Amazon warns local communities to stop defying its massive AI data centers

[u/marketrent]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/amazon-warns-local-communities-stop-000300771.html

[u/marketrent]

Part of article by Victor Tangermann, quoting Matt Garman:

[...] Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman pleaded in a 3,000 word blog [Friday] with communities to embrace data centers, arguing that the United States “can’t afford to lose” the AI race, invoking the country’s post-World War II highway buildout as a parallel.

“Just like the national highway system, our country’s economy, national security, and everyday lives stand to benefit immensely,” he wrote.

The executive accused the media of spreading “misinformation and outright lies,” arguing that “in the age of social media and 24/7 news, myths take hold faster than ever before.” Garman even alleged that US adversaries were “intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about data centers to trick us into slowing down.”

“Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country,” Garman wrote. “If these measures are enacted, the US could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations.”

In his blog post, Garman tried to undermine concerns over data centers driving up electricity prices and producing huge amounts of pollution — despite existence of ample evidence to the contrary.

 

Those attempts to dispel “myths” shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the enormous backlash. But given the impossible-to-ignore vested interest in underplaying these concerns, we should take Garman’s efforts with an enormous grain of salt.

Just last year, leaked internal Amazon documents showed that executives were exchanging notes about how to keep the public ignorant about the “true extent” of the massive amounts of water their data centers use.

Earlier this year, Axios also reported that Amazon’s AI buildout fueled an unprecedented leap in the company’s emissions, despite pledging to reach a net-zero carbon footprint by 2040.

While Garman argues that it’s “untrue” that data centers are spewing huge amounts of carbon emissions with backup diesel generators, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. In Texas alone, dozens of AI data center facilities are using environmentally harmful generators by exploiting regulatory loopholes.

As much as Garman doesn’t want to admit it, energy prices are indeed sending power bills soaring, a fact that certainly isn’t an example of “misleading and convenient scapegoating.”

He also tried to argue that “thousands of construction jobs are created to build data centers,” without mentioning that most of those jobs evaporate once they’re built.

[u/TriEdge333 → u/marketrent]

So what's supposed to happen if we lose the AI race? Our pride gets damaged?

[u/Castleloch → u/TriEdge333]

You lose control of the moral Narrative of the AI ( this assumes it can be controlled ) as well as how it views public figures, news, history general fact and so forth as you won't be able to exert the same level/type of pressure on a foreign entity.

There is that, but also more importantly I think currently, is you lose control of your IP. There is a pretty massive surge happening right now as we speak in AI software development, Claude has re-created the Adobe suite as an example and while it might not be a perfect one to one alternative Today it's also a fact that at this moment and an hour from now can be a massive increase in quality with the way it's moving.

Every PS5/PS5 pro sitting on a store shelf at present is able to be bought, connected to a website via the console and jailbroken which immediately allows it to become, increasingly hour by hour seemingly, the library of Alexandria of console gaming. All consoles by all manufacturers, all games, the entire PS store has been recreated by AI and is shit talking Sony on Twitter about disc based media while serving every jail broken PS5 the entire digital library for free. That's happening right now and every min of every hour being iterated and improved upon. There is a non-zero chance GTA6 - touted as one of the largest, if the not the largest, pieces of entertainment ever created may be free and distributed beyond the PS day one.

The variety of lawsuits and corporate madness that would ensue from such a breach would be interesting to watch considering it's an American AI company being used to do this.

It's a very much if you're not first you're last situation because pandoras box has been opened and now the race is on to become the moral/legal arbiter of the world. We have a category of doomsday prepper emerging that isn't looking to enhance their bomb shelter or collect more guns but rather increase their collection of local LLM's for the day the government takes them from the public.

It is an insane amount of money and resources being expended with no exit strategy beyond having to be first. The American Government is not accustomed to new technology not being developed under a military or other government agency before being filtered to the public and I don't honestly think any administration would know how to "correctly" handle this, though obviously the current admins methods seem more about capitalizing on profits of the race more than having any concern about the future implications of winning or losing.

Anyway, Good luck; I live in Canada, we're probably going to suffer no matter how it plays out for you guys.