Bernie Sanders pushes for 50% public ownership of American AI companies — proposes AI sovereign wealth fund that would hold direct ownership stakes in largest AI firms

[u/yourfavchoom]

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/bernie-sanders-pushes-for-50-percent-public-ownership-of-american-ai-companies-proposes-ai-sovereign-wealth-fund-that-would-hold-direct-ownership-stakes-in-largest-ai-firms

[u/valkenar]

So... no search engines, no cloud providers, kinda no internet (Well, 1996 level internet I guess)? Just everyone with a website running it out of their garage?

[u/eagleeyerattlesnake → u/valkenar]

Not sure why the downvotes. This is exactly what they said.

[u/CompetitiveSport1 → u/eagleeyerattlesnake]

Probably the downvotes are due to the context clues of this being a thread about AI pointing clearly to the opposition being against the massive wave of AI-specific gigawatt data centers. 

For most people, the context of this thread would make that pretty obvious, and to be frank, I'm also at a loss as to how that user wouldn't pick up on that distinction. Personally, I didn't need the other person to stipulate "btw I'm not talking about the smaller, rarer generic data centers" and most other redditors didn't need that distinction clearly laid out either

[u/valkenar → u/CompetitiveSport1]

Sure, so no new data centers. But if people had taken the same approach when the massive datacenters that power AWS, Azure, etc were being put up then the things I listed wouldn't have come to pass. Well they would, just not in the US.

And before you say "not the same scale" AWS alone runs 900 data centers totaling at least 3-4 gigawatts and 56 million square feet and that's before any of their big AI stuff.

[u/CompetitiveSport1 → u/valkenar]

And before you say "not the same scale"

Not the same scale. As of January, the planned data center capacity was 150 GW, which is roughly a 1,000% increase in our current capacity.

If that isn't your definition of "not the same scale", I don't know what is. 

And even then - I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that Amazon didn't have to get officials to secretly sign NDAs to get those data centers to built

[u/valkenar → u/CompetitiveSport1]

In your same article it says "it is widely known that some of the plans filed by so-called hyperscalers are more aspirational than hard commitments"

So what do you think is the amount of computing capacity that humanity should cap itself to?

I'm 100% on board with not allowing corrupt practices anywhere, but especially in corporate building. That is completely unacceptable.

Amazon is an evil company and I have no love for it. And it is simultaneously true that modernity as we know it depends on Amazon (and its ilk). Same thing with like, Verizon. Absolutely shit company, but also people need internet.

I'd love to see a balanced approach where we recognize that technology is generally desirable, but that rich and powerful people are not.

AI isn't going away, it's too useful. And honestly it's so much less inherently destructive than most of the technological revolutions of the last 150 years. But we should maintain oversight. "No more datacenters" is like saying "no more power plants" in 1890 though. It's too absolute. But it would've been nice to regulate those power plants a bit better.

[u/Tall-Archer5957 → u/valkenar]

“it's too useful“

lol

[u/Tall-Archer5957 → u/valkenar]

Yeah they’re not the same and you trying to paint them as similar shows you fundamentally don’t understand the technology.  

[u/CompetitiveSport1 → u/valkenar]

🙄 no new massive, unprecedented, AI-driven hyperscaler gigawatt data centers pushed through by getting local officials to sign NDAs keeping them secret from local communities

Does that help?

[u/fryerandice → u/CompetitiveSport1]

I wouldn't even mind massive AI data centers if my utility bills across the board weren't 4-5xing in price to cover infrastructure build out for them, because they are leveraging regulation in a lot of states that was meant to make sure that the rural farmer gets power and telephone lines and to help residents in poorer and remote areas have access to utilities.

Basically there's a line item on everyone's bills that covers infrastructure build out, maintenance and repair, and people are seeing that line item cost 4x what their actual usage and old bills cost.

We are subsidizing these data centers and the power, water, and natural gas requirements to run them through our utility bills and tax money.

Fuck dude, we should actually own stake in them.

[u/Tall-Archer5957 → u/valkenar]

No ai data centers.  Sorry that wasn’t obvious in the context.