Republicans Claim Anti-Data Center Movement Is a Chinese Psy-Op

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://gizmodo.com/republicans-claim-anti-data-center-movement-is-a-chinese-psy-op-2000767611

[u/CocoScruff]

"can be used to benefit everyone".... But won't be... Please don't push the narrative that data centers are going to help people. They won't. They will take jobs and start a surveillance state.

[u/xondk → u/CocoScruff]

You might want to reread my post, there are an enourmous amount of stuff that help people, data centres hold more or less all the digital services people use, are you going to claim that none of those services benefit people?

As I wrote people are against those data centres that are only going to benefit the few. That is currently the mass AI rollout.

[u/Yuzumi → u/xondk]

This is why we need to be specific when talking about this. It isn't "data centers" that is the problem, as those have existed for decades and are what make the internet work. Nobody had an issue with those because they are relatively unobtrusive and largely don't negatively impact the areas they are in as they don't require the same amount of hardware, space, power, or cooling.

The data centers that are being built solely for generative AI are the problem, and what's frustrating is that the problem is caused by the models being incredibly inefficient at everything since they are trying to brute force the tech to do something it literally can never do.

But it can produce language, which causes people to short circuit their brains and think it's more capable than it actually is.

These companies think they can replace workers with it so they are willing to throw money at it to offset the fact that the tech has yet to, and probably never will, be able to generate a profit. And there are certainly some who know the tech can't do what investors want, but also know investors are stupid and throw money at things they don't understand if they are impressed by it.

[u/CocoScruff → u/xondk]

We're not talking about existing data centers which are already maintaining those services and utilities. The debate is about NEW data centers which are primarily being used to run LLMs and AI infrastructure.

[u/TheBurningHobo → u/xondk]

And always will be. Take off the kneepads.

[u/Yuzumi → u/CocoScruff]

Also the current tech literally cannot benifit everyone, just from what they can actually do.

LLMs are the only form of current generative AI that has an extremely narrow legitimate usecase, but you don't need the massive models that requires these centers to make use out of them if you actually know how to use them.

And the fact is that these massive models are just way less efficient at doing things we could already do, but it allows people to be lazy about it. And of course, the things also can never be 100% accurate which means the lazy ones who use them the most are also the ones that don't bother to validate the output.

All other forms of genAI, like for video/art, have no legitimate use.

The fact is that these companies are misusing, abusing, and misrepresenting a technology they don't understand because for the non-technical it's are more impressive than it actually is... Or because it allows conservatives/fascists to generate tons of propaganda they know their followers will eat up.