alt Hacker NewsIf the reality you believe in is one in which pockets of local resistance to data centers is going to meaningfully derail AI buildout across the country then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
It's a bad idea. The few communities that succeed are still going to suffer the macro consequences of data centers being built in the next town over.
I don't think anyone is expecting to seriously "derail AI" just by preventing data centers from being built in their neighborhood. But they can at least inconvenience the people they see as the perpetrators. If you can't win the fight, and can't walk away, at least you can give your opponent a bloody lip. And who knows, maybe it gets steam and the people in congress who have been actively ignoring them have incentives to at least throw them a bone.
If there were serious macro consequences then maybe it would be an issue but from the point of view of the communities -- there aren't. Data centers don't bring a lot of permanent employment and tend to be given tax breaks. They are skeptical that data centers are the boon that these people claim they are -- and they are right to be so since people pushing these data centers have been wildly untrustworthy at best.
Saying "You can't stop it so you might as well get on board and hope that in the future you can convince shareholders/billionaires/US Congress to give you a pittance of UBI" is going to go over like a lead brick. There's no reason to trust that UBI will come if you give up any leverage you have, even if it is a minuscule amount of leverage.