alt Hacker NewsAt the end it's a facility that costs the locals and benefits non-locals. Even if AI is the truly greatest productivity booster, the benefits are still distributed over all its customers, and the environmental impacts are mostly local.
It's like if someone is building a landfill in your hometown to bury the whole country's waste. Or it's like a factory that creates zero job.
Replies
How is this different than a cornfield? A data center is probably a better neighbor because it doesn't kick up dirt, pesticides, and fertilizer into the air.
Except datacenters are actually very low environmental impact. As long as they provide their own power, they have MUCH lower impact than most farms would.
I’m sorry but I’d like specifics - there are too many environmentalists hand-waving.
This is a well established playbook - it was used with nuclear. It’s being used with oil transport.
It’s literally the same script.
The reason these data centers are getting built in place people don’t want them is because the towns are broke.
The city councils know it, but the residents don’t.
The entire point of the last 10 years of Strong Towns was talking about municipal finance, infrastructure costs, and the insolvency of the American suburban town.
https://youtu.be/tI3kkk2JdoI