People have. That's a common objection to golf courses.
The difference here is that data centers are both economically and environmentally extractive. People in the community, or at least in the surrounding area, will play golf there. Data centers are purely extractive, and that's why they have become so galvanizing. It's transferring probably the only real asset these communities have left, their open spaces, directly to the elite.
What is the exact value proposition of AI as it exists right now for the average person who lives where these things are being built? They don't even get jobs. With golf, they can enjoy the outdoors and escape a little bit.
I'm not entirely certain, but I think a data center might just provide more temporary and permanent jobs than a golf course, and with likely higher mean and median wages.
The golf park isn't even the best natural-adjacent use of the space.
A regular park or a trail will service a significantly larger portion of the population than a private property that transfers wealth from the community to a single person or corporation.
>I'm not entirely certain, but I think a data center might just provide more temporary and permanent jobs than a golf course, and with likely higher mean and median wages.
Well, you're right to be uncertain. After they're built, once the crews that built them move on to the next one, they don't even bother to keep the lights on. They might hire private security guards to patrol the exterior, but that's hardly an infusion of capital into the community.
> The golf park isn't even the best natural-adjacent use of the space.
> A regular park or a trail will service a significantly larger portion of the population than a private property that transfers wealth from the community to a single person or corporation.
Ok. Then they can decide to build a nature trail instead. The local community should make the decision and not be coerced because someone from the coasts thinks that they're a minor annoyance that needs to be lectured on the future of humanity or whatever lessbad rational-du-jore is being peddled.
> going to go out on a limb here and guess that net-net, a datacenter provides more benefits to a broader spectrum of society than a golf course does.
Is that true locally though? Having a golf course nearby your home is better than the golf course just existing somewhere, at least if you play golf, but that is decidedly not true of data centers. You might benefit from at least some of them existing, but derive very little benefit from having one in your backyard and a lot of potential downsides.
> Having a golf course nearby your home is better than the golf course just existing somewhere, at least if you play golf, but that is decidedly not true of data centers.
Isn't that the standard NIMBY argument, which ensures nothing ever gets built? Who wants a power plant, or dump near their house? Even if there's some vague local benefit (eg. a dump that benefits the county), you could always make the argument to put it on the other side of the county or whatever.
This will end in another 'adpocalypse' episode. Something like: ChatGPT generates recipes from the Anarchist Cookbook and adds Home Depot ads at the end, or inserts Amazon affiliate links for the Turner Diaries.
Google putting AI search summaries is the worst of all worlds.
You need cheap, fast inference to put on a search results page and finish near the deadline (~3 seconds). Cheap, fast inference is more likely to get stuff wrong. No one is happy.
My understanding of Google politics is that the small number of search team members who implemented any given 6-month-old feature will be happy as they will have been promoted away from the team and not responsible for maintenance nor quality.
I'm curious how google think about the damage this does to the perception of the quality of their AI tools. Every second google search I do reinforces the association "google AI is crap" because you can't help but see it there at the top of the page. Surely this perception hurts Gemini adoption across the board?
I was quite happy when I could type search keywords in, Google searched for relevant pages with those keywords, and I went and read those pages. Haven’t really been happy since they broke it quite a while ago.
Some are very hard: Bibliotik offers very few opportunities to build ratio. Very few people download any given random book, and there is no source of free credit. The economy is very feudal with no real inflation.
Some are easy: the ratio requirement on btn is nominal, and the real requirement is that you seed single shows for at least a day and seasons for a week. The system especially penalizes 'Hit and Run' downloads (i.e., not seeding for the required amount of time) rather than overall ratio. This acknowledges the ephemeral interest of a given TV show, and that each new show release is effectively a 'holiday' event.
It is way cheaper long term.
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