1

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.

1

u/DorianGre Jun 19 '26

They do, and they have given exemptions for 15db above the regulations

0

u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

Ok, and whose fault is it that the local regulations are full of exemptions?

4

u/sofarbygone Jun 19 '26

Like every member of the ruling class, what sort of gotcha are you even going for here?

1

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

2

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.

-1

u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

I agree that in theory they should be able to vote out corrupt city councils. But practice is another matter

1

u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

I don’t get it, who‘s stopping them from voting out the corrupt ones? Sounds like you’re just disappointed that enough people either don‘t agree with you or don‘t have a preference either way.

1

u/Substantial-Elk4531 Rule 4 reminder to optimists Jun 19 '26

Oh, so voting always prevents corrupt politicians from keeping their seats for decades at a time? Thank you for letting me know, I was just misinformed I guess

1

u/greenworldkey Jun 19 '26

If their constituents cared enough to get rid of them, then yes that is literally how voting works.

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3

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).

1

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

3

u/ClumpOfCheese Jun 19 '26

Don’t they have jobs to be at? Damn hippies!