it's a convincing, if very long, article. I agree with the general takeaway that people 'on our side' are getting caught up in the AI data center boogeyman and losing the plot. dont know or care...
it's a convincing, if very long, article. I agree with the general takeaway that people 'on our side' are getting caught up in the AI data center boogeyman and losing the plot.
dont know or care about AI so much, but if it's their land then they should be able to sell it for data center.
Farming should be treated as one industry among many, that we can criticize or praise like any other industry, and that shouldn’t get special treatment or handouts because of the inherent virtue of toiling in the soil.
Logically I agree with this and even though I think farming is important (half my friends are farmers), I would say its just as important to manage sewage systems and therefore prevent the spread of filthy diseases. But no one talks about sewage workers like they talk about farmers!
I admit it doesn't feel good to see such a long critique on farmers. I read most of the article and gave up near the end because it's just so endless. I can't really object to anything in here, but the sentiment that farmers can do no evil is really ingrained in me. It feels wrong even though it's a very well reasoned essay.
It happened because you basically can’t say ‘small farmers are part of the problem’ in American politics and expect to keep your job. At best, you can blame “big ag,” or maybe China, but the politics of farming is so crazy that farmers are a permanent third rail politicians won’t touch, even while they poison a local community. For any other industry, this would obviously be crazy, and every other industry has regulations on how much it can pollute water. But farmers are organized, numerous, and have silly folk theories about the inherent virtue of growing food on their side.
I think this is a bigger problem with the leftists being over-focused with the idea that "big corporation = bad", not specific to agriculture. They can't loudly criticize small-scale orgs or movements at all (by virtue of being grassroots or supposedly more honest), even if they're screwing something up, so they have to leave that dirty work to centrist liberals and conservatives. The worst case here is probably housing. Democrats in California (where they have 3/4 of the legislature) just cannot go on record saying they support the obvious fix to the housing crisis, which is to restrict local zoning power (which is usually what's stopping efficient development).
I don't blame them, the message that regular ol everyday people are wrong and the Developer or AI megacorp is right is... a losing message. But advocates could probably do a better job articulating critiques of excessive power/bad policy in all forms rather than just the megacorporations, which is pretty obvious by now. Like, none of us have to win an election, it's good we are having this conversation.
A large part of the founding vision for America as a country is to be a republic of yeoman farmers, so there's a lot of that in the gut reaction to side with farmers even when it's not practical....
A large part of the founding vision for America as a country is to be a republic of yeoman farmers, so there's a lot of that in the gut reaction to side with farmers even when it's not practical. I'd say there's also an anti-modern sensibility of wanting to preserve a way of life from a simpler time. On the whole, I generally want those things, but there needs to be major reform to how we regulate and subsidize farming in this country. I think one starting point would be to massively raise requirements for ethical treatment of animals (Kurzgesagt did a video showing how relatively little it'd cost) and to think about how to expand consumer demand for the category of locally grown produce from independent farms.
Probably a good place to share The Myth of the Happy Yeoman The argument is that that founding vision was always built on a myth, and that American agriculture from the very beginning was...
The argument is that that founding vision was always built on a myth, and that American agriculture from the very beginning was commercial, speculative and profit-driven. The yeoman farmer largely doesn't and never existed. I guess my point is that the tensions discussed here have been felt for a while. Yet, the mythologizing on farmers persists.
Well, I guess this depends on exactly how leftist vs Democrat we are talking, because the Democrat party is perfectly content to go after some small businesses. And I see small businesses vote...
They can't loudly criticize small-scale orgs or movements at all (by virtue of being grassroots or supposedly more honest), even if they're screwing something up, so they have to leave that dirty work to centrist liberals and conservatives.
Well, I guess this depends on exactly how leftist vs Democrat we are talking, because the Democrat party is perfectly content to go after some small businesses. And I see small businesses vote Republican even though I'd guess it probably hurts them?
And this is probably my bias showing, but centrist liberals can't trivially step up and criticize flaws in small-scale orgs or movements either (also 100% by virtue of being grassroots or supposedly more honest). But hey, here's my criticism; I observe small businesses easily evading environmental protections and various other kinds of regulations generally. Perhaps auditing them is difficult.
If I had to guess, I'd say both Democrats and Republicans go after any easy targets for their respective party, and that almost certainly includes some small-scale orgs / movements / businesses (I assume small-scale orgs uncludes small businesses btw) for each of them.
I’ve seen many articles about problems with AI and not one of them was about land usage. Maybe because I’m not a farmer. All the stories I’ve seen are that AI: Drives up the price of computer...
I’ve seen many articles about problems with AI and not one of them was about land usage. Maybe because I’m not a farmer. All the stories I’ve seen are that AI:
Drives up the price of computer components
Drives up the price of electricity
Causes risks in the economy due to speculation and lost opportunity doing other productive things.
Harms the job market, either by replacing workers or giving companies excuses for layoffs
Causes cognitive decline in people that use it
And these which are addressed in the article:
Waste of water
Pollution
Proximity to homes
So is this facet about the land kind of a red herring?
I think the fundamental and valid concern is that tech companies have too much wealth and power and are moving fast and breaking things. They are buying political power and media control while telling everyone that their concerns are fake.
There’s a sort of appendix at the end where he criticizes specific articles for being bad on data center land use. Also, he is writing a series of articles. I haven’t read the others, but they do...
There’s a sort of appendix at the end where he criticizes specific articles for being bad on data center land use. Also, he is writing a series of articles. I haven’t read the others, but they do seem to address other concerns.
There are an absolute load of people criticizing AI on an environmental basis that relies more or less solely on misconceptions about those last three bullet points, though, and those tie in...
There are an absolute load of people criticizing AI on an environmental basis that relies more or less solely on misconceptions about those last three bullet points, though, and those tie in pretty clearly to land use as a larger issue. I suspect how much weight this is given depends a lot on the venue, but among laypeople who aren't that deeply knowledgeable about the details, those are very common talking points (to an extent that imo tends to detract from the more well-founded arguments about the negative effects of AI).
Like biographies use their subject as a prism for the world around them, I use data centers as a prism for much larger but invisible environmental problems, hidden by our tendencies toward populism and localism that data centers offend. This post focuses on the ridiculous ways we use land in America, which (like most of our water issues) is downstream of farmers being shielded from popular criticism by political alliances and folk intuitions about the honest toil of growing food. By the end, I hope you’ll be much more skeptical of headlines like this:
and of the idea that data centers purchasing farmland is a unique evil.
I’m not claiming data centers should be built anywhere and everywhere. There are lots of places where they’ve been built too close to people’s homes. This post is about whether data centers waste the land they’re on relative to what they compete with, and my claim is that they mostly don’t compete with things we need more of (housing) and mostly compete with things we need less of (farmland).
Mid way through the article, it feels modeled perhaps too closely on existing data centers, and less representative of new data centers. It is a credible article, but I would sooner recommend...
Mid way through the article, it feels modeled perhaps too closely on existing data centers, and less representative of new data centers. It is a credible article, but I would sooner recommend reading this source it cited.
it's a convincing, if very long, article. I agree with the general takeaway that people 'on our side' are getting caught up in the AI data center boogeyman and losing the plot.
dont know or care about AI so much, but if it's their land then they should be able to sell it for data center.
Logically I agree with this and even though I think farming is important (half my friends are farmers), I would say its just as important to manage sewage systems and therefore prevent the spread of filthy diseases. But no one talks about sewage workers like they talk about farmers!
I admit it doesn't feel good to see such a long critique on farmers. I read most of the article and gave up near the end because it's just so endless. I can't really object to anything in here, but the sentiment that farmers can do no evil is really ingrained in me. It feels wrong even though it's a very well reasoned essay.
I think this is a bigger problem with the leftists being over-focused with the idea that "big corporation = bad", not specific to agriculture. They can't loudly criticize small-scale orgs or movements at all (by virtue of being grassroots or supposedly more honest), even if they're screwing something up, so they have to leave that dirty work to centrist liberals and conservatives. The worst case here is probably housing. Democrats in California (where they have 3/4 of the legislature) just cannot go on record saying they support the obvious fix to the housing crisis, which is to restrict local zoning power (which is usually what's stopping efficient development).
I don't blame them, the message that regular ol everyday people are wrong and the Developer or AI megacorp is right is... a losing message. But advocates could probably do a better job articulating critiques of excessive power/bad policy in all forms rather than just the megacorporations, which is pretty obvious by now. Like, none of us have to win an election, it's good we are having this conversation.
A large part of the founding vision for America as a country is to be a republic of yeoman farmers, so there's a lot of that in the gut reaction to side with farmers even when it's not practical. I'd say there's also an anti-modern sensibility of wanting to preserve a way of life from a simpler time. On the whole, I generally want those things, but there needs to be major reform to how we regulate and subsidize farming in this country. I think one starting point would be to massively raise requirements for ethical treatment of animals (Kurzgesagt did a video showing how relatively little it'd cost) and to think about how to expand consumer demand for the category of locally grown produce from independent farms.
Probably a good place to share The Myth of the Happy Yeoman
The argument is that that founding vision was always built on a myth, and that American agriculture from the very beginning was commercial, speculative and profit-driven. The yeoman farmer largely doesn't and never existed. I guess my point is that the tensions discussed here have been felt for a while. Yet, the mythologizing on farmers persists.
If you want to read a progressive attack on most farmers (for bad politics), there is Sarah Taber's latest.
Well, I guess this depends on exactly how leftist vs Democrat we are talking, because the Democrat party is perfectly content to go after some small businesses. And I see small businesses vote Republican even though I'd guess it probably hurts them?
And this is probably my bias showing, but centrist liberals can't trivially step up and criticize flaws in small-scale orgs or movements either (also 100% by virtue of being grassroots or supposedly more honest). But hey, here's my criticism; I observe small businesses easily evading environmental protections and various other kinds of regulations generally. Perhaps auditing them is difficult.
If I had to guess, I'd say both Democrats and Republicans go after any easy targets for their respective party, and that almost certainly includes some small-scale orgs / movements / businesses (I assume small-scale orgs uncludes small businesses btw) for each of them.
I’ve seen many articles about problems with AI and not one of them was about land usage. Maybe because I’m not a farmer. All the stories I’ve seen are that AI:
And these which are addressed in the article:
So is this facet about the land kind of a red herring?
I think the fundamental and valid concern is that tech companies have too much wealth and power and are moving fast and breaking things. They are buying political power and media control while telling everyone that their concerns are fake.
There’s a sort of appendix at the end where he criticizes specific articles for being bad on data center land use. Also, he is writing a series of articles. I haven’t read the others, but they do seem to address other concerns.
There are an absolute load of people criticizing AI on an environmental basis that relies more or less solely on misconceptions about those last three bullet points, though, and those tie in pretty clearly to land use as a larger issue. I suspect how much weight this is given depends a lot on the venue, but among laypeople who aren't that deeply knowledgeable about the details, those are very common talking points (to an extent that imo tends to detract from the more well-founded arguments about the negative effects of AI).
From the article:
Mid way through the article, it feels modeled perhaps too closely on existing data centers, and less representative of new data centers. It is a credible article, but I would sooner recommend reading this source it cited.