🇺🇸🤖 To data center or not to data center?
NYT: Voters Rejected A.I. in the Midterms. Now Comes an Era of Scrutiny.
Voters on Tuesday slammed the brakes on data centers and swept in governors and legislators who have promised to protect individuals from threats posed by artificial intelligence.
Despite record donations by tech executives to tech-friendly candidates, voters chose a new Democratic leadership raring to investigate the cozy ties between A.I. companies and the administration.
In 40 out of 41 local ballot initiatives across the country — more than half of them in Ohio — citizens voted to limit or prevent data center development. Governors and congressional candidates who ran on anti-tech platforms in Texas, Ohio, Georgia and other states prevailed. And senior Democrats immediately promised to swing a hammer on the industry.
“Expect a tsunami of new rules and oversight,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.
Selected comments:
● “Voters on Tuesday slammed the brakes on data centers...” In other words, China won the election.
● The recent opposition to data centers verges on hysteria. We have relied on them for decades to power everything from online searches and movie streaming to telecommunications. We fundamentally need this infrastructure.
While it is true that proposed AI data centers are substantially larger and demand far more power than older facilities, the solution is not a total shutdown. Grid connections and site selection should be regulated locally, just like any other large industrial plant.
Blanket bans are myopic: they ensure that the US will fall behind China and other global competitors in this critical era of technological growth.
● The growing opposition to data center development should concern anyone who wants America to remain a world leader in technology. AI is likely to transform virtually every sector of our economy, but that future requires infrastructure, and data centers are an essential part of it. Concerns about electricity, water consumption, and noise are legitimate. Developers should be required to address these issues and demonstrate that their projects won't burden existing consumers, threaten local water supplies, or disrupt residential neighborhoods. But responsible regulation should not become an excuse to block development altogether. If we make it too difficult to build this infrastructure, other countries, particularly China, will gladly fill the void. We've already seen the consequences of allowing critical industries and supply chains to move overseas, as our dependence on foreign rare earth minerals demonstrates. We should not repeat that mistake with AI. We can protect our communities and natural resources while making America the world's leading destination for AI development. Let's not allow fear and short-term thinking to cost us our technological leadership.
My quick take on the issue: Blanket bans are ridiculous, but it’s not right for trillionaires and their companies to get rich off rising electricity and water prices in the communities where data centers are being built. In China, there’s coordination and resource allocation. In the U.S., there isn’t even adequate legislation—which should probably be at the state level, since at the federal level, politicians have other battles to fight. Approvals should be granted on a case-by-case basis after thorough analysis, but given the bribes trillionaires can afford to pay, I fear any county commission responsible for approvals—and any expert tasked with preparing a technical or economic report—would approve them on the spot, regardless of legal provisions. Everyone has their price.
Business Insider is trying to deceive us: This tiny North Dakota town was the only place to vote in support of data centers:
Voters delivered a stern rebuke of data centers in ballot propositions across the country on Tuesday.
Except in one tiny North Dakota town.
The citizens of Harwood, who number about 940, shot down a measure that would have given residents a greater say in how large projects, such as AI data centers, are constructed in the town.
The vote wasn't exactly close, either. Some 325 voted against the measure, compared to 105 who voted for it, according to the North Dakota Secretary of State's office.
Of all 45 data-center-related propositions on the ballot across the country on Tuesday, Harwood stood out as the sole constituency in support of them. The other 44 fell on the anti-data-center side, according to Redbud Consulting, a ballot tracking firm.
And for residents of Harwood, the issue is germane. A $3 billion AI data center equal in size to 17 football fields is under construction in the community's backyard. The company building it hopes to employ 200 people — a number equal to about 20% of the city's population.
"It's frustrating," Mark Coolidge, a 59-year-old resident who voted for the measure, told Business Insider.
"We are the people that have to live with this type of industry as a neighbor," said Mike Swartz, a 47-year-old resident who advocated for the proposition. "Do we not have any say in what we want for the community some have vested decades into calling their home?"
In an interview, Blake Hankey, the mayor of Harwood, said he didn't support the measure. He said the language of the proposition was imprecise and that some of the stipulations "would have been financially burdensome to a city our size."
This amendment to the home rule charter wasn't strictly aimed at data centers," he said. "It was any kind of business coming to town."
He also said the proposition wasn't a referendum on data centers. "It wasn't if there was going to be a moratorium," he added.
The proposition, should it have passed, would not have affected the existing data center, which is set to be completed next year.
Rather, it would have applied to all future construction projects that met a criteria of scale. For instance, a new gas station wouldn't have qualified, but a new large data center would be subject to independent assessments and mandatory public hearings.
Swartz said the measure was necessary because people in town were "blindsided" by how quickly the current data center was approved.
"Many in town didn't even know what that was or meant," he said. "Yet it only took 21 days from the time it was announced to the time construction began."
Hankey, who said he signed a non-disclosure agreement with Applied Digital, the company building the data center, described the decision as one he and the city council had to make quickly, lest neighboring Fargo got the contract first.
"I don't regret signing it," he said of the NDA. "Had I not, that data center would almost certainly be in the city of Fargo right now, without any kind of sales tax or property tax for our community."
So no, Harwood residents did not vote in favour of data centers. They voted against an amendment that would have imposed additional democratic oversight through scrutiny and public consultation requirements on future large-scale developments, including data centers. By rejecting it, they left the existing decision-making arrangements unchanged, under which the mayor and city council retained control over such decisions.