cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/54061344
https://archive.ph/2026.11.05-224738/https://www.ft.com/content/32fd4450-5880-437d-9bd9-df13289ada24
The US midterm elections — in which voters elected anti-data centre governors in Texas, Georgia and Ohio and passed 38 local votes in favour of restrictions on their development — have forced the tech industry to reflect on its failure to connect with the public.
“The reason is not that people are Luddites . . . it’s much like the protests against the masks in Covid. It has become a political symbol,” said Vik Bajaj, co-chief executive of the Jeff Bezos-backed AI start-up Prometheus.
. . . “As a profession, we have spent two years pretty dangerously telling people that AI will change the future of work for the worse — that they will be out of jobs, that their children will be out of jobs, their grandchildren will live in a world that’s unrecognisable. And then for the last year or so, we’ve also been flirting with the idea that it’s an existential crisis.”
“I think this election was a big wake-up call . . . to take a pause and think about what’s happening and approach this in a way that’s maybe a little more thoughtful,” said John Hanke, founder of Niantic Spatial, the AI world model company and gaming group that made Pokémon Go. “It’s been go, go, go, build, build, build, and some of that has been . . . with head buried in sand.”
Seems to be good-news-friday
There was never a fucking “boom” just a lot of stupid money being thrown at the latest gamble, rather than investing in the boring, predictable things we know makes life better for people right now.
Eeey, it’s Mr. Dong Lover
This sounds like a win for homeowners power bills…infinite growth projections for these projects was ludicrous levels of stupidity.
Something something invisible hand of the market.
I hope that this means thoughtful conversations about how much AI compute infrastructure is actually useful given realistic demand curves, where it should be located, what resources will it require, and, importantly, how the companies that benefit from it will directly share those benefits, as compared to hazy gestures towards “economic development”.
I fear that this is just the industry telling us they’re about to start lying even more than they have.
Good. Let their fingers be burned right off if need be. Those vast data centers are to be used to facilitate oppression, not to improve the quality of life of anyone but (maybe) billionaires.
“The fact that my business model doesn’t work is an unfair threat to my business model!”
I mean, these tech CEOs went to college graduation ceremonies and said “None of you will be getting jobs, lol” and went on TV and said “AI will destroy humanity” and then ramped their data center expansion so rapidly that peoples electric bill went up by 300% and when the public hates them and their technology and votes accordingly they are “What happened? How can people be so short-sighted? Why is this so political?”
I dunno, fuckheads, maybe move fast and break things isn’t a popular strategy when applied to society.
“Won’t somebody think of the poor billionaires?!”
Oh noes! Did the trillionaires’ playtime pretend investments never happen? Oh, poor trillionaires. Maybe they can just hop into a dick-rocket and get the fuck off our planet instead.
Maybe this was simply too much, too fast, with insufficient demonstrable value.
But the NDAs, backroom deals, hoarding, shell games with debt, blatant illegal activity and disregard for environmental laws and just all the fucking shenanigans have to come to a head. Of course this was going to get hit with backlash!
If all these companies weren’t treating this as a selfish land grab maybe everyone wouldn’t hate them.
Oh the value was proven as of summer this year. But in public perception, AI still means chat littered with hallucinations.
imagine if we put this much into the power grid. Might have cheap electricity instead of centralized AI.
We’d have a working fusion reactor with that kind of money.
will of the people threatening all with less horribleness.
“Backlash against unwanted resource hogs threatens our pocketbook.”
That’s what they mean.
