In the past few months, the internet, local media, and many jurisdictions have been swamped with articles, opinion pieces, alarmist postings, and multiple claims about how “data centers” are being built all over the place, and bring incredible problems (and evils!) with them.
It joins the constant refrain in social media, the mainsteam media, and all the little activists that are bored with Black Lives Matter, LandBack, and whatever The Donald said that they don’t like so immediately claim to be a lie. And they get all the do-gooders out to tramp along the streets and the sidewalks, put out more false information, and declare that the world is coming to an end.
For example, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, last week: (Courtesy Cowboy State Daily), Wyoming Residents Join National Day Of Protest Against Data Centers A few dozen Wyoming residents gathered at the State Capitol on Saturday as part of a national day of protest against data centers. Organizer Taylor Haynes called data centers “digital prisons” and said the need for artificial intelligence has taken away Americans’ freedom.
Such silly claims are actually some unusual points made in opposition to the huge “server farms” which are springing up across the States. (And, we presume, the world.) The major objections we have observed are of two categories:
- Excessive consumption of water and electrical power, therefore using limited resources and driving up prices by demanding more and more.
- The use of the centers and their facilitation of AI and surveillance (tied with Flock cameras and Ring cameras and all the rest of the tools of the modern surveillance state).
Not precisely clear on how these are “digital prisons” – are the data centers hoarding data and not letting people access it? Or is this a somewhat twisted allusion to the idea that being able to track people (and their vehicles and no doubt their livestock, service animals, and pets) 24-7 creates virtual prison bars and security perimeters which we cannot pass through?
We admit to a similar lack of comprehension regarding how “the need” for AI takes away our freedom. Everyone’s freedom, apparently. This is in stark contrast to the actual situation: knowing the truth makes us free, provided we also act on the truth. Perhaps they are alluding to the fact that “Artificial Intelligence” often produces products (both words and illustrations) that are terribly, terribly wrong. With very stupid errors.
Of course, it doesn’t take machine “intelligence” to do that. Humans are able to do that all by themselves. We here at TPOL have begun collecting tidbits of “AI fakes” – info spread to the world beyond the usual photoshopping. For examples, geographic “educational material” that shows the Black Hills extending from somewhere in Saskatchewan to northern Kansas, or the headwaters of the Mississippi (which it didn’t spell correctly) starting up in Manitoba. Or other maps showing that ocean levels rising (due to “proven” global warming) will cause the waters of the Gulf of America [Mexico] to extend all the way into the San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado. (The Valley floor has an elevation in excess of 7500 feet above sea level. We don’t think Alamosa or South Fork is going to become a seaport anytime soon.)
But we’ve been collecting bits of false/fake trivia put out by people without the help of computers for a very long time. A favorite of the staff here at TPOL goes back about 25 years. The claim is made that if farmers and ranchers keep pumping the ground water out of the Oglala Acquifer (which stretches from the Texas Panhandle clear up to South Dakota), the entire western Great Plains will collapse into a giant, Florida-style sinkhole allowing the waters of the Gulf to race north to make Mission and Rosebud and Winner (small towns in West River of South Dakota) “seaports.”
We recognize that developing and operating large facilities which consume megawatts of power constantly and require constant disposal of the waste heat generated by their operations can create major problems. Just as we recognize that noise, electromagnetic emissions, sound levels and types, and the exhaust from internal combustion engines all have the potential for significant impacts on human health and the environment.
But it appears that the truth, and rationally addressing the issues, including those of surveillence and privacy, is not adequate for a growing (but still tiny) minority of Americans. It is no longer sufficient for people opposed to something to simply state, “I object, for the following (truthful) reasons.” Instead, horror stories must be created out of whole cloth and anything that they oppose must be presented as the greatest evil since Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. (Or maybe even worse.)
A question which Mama Liberty often asked comes to mind: what exactly is being covered up by this hysteria? What is being done under the covers or behind that curtain?
The Price of Liberty 
To me it’s pretty simple: If you don’t want a data center, don’t buy/build a data center. As long as government subsidies, set-asides, favors, eminent domain actions, etc. are left out of the matter, that should be the end of it.
I happen to like the idea of companies spending a lot of money to build facilities that use — and either buy or produce themselves — a lot of electricity. Over time, they’ll get more efficient at reducing their usage, leaving a power production glut that reduces everyone else’s cost per kilowatt-hour (see “supply and demand” for more information).
On the water side, they’ll also get more efficient at running more CPU cycles with less heat waste — and they’re ALREADY doing things like using (and adding additional public-benefiting filtering to) water coming out of sewage treatment plants.
And both of those prior innovation incentives will result in regular old computer users like me getting faster, cheaper, more efficient CPUs for my desktop/laptop.
I mean, I GUESS it’s POSSIBLE that AI will eventually rise up and squash humanity a la the Terminator movies. But depriving us of data centers here in the US won’t stop that if it’s going to happen. Why should I care whether SkyNet becomes self-aware over Boise instead of over Beijing?
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Tom, I do believe we are in full agreement here. When having to listen to/read the nonsense being spouted, I am reminded of Mark Twain’s statement: It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
If anything, what we’re seeing is that the various local and State governments are not allowing any of the “privileges” for data centers that they routinely extend to new or expanding businesses; rather, the opposite: they are coming down harder on them. (I am sure that there are those which do – but not in the areas we keep track of.
And as we’ve pointed out before, if people don’t want data centers, can they not simply stop doing things that require the things: drop their cellular phone service, their internet subscriptions, and streaming entertainment stuff, right? Those who use social media to complain about data centers are, at least to some degree, practicing hypocrisy, are they not?
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