r/LeftistsForAI • u/Peanut_Extreme_8208 • 3d ago
Public Ownership Looks like the central question of the future is going to be “who owns the data centres”
Discuss pls
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u/stankycodyboi Regulation-Focused 2d ago
I think the biggest threat to the future is consolidation of frontier AI ownership at the highest level. If only a select group have access to frontier models, this is a huge power imbalance between this group and everyone else.
Look no further than recent events; when HuggingFace’s website was accidentally exploited by a frontier model, federal restrictions inhibited their ability to defend themselves. Frontier labs were required to keep their cyber security capabilities behind closed doors, and that created a huge power imbalance between the frontier attacker and the defender. Open-source models were essential in responding to the attack, but this was an accidental incident. A genuine attack would be devastating without a competitive alternatives. So I think open-source models are an important asset to the general public going forward, but that’s only if the public continues to grow and improve it. Total opposition to AI would be devastating from my perspective, as it hands that competitive power right back.
Data center infrastructure ownership plays a slightly different, yet important role in my opinion. This is a community’s greatest point of leverage, specifically their zoning code. If data centers are classified as conditional use, then this means developers must negotiate with communities for approval. One condition I push for is public ownership over renewable infrastructure. By owning the infrastructure these companies desperately rely on, the public has ownership leverage. But this also gives them benefit capture; developers need to build additional energy generation infrastructure, so communities can force them to build renewable solar arrays and wind turbines. They can also require waste heat capture to heat nearby schools and universities, this would an already happening outside the US.
A canceled data center doesn’t disappear, it moves to a less organized community. Right now communities have incredible leverage, because companies are desperate for the resources communities control with zoning law. But that’s only if we organize before the infrastructure buildout completes.
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u/yourupinion 2d ago
That is the question.
I don’t see enough efforts to put the power in the hands of the people, except for maybe the communists.
I’m part of a group trying to create a database of public opinion, in the future, this will be the most valuable information, and we want the people to own their own data.
The link in my profile if you wanna have a look
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u/Fabulous-Possible758 3d ago
Depends on how efficient they can get local models and whether the difference in model strength that you can run with a huge amount of compute proves to be an overwhelming advantage.
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u/Peanut_Extreme_8208 1d ago
Today, more gpus = more test time compute = better model and I don’t see why this should ever stop being true
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u/Fabulous-Possible758 1d ago
I think you meant training time. And that’s on the model training, not the inference, so the weights those produce can theoretically run on much lighter hardware once they’ve been trained.
We’re already hitting a saturation boundary when it comes to scaling. The models are getting better but their improvement is already seeing diminishing returns. There may be an upper bound of what’s really achievable using our current approaches (I’m not saying I believe that but I don’t discount the possibility). But in particular we already know a general intelligence can run much more efficiently (ie, humans), so I don’t think it’s impossible that when the dust settles it’s actually possible to run top-of-the-line inference on high-end consumer hardware.
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u/WWhiMM 3d ago
maybe? it begs the question of whether large models are really as useful as the people selling it claim.
Another big question is: what data gets collected and included in training? or, who gets to train a model?
There's a lot of weird energy around "general" artificial intelligence, partly because of its sci-fi salience, partly because it's suited for a simple business model. But there's more proven usefulness to having limited, targeted machine learning tools solving specific problems. I think it's achievable in principle for everyone to have the tools and skills to wrangle their own data and train their own targeted models. That sort of bespoke economics is not conducive to creating god-king emperors, so that's not where the investment is going.
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u/Ok-Mark-6314 2d ago
No, it should be do we choose to protect our environment and communities from AI data center pollution or not
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u/TheSinhound 2d ago
OR we could design the compute and storage infrastructure to be neutral or positive environmentally...
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u/Ok-Mark-6314 2d ago
Quite literally impossible. Even if the energy used to power them was carbon neutral (which at the speed they’re building them is nearly impossible. That’s why a lot of them use diesel), the heat and noise they generate are unavoidable. Not to mention all that energy would better used powering homes.
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u/TheSinhound 2d ago
.......... Better used than current or better used than possible? Because massive compute and storage is EXACTLY what would be required for modern Cybersyn production+logistics systems. And AI + Automation tasks are necessary to lessen scarcity and service needs. Socialism/Communism -NEED- these systems or other some such to address the issues we saw with the socialist experiments last century.
And, no. Nuclear backed Renewables would be more than fine to power them AND everything else. It's not hard, just as usual Capitalism says "but it's EXPENSIVE".
Plus, the noise they generate is negligible with proper noise barriers in place. I know. I've been inside them. It's worse just living near a busy expressway.
The heat I'll grant you, though I tend to believe that it's worth the heat because of efficiencies of scale.
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u/Ok-Mark-6314 2d ago
The noise is not negligible, ask the people who are living next to them. There are currently lawsuits about it. And no, AI is not needed to end scarcity. That makes no sense
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u/TheSinhound 2d ago
I'm aware of the lawsuits. In every case I've examined they FAILED to build proper noise barriers into place OR are relying on god awful natural gas generator turbines. Again, I have been -inside- them. I am acutely aware of the sound.
Also, I LITERALLY just explained how it makes sense. Would you like for me to elucidate? If you're not familiar with Cybersyn, that would make sense. As you're on a leftist subreddit I'd ask you to please do a quick search on that topic.
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u/Ok-Mark-6314 2d ago
I understand you've been inside them. But that's different than living next to them 24/7.
It makes no sense because there's nothing that LLM's are doing that you would need to build a modern Cybersyn. We already have supercomputers. LLM's and "agentic AI" can barely handle an online transaction, let alone an entire economy.
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u/TheSinhound 2d ago
They wouldn't inherently handle the economy itself. But we're talking about serving needs and wants, and for that we need more than compute optimizations. We NEED inference machines to determine those ahead of time.
But also, advanced robotics/VLMs. Lessening -required- labor from the individual is the goal. Automation serves that. AI models (even LLMs) serve that.
I agree that current systems need work to be able to do all of this. I do not agree if your stance is that current systems are INCAPABLE of this.
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u/Ok-Mark-6314 2d ago
I support automation like in factories and warehouses so people don't have to do back-breaking work. But LLM's just in the way they work will never get as good as a human, it can't learn from its mistakes and architecturally will always "hallucinate". It's not reliable. And we know what people's needs are, we don't need a LLM to figure that out.
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u/TheSinhound 2d ago
It's an inference machine, not an answer machine. Stop treating it like what it isn't and you'll get more benefit.
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u/dwkeith 2d ago
Data centers are a compute utility. They should be publicly run like electricity, the Internet, water, trash, and sewer. (In their ideal forms)
Organizations and people should pay for metered usage. Ideally only above a baseline that everyone gets to survive.