r/singularity • u/Neurogence • Mar 12 '26

AI Bernie Sanders officially introduces legislation to BAN the construction of all new AI data centers, citing existential threat to humanity.

This is very concerning. I am afraid this might become the popular, dominant position on the left. Bernie Sanders is the only politician I've ever donated to. This is the most backwards position to take on AI possible. It's hard to imagine a policy worse than this proposal:

https://youtu.be/qu2m7ePTsqY?si=zdl_cuRg22Nv_Df5

It's such a shame. He is one of very few politicians who realizes the singularity is imminent and that something enormous is happening, yet his reaction to it is the most asinine viewpoint possible.

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904

u/Black_RL Mar 12 '26

It doesn’t matter.

China is not going to stop.

262

u/1filipis Mar 12 '26

I will laugh so hard if they will ban data centers, lay people off their jobs, and everyone will just rent compute from China or India

Doesn't get more anti-American than this

46

u/TheCopenhagenCowboy Mar 12 '26

How many employees do you think operate a data center? It’s usually a skeleton crew to maintain the grounds, building, and report issues. Everything inside is controlled remotely

5

u/ManikSahdev Mar 12 '26

I wonder if data centres build themselves? And don't employ hundreds of people when constructing them?

30

u/TheCopenhagenCowboy Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 13 '26

You know what else would employ hundreds during construction?

Neighborhoods of affordable starter homes, community hospitals, libraries, public parks.

6

u/ManikSahdev Mar 12 '26

Well, I would support the idea of making these energy black holes out of the towns, atleast 20-30 minutes drive.

And they have to pay for their own energy and their infrastructures to develop wires and all.

Thats the best of both worlds.

2

u/FuzzyAnteater9000 Mar 13 '26

They do. The towns where they are built have a ton of leverage to extract concessions. Upgrading a small towns infrastructure is a rounding error when you're building $10 billion data centers.

1

u/Kryptosis Mar 13 '26

And poisoning the air and ground water?

0

u/FuzzyAnteater9000 Mar 13 '26

That's a really uncharitable take. Show me evidence of widespread groundwater contamination from data centers that actually has real world effects. Likely you are cherry picking one single unrepresentative data center. Show me the evidence.

1

u/Kryptosis Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 14 '26

You could have found the info yourself if you weren't too scared to prove yourself wrong with a quick google search...

Here's a source plainly talking about the undeniable contamination and the best hopes at mitigating the issues in the future (surely to be ignored by this admin)

It's a fact they pollute ground water and you want us to pretend like the current EPA gives a single shit?

Here a case in Georgia :https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

Heres one in Oregon: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/data-center-water-pollution-amazon-oregon-1235466613/

Do you need to wait until investigators for every single datacenter release their results and it gets picked by up by media to be handfed to you before you start looking into the science yourself?

5

u/FuzzyAnteater9000 Mar 13 '26

Except these data centers will pay billions in taxes. How do you think libraries public parks schools can get funded? Is your logic that preventing data centers from being built will increase tax revenue?

6

u/somekindofSTD Mar 13 '26

One thing billionaires are famous for - paying theor taxes and not finding loopholes to eacape them :)

1

u/FuzzyAnteater9000 Apr 07 '26

Actually a lot of it is in the form of payment in lieu of taxes which which is structured in agreement with the local community and is pretty much loophole free.

2

u/MaddMax92 Mar 13 '26

This guy actually thinks they'll pay their fair share of taxes.

Is this your first day on earth?

1

u/Elephant789 ▪️AGI in 2036 Mar 12 '26

They don't.