The title is accurate: it's "I think". There's no convincing argument or study about whether the backlash is about big tech, data centers or AI or not. Maybe I'm a bit tired but I didn't find any objective information in this post on the matter.
If we are sharing just opinions, I'll say that it's definitely a mix of things. And the anti AI sentiment (in part because of the environmental impacts) is very real.
The rapid growth of AI possibly also raised anti tech growth sentiment more generally: in a way, we are realizing that tech doesn't live in clouds but is very much tangible, and its externalities too. Tech has never been this concrete in a way. And in parallel people are more and more aware that big tech doesn't straigtforwardly design its software to serve the end user, so yes, there's also a negative sentiment because of this too.
You are right. Most people are against scale and progress. I don’t think it’s about big tech. I don’t think it’s about data centers. I don’t think it’s about emissions or water. It’s about scale.
Data centers polute their air, use up their water, increase their energy cost and make an unbearable noise in their neighborhood. But sure, they are simply anti progress for no reason.
The scale of wealth imbalance, the scale of money in politics, the scale of grocer prices,
the scale of data collection and abuse of targeted price manipulation,
the scale of climate catastrophe,
the scale of electric bills, humming noises, draught conditions.
It’s about realizing the scales are uneven, and seeing a tangible incarnation of that being built. All those problems are starting to seem awfully close to home.
You can’t reach the trillionaire, but maybe you can keep it out of your back yard, so you protest the data center.
> lot of discussion on Twitter in the last few days [...] People from basically all political sides are interested in owning the data center backlash, and are all saying it’s being caused by what they’ve always been on about.
I dont think twitter represents all political sides. Twitter is its own echo chamber.
But also, not being on twitter, I have not seen "all political sides" being interested in "owning the backlash". I have seen claims that "backslash unifies the sides like nothing else" and literally "it gives me hope we can unite on at least one thing". Interestingly, the activists I listened to said "everyone has own reason to hate them, but they are unified in the goal" confirming it is mix of reasons. Trump voter protesting data center wont have the same motivations as progressive protesting data center.
If we are sharing just opinions, I'll say that it's definitely a mix of things. And the anti AI sentiment (in part because of the environmental impacts) is very real.
The rapid growth of AI possibly also raised anti tech growth sentiment more generally: in a way, we are realizing that tech doesn't live in clouds but is very much tangible, and its externalities too. Tech has never been this concrete in a way. And in parallel people are more and more aware that big tech doesn't straigtforwardly design its software to serve the end user, so yes, there's also a negative sentiment because of this too.
- https://read.misalignedmag.com/triangulating-ais-climate-imp...
Data centers polute their air, use up their water, increase their energy cost and make an unbearable noise in their neighborhood. But sure, they are simply anti progress for no reason.
I dont think twitter represents all political sides. Twitter is its own echo chamber.
But also, not being on twitter, I have not seen "all political sides" being interested in "owning the backlash". I have seen claims that "backslash unifies the sides like nothing else" and literally "it gives me hope we can unite on at least one thing". Interestingly, the activists I listened to said "everyone has own reason to hate them, but they are unified in the goal" confirming it is mix of reasons. Trump voter protesting data center wont have the same motivations as progressive protesting data center.