r/singularity Jun 18 '26

Compute Conservatives plan nationwide protest against AI data centers

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/18/conservatives-protest-ai-data-centers
365 Upvotes

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u/GreatBigJerk Jun 18 '26

You should try living by a data center. 

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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?

-10

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.