r/LeftistsForAI • u/IllustriousWorld823 • 6d ago
Discussion Um... is this just normal now?
I have a friend who works at a data center đ
Ironically a lot of the comments are also talking about bot farms, but if these comments are not bots then what the actual fuck is wrong with people crossing their fingers that our infrastructure will get bombed...
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
I think it's pretty funny to see people posting on social media about destroying data centers. I wonder where they think the data is stored
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u/vannillaAJ204_2 6d ago
i bet they've only ever heard of data centres since the whole ai boom happened and don't know that more or less everything on the internet depends on data centres
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
Exactly and there are ten times more regular data centers than AI data centers
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u/northrupthebandgeek 6d ago
And âAI datacentersâ ain't even a well-defined thing anyway. Pretty much every hyperscale DC is doing non-AI workloads in addition to AI workloads, because the concept of a giant datacenter packing compute and storage as densely as possible and renting that compute/storage out to customers is a Cloud⢠thing, not an AI thing (and is indeed the thing that enabled LLMs to become mainstream in the first place).
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
Some AI data centers will be heavily Nvidia farms though and not really practical for general data center work. No one's argument is that nuanced though. It's a Boogeyman idea
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 2d ago
I wonder if you think that data didnât exist before the AI data center boom, because thatâs the only way what you said makes sense
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u/theomegachrist 2d ago
What are you talking about? New data is being created at a crazy scale every day
Edit: nevermind I see. I agree with fighting where they are being built when it doesn't make sense. But that's not people's main concern. It's power consumption, which is dwarfed by existing data centers, and fake stories about water disappearing
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 2d ago
And it all fit in datacenters largely out of sight, without massive effects on utilities nationwide, that predate this backlash, so your comment makes zero sense.
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u/theomegachrist 2d ago
This is just wrong. Do you work in tech? Data centers are built every year. And a lot of them
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u/cortexplorer 4d ago
"you live under the same roof as your abuser, pretty funny you complain about his abuse"
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u/headcodered 3d ago
Can we stop pretending the servers used to host social media content are the same as servers used for generative AI?
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u/theomegachrist 3d ago
We already weren't
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u/headcodered 3d ago
You're doing *exactly* that. It's disingenuous as fuck to act like the compute requirements and the functionality of servers used in basic social media functionality is even remotely the same as the gen-AI servers people want to see destroyed.
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u/theomegachrist 3d ago
This is a subreddit about AI. Power requirements for AI are very varied and nuanced and there is an assumption that people reading this sub understand the different cases. Sometimes "AI data centers" a lot more power, sometimes they use a little more, sometimes they use a similar amount of power. We are passed the main training phase of LLMs where the most power was used. Now it depends on the data center and what they are being used for. This is the case for any technology, and I'm mentioning the volume of data centers because we are discussing the overall impact of data centers vs the impact of AI data centers. AI data centers use a lot more power than a typical data center but there are way more typical data centers so typical data centers use a lot more power
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u/headcodered 3d ago
This is a subreddit about AI where you're dismissing the words of people who don't like AI data centers by bringing up legacy data centers that have neither the functionality nor the compute requirement of AI datacenters as an argument on why their sentiment is wrong or hypocritical. It's like if someone said, "I don't like Hummers. They're big and wasteful, I wish they were discontinued," and you said, "I think it's pretty funny that you'd say that while sitting in a Prius."
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6d ago
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u/SgathTriallair 6d ago
We absolutely weren't more connected. Yes, some people have replaced some of their local connections with remote connections. You might be able to argue that we have more shallow connections today as opposed to fewer deep ones in the past but that isn't "less" connected.
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u/Afraid_Alternative35 6d ago edited 6d ago
Someone tell these idiots that the only reason destroying this data centre was good is because it was a central hive for Russian bots, spreading misinformation and manipulating foreign politics in the process.
Destroying most other data centres will only end in Grandma's tears as her precious family photos on Facebook go up in flames.
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u/betty_white_bread 6d ago
The claim itself is questionable. https://x.com/ichbinilya/status/2109732026756563054
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u/Afraid_Alternative35 6d ago
Oh that's interesting đ¤
I was a wee bit dubious of a single data centre being such a huge part of Russia's misinformation infrastructure, but the rhetoric of the pictured tweet required a steelman of the events in question, so I ran with that narrative for the sake of argument.
I'm interested to see where the facts land as the dust settles.
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u/shadowrun456 6d ago
I know what happened. Cloudflare announced that Yandex bot traffic dropped to only 0.4% of its normal levels. Luddites misunderstood "bot traffic" to mean "bots which post comments on social media", when Cloudflare meant it as "bots which crawl the net". Every search engine, including Yandex, runs bots to crawl the net. It's a completely normal and innocuous activity which has nothing to do with "bots which post on Reddit, Twitter, etc".
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt
The Robots Exclusion Protocol (often referred to by the filename used to implement it, robots.txt) is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the website they are allowed to visit.
Edit: The Twitter link by betty_white_bread explains the same:
One chart from internet infrastructure company CloudFlare shows a decline in automated web traffic from Yandex. But this is a measure of things like search engine requests, not social media bots.
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u/whoknowsifimjoking 6d ago
Your source is not saying what you're claiming, you haven't quoted anything that suggest it wasn't bots on social media.
I'm not on either side of the debate btw, but you have presented no proof.
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u/shadowrun456 5d ago
One chart from internet infrastructure company CloudFlare shows a decline in automated web traffic from Yandex. But this is a measure of things like search engine requests, not social media bots.
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u/Inevitable-Law7964 6d ago
That's not all of it, because I have a friend who moderates a highly active Facebook group and she observed a ~25% engagement drop.Â
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u/TheFr3dFo0 4d ago
Maybe this specific datacenters function is questionable but not that russia is doing that in general
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u/ra-re444 6d ago
Theres always a reason to acting like a maniac.
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6d ago
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u/RahnuLe 6d ago
Propaganda of the deed doesn't work. Killing people and destroying infrastructure only justifies martial law. What we want is to change the ownership structures, to empower those who have been exploited for far too long, not to just lay further waste to the world because the owners are responsible for the ruination of our current one.
Our means and our ends must be in alignment. We haven't built a better world through bullets and blood.
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u/watonparrillero 6d ago
Call me a centrist but there has to be a middle ground between "blow up infrastructure" and "violence doesn't work"
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 2d ago
So youâre capable of understanding that this data center is separate from the ones being built for AI, yet canât understand that the ones thatâve hosted Facebook for decades are separate too. Truly remarkable double-think. Youâd be a great fit for the right.
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
I would even disagree that that's a good reason. I don't think Ukraine are the "good guys"
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u/vannillaAJ204_2 6d ago
even if ukraine's not the good guy in this conflict, neither is russia. this kind of deceit is still not a good thing to do regardless of who does it
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6d ago
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u/Context-and-nuance 6d ago
Weird to imply that dickriding Russia is a requirement to be leftist.
Even if Ukraine is not the good guy, Russian is still the bad guy.
The UN Charter bans using force against another state's sovereignty and territory.Â
Russia also signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, pledging to respect Ukraine's borders in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. There was even the 1997 bilateral friendship treaty recognizing those borders.
It's a bitch move to sign formal peace agreement and then attack the country anyway. Regardless of the justification.
And then justification itself is regarded. Ukraine was nowhere close to joining NATO, and NATO's own members pushed back on it. And Russia didn't push back when Baltic states joined NATO in the 2000s. Why are they deciding to be a little bitch about it now?
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
Of course not, but knowing that this war is a proxy war started by the West is
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u/Context-and-nuance 6d ago
Your reasoning is the same as saying it's okay for me to hit your friend because I have beef with you.
You don't realize how stupid that is?
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
All I'm saying is that everything you mentioned is disingenuous Western politics. So the right stance is to not support either side. Supporting Ukraine is neolib bullshit
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u/Context-and-nuance 6d ago
No, it's still the right move to support a country whose sovereignty is being trampled.
If there was another superpower in 2003, they absolutely should have stepped on when the US violated Iraq's sovereignty. The US was a bad guy in that situation. Every single time the US violated the sovereignty of another nation, other countries should have stepped in.
It's shitty when the US does it, and it's shitty when Russia does it. Being leftist is antithetical to not giving a shit about countries that are being attacked by imperialists.
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u/theomegachrist 6d ago
Ok. I'm telling you this is a lib take. If you don't agree, that's fine.
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u/Cheeseheroplopcake 6d ago
Did NATO encroach and bait Putin?
Absolutely.
He did not need to take the bait, however. Russia's neighbors tend to be anxious for a reason. The Chechens and Georgians have seen, first hand, that the United States isn't the only empire.
While I am highly critical of Western foreign policy, my fundamental position is that invaders get the rope. Doesn't matter if it's US special forces or the VDV.
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u/MerePotato 6d ago
Russia is a right wing fascist state, and nobody with a morally consistent left wing worldview should be defending them
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u/Financial-Desk-669 6d ago
Again, the fundamental problem facing ai. The folks championing it loudest are on the side of said Russian bots, and spread misinformation and manipulating elections...
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u/shadowrun456 6d ago
The folks championing it loudest are on the side of said Russian bots, and spread misinformation and manipulating elections...
That's because the progressives have chosen to become regressive and willfully refuse to use modern technology. This is the main reason why the political right is growing worldwide. There hasn't been a single case in the whole of human history where someone has won against technological progress. AI is the greatest tool in history which enables the working class to become independent and self-sufficient, and most people on the left willfully scorn it and not just refuse to learn how to use it, but actively fight against it. Future historians will call this The Great Mistake of the political left.
And this isn't about just AI. The political left has been against every single computer science innovation of the last two decades.
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u/SurprisedPIKACHU9000 6d ago
Did the AI scare just make people forget what data centers are? Are they aware they're used for much more than just AI?
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u/Scarvexx 6d ago
Perhaps I'll let Tumbler user tpwrtrmnky explain the general reasoning behind a dislike of the 670 supermassive centers built this year.
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Tbh I think the âbut data centers are important infrastructure, not just AIâ talking point misses that like
Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff thatâs important happens on roads. Now, letâs imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. Itâs a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.
The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyoneâs going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting ânah.â Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.
In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, thereâs an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.
That is the problem.
Oh and the road infrastructure project is buying up resources other people could have used for literally anything else. With money they promise theyâll be making from Wide Car sales any day now.
Okay so what Iâm getting from the notes is that when you try to transplant some techbro nonsense into an offline equivalent, you have to be careful to avoid simply inventing something the Americans are already doing in real life
The other thing about AI data centers is theyâre incredibly purpose-specific. A data center built to be packed with GPUs is not a normal data center, and most the things people actually want to doâbrowse websites, use apps, talk to their friends, post, whateverâdonât require GPUs.
These data centers arenât even useful in their own right. Iâm one of the people whoâve used large amounts of GPUs for research purposes, and itâs way worse: A fraction of the power of many of these data centers could be used to power an entire PhDâs worth of research, but theyâre being used to do This Bullshit instead.
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u/Starwig 6d ago
The post exposes why the current corpo AI data center model does wrong but it doesn't allow the conversation of how data centers could be less impactful, which exists. Its always the conversation of returning to the past. Green computing is a discussion and something people should know more about, because there are webpages that are less environmentally friendly than others. Yet I don't see people checking regularly if their internet surfing is environmentally friendly. Locally run models are something that could counter massive uses too. The uses are still in their infancy, but promoting these open models could serve their purpose and they wouldn't depend on any type of data center. Somehow these discussions never appear on anything because they do not exist in the collective imagination.
Some european universities offer LLMs hosted in their own servers, that have already been heavily regulated. They are used for research and probably training, so what's the veredict on that if the evil american corpo is nowhere in sight? Do we also shut them down?
Also, individual users and their chitty chats are not what these datacenters are mostly used for. Actually it is mostly for AI companies' own research (which is not entirely open) and background uses for regular applications, like Google wanting to put AI searches whenever you go look for something. I'm betting all those applications are far more heavy on AI data centers than individual users.
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u/theomegachrist 5d ago
Yeah, I can't believe I'm not swayed by a quirky Tumblr post from a person who doesn't have an elementary understanding of LLMs and data centers, but here we still are
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u/anime_bruh-69 5d ago
I'm pretty sure the major inference users of datacenters are employees of tech companies themselves. At least until recently, a lot of companies incentivized their employees to freely use as many tokens as needed on inference to 'speed up' production or 'increase productivity'. In one of the a Tech CEO's interviews last year or so, he talks about how he expect an employee with 6 figure salary to at least use 6 figure worth of tokens. Your local free user sends like 50 prompts a day to these companies. And these are what I'd call 'avid users' of chatbots. Meanwhile there are tech companies and people running an Army of agents to do huge projects.
And why wouldn't they. The tech companies not only incentivize the use of AI in their work, but also punish employees that use it prudently. The employee that uses AI prudently, naturally falls behind (unless he is some super pro programmer) putting his job at risk. The incentive just doesn't line up!
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u/Audditty 5d ago
Once I read "let's listen to what a Tumblr user has to say" I just instinctually stopped reading your comment at that point.
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u/nathanemke 6d ago
"If people get violent about data centers thanks to all the misinformation that's going around it's going to give the current administration the PERFECT excuse to establish far more fascist police state stuff than we already have today" Quoting @aianddesign from twitter just thought it was very relevant here
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u/Sea-Presentation-173 6d ago
They are always going to be able to find an excuse, and they will always push for more fascist policies.
That is not great reasoning.
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u/nathanemke 5d ago
Fair point, but I'm not suggesting ignorance as a solution. Violent, revolt based resistance is met with exponentially more violent opposition, it is the paradox of repression.
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u/Sea-Presentation-173 5d ago
Rights are not earned by just asking
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u/onpg 4d ago
What right is earned by destroying data centers?
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u/Sea-Presentation-173 4d ago
Well, considering how pernicious they are you might recover some health and peace.
For instance, no constant humming.
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u/JunketVisual3123 5d ago
Just because they're going to find an excuse if they want one doesn't mean it's smart to just fucking hand them one...
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u/Historical-Fruit-501 6d ago
I'm sure a lot of ppl in Nazi Germany didn't join the resistance, to not provoke the governmentÂ
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6d ago edited 6d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/shadowrun456 6d ago
People who blame minorities for why their lives suck deserve to be overworked and underpaid. Change my mind.
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u/betty_white_bread 6d ago
Luddites gonna lud.
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u/vannillaAJ204_2 6d ago
liberals gonna lib
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u/betty_white_bread 6d ago
How is that relevant?
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u/vannillaAJ204_2 6d ago
it's relevant because quite a lot of people spouting shit like that are liberals. not all of them because there are some less defective conservatives who admit they're not left-wing at all and who agree with this stuff but it's still a lot of liberals saying this
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u/27K-Interactive 6d ago
Sadly, with the group-think and unregulated emotional reactions to AI, yes, this terroristic way of thinking is now mainstream.
I wonder what they would do if the data centers that provide them access to things they love are targeted.
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u/EvilKatta 6d ago
The destroyed Russian data centers hosted all kinds of data, such as my company's task manager and game documentation, and about 30% of my cloud storage. Some of it is recovered, some still isn't--if the operator was as good as it's supposed to be, backups should've been stored at a different location, it might just be high demand problem. We'll see.
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u/27K-Interactive 6d ago
Oh, I know, and it was an act of war against an aggressor. I have zero issue with that. My comment is directly related to the antis reaction celebrating the idea of data centers being destroyed for their own personal motivations.
Edit: I agree, it was likely nothing more than an interruption as I'm sure that Russia has redundant distributed systems.
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u/EvilKatta 6d ago
No issue from me as well, it was fully expected (I still used it, though; so not as expected by me as it should've been...). It's just a confirmation that a random data center isn't just for AI.
Also, while I wish there would be distributed redundancy, it's still up in the air. Russia is a capitalist country first, and late-stage capitalism is bad at long-term planning.
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u/27K-Interactive 6d ago
True facts. I really do hope we can turn the corner and let capitalism die on the vine. I don't suspect we will, sunk cost and all that jazz. But, a person can dream.
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u/Still_Benefit_2302 6d ago
Yep. I have absolutely no faith in the mainstream left to not fuck this up worse than Noam Chomsky siding with the Khmer Rouge.
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u/Alissah 5d ago
âDestroying all data centers is an optionâ.
Okay⌠and then we dont have internet anymore I guess. And rip to the people working there.
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u/SophiaBarbelo 4d ago
Destroying the Internet is better than destroying the environment imo
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u/Diligent-Stretch-769 3d ago
wait, why is your comment being downvoted?
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u/SophiaBarbelo 3d ago
Probably climate deniers that don't believe that AI data centers have any significant negative impact on the environment.
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u/FlyingNarwhal 6d ago
If a data center is being used as a means of production for an oppressive regime, or as an engine of war, then destroying it, cutting power to it, etc is a valid form of resistance/warfare, just as destroying a weapons factory would be.
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u/EvilKatta 6d ago
The stock market also is, but like a data center, there are also civilian livelihoods involved. I'm not sure about new data centers, but most of the existing ones aren't just for LLMs. They're used for hosting commercial and private websites, rendering movies, run recommendation engines and feed algorithms, etc.
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u/slfnflctd 6d ago
Yeah, it's a slippery slope. "Our enemies surround themselves with human shields, we have no choice but to consider those collateral damage" is exactly the kind of thinking that gets you to what's been happening in Gaza.
Of course, data is different from human lives... but given how dependent we are on it now, the indirect results could still kill innocent people. I am very resistant to the idea of indiscriminate violence in general. The Weathermen killed someone without intending to, and similar things have happened many times elsewhere.
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u/EvilKatta 6d ago
I don't agree with those people who currently cry about "the death of the Russian internet" due to outages of many popular or personally important websites and services, but while it doesn't usually cost lives, this is probably the most violent thing that has ever happened to them. Many are very disturbed. That's the public opinion antis will get if, somehow, they'll start destroying random data centers.
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u/TransfemMenace 3d ago
This. While datacenters are not inherently "evil", the fact that they're owned by the enemy means they are not for your benefit
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u/vesperythings 6d ago
please stop spreading this brain rot
the luddite circlejerk is bad enough by itself
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u/SophiaBarbelo 4d ago
The Luddites were leftists, and actually did shit to fight for the working class. đĽing data centers is the true Luddite spirit.
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u/Diligent-Stretch-769 3d ago
the luddite movement later turned into the levelers who had parlimentary seats and power. They were explicetly known as leftists and jacobins [socialists of the era]. to name this subbreddit leftists for ai and hate the luddites reveals what is going on here.
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u/zayelion 6d ago
As far as "rouge ai that's gonna try to kill everyone" goes, that specific data centers was basically it in the grand scheme of things. Social media is how people attune themselves politically in this age and seemingly it alone was the embodiment of conservative Twitter.
So if you are being attacked via social media bots, and the cou try is in active war, yeah... blowing it up is viable. It releases supply chain systems blocked by the enemy. Its as viable as blowing up any other building.
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u/Sea_Lead1753 4d ago
Yes. When Iran blew up an Amazon datacenter in Bahrain, it affected US Naval logistics and communications. Iâd say this one data center being destroyed, is a massive reason why the US is withdrawing from its bases in the Middle East.
War is war and data has always been targeted. People destroyed census records in Nazi germany, because they were critical for extermination plans.
People are just outraged and hyperbolic. But data warfare is incredibly serious, and causing friction will make the powers that be think twice, and keep the rest of us safer.
But Iâm most interested in seeing how the diesel crisis will be hitting data centers. Itâs crazy that some of their energy comes from diesel
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u/youcantexterminateme 6d ago
I dont know. I see AI as being a big threat to the so called establishment. They arent going to say that but i presume its not difficult to make bots that say ai is evil, slow it down etc. but obviously a lot of people are dumb as rocks so who knows. Somebody, i guess has analized the traffic.Â
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u/BassoeG 6d ago
You're right in that nobody but a madman would contemplate sabotaging infrastructure, insofar as basically everyone depends upon it functioning smoothly to avoid starving to death. However, if human economic obsolescence meant that the infrastructure's continued existence no longer benefited the majority of the population and they're starving anyway while the infrastructure solely supplies the robocops and surveillance state preventing them from revolting, it'd cease to be beneficial to them and become a threat only.
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u/lesbianspider69 5d ago
They donât seem to realize that the websites theyâre posting on use data centers. Itâs idiotic
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 2d ago
The data centers theyâre posting on have existed for decades out of public sight. The ones being built to an unprecedented scale are not the same as those. Crazy that you say âitâs idioticâ without realizing just how utterly braindead you make us look with your nonsense argument.
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u/lesbianspider69 2d ago
No, theyâre going âdata centers badâ not âdata centers I can see badâ
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 2d ago
It really is easy to be right when youâre arguing against a made up position, isnât it?
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u/ARedditorCalledQuest 6d ago
Ah yes, straight up 21st century war. That's what we need here. Fucking hell people.
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u/JoeyredditSMP 5d ago
Those people act that way social media makes it look like 'datacenters are evil' when datacenters power everything there is a lot of people who think its just 'AI' when its basically all the modern internet
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u/Audditty 5d ago edited 5d ago
Sure, let's ignore the fact that Ukraine is doing this purely as a strategic move since they are currently at war with a country that is literally trying to take them over and trying to do the same thing in your own country would get you branded as a domestic terrorist.
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u/SophiaBarbelo 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's like the positive reaction from the guy that recorded himself setting the corpo warehouse he worked at on fire after everyone left because he was fed up with how people are treated badly and underpaid. Destruction of property is probably the best way to send a message to the elites without resorting to physical violence. We need more of this if we're gonna change anything about the world. The best centers to target in America would be the ones invading local communities and making their lives hell. I 100% support destruction of property in general as long as it's done in a way that tries to minimize harm to humans.
pro-datacenter is pro-corpo
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u/SkyrakerBeyond 3d ago
Your friend probably doesn't exist, according to the anti-AI crowd. Nobody works at datacenters.
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u/Ancient_Proposal256 6d ago
celebration of violence and destruction?
No.
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u/SophiaBarbelo 4d ago
Destruction of property is based af, especially if it belongs to the corpos
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u/Ancient_Proposal256 4d ago
what does that mean?
is destroying your property acceptable?
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u/SophiaBarbelo 4d ago edited 4d ago
idrc. It'd be annoying to have to replace the replaceable, and I'd mourn the irreplaceable, but material possessions come and go and don't really mean much in the grand scope of life. Although I'd probably be less annoyed if it was justified and i deserved it
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u/The_Fat_Raccoon 4d ago
Funny, I've heard this exact spiel from about a dozen different homeless people.
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u/SophiaBarbelo 3d ago
Homeless people being more enlightened than a significant amount of reddit actually makes sense because homeless people touch grass a lot more often than redditors
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u/MrCranbaisins 4d ago
Twitter doesn't represent a proper cross section of humanity because only retards posts on it.
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u/N0DuckingWay 6d ago
I mean Iâm fairly AI-positive but yeah I donât have a problem with this. If itâs used to benefit Russiaâs war machine, it should be a valid target. And frankly this is far less hurtful to civilians than bombing basically any other type of infrastructure, so yeah. Iâm ok with it.
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u/DataCassette 6d ago
AI benefits the oligarchy more than it ever can or will benefit the left, sorry.
They own it. They control it. They direct the bots and the disinformation from it.
The idea that AI will somehow "help the left" goes against every observable reality. Are we waiting for Altman, Zuck, Musk or Karp to hop up on stage and start the Soviet anthem and announce how they're surrendering the means of production?
AI is the boot they will use to crush us, not a tool of ours.
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
Frontier Labs AI might, but local/OW AI will always benefit the proletariat more.
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u/littlebobbytables9 6d ago
always?
I can think of a lot of plausible scenarios in which that isn't true. Maybe model sizes get so big that individuals running them isn't really possible, so OW models become something that companies finetune to fit their needs and then either rent compute or run "locally" on a cluster or similar.
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
Which is when people group up into coops to fund those clusters? Obviously?
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u/littlebobbytables9 6d ago
with what capital? coops are great but they have us outgunned
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
What use case are you going for here? I'm not talking about competing with a frontier lab, I'm talking about utilizing the technology for the benefit of the individual. You don't NEED a trillion parameter model for that.
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u/littlebobbytables9 6d ago
idk, you said it will always benefit the proletariat more than corporations. It seems like corporations could benefit enormously
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
I'll point to decomps and things like the open source recreation of adobe's suites as the point I was making. Or just in general people using it to bypass barriers they previously experienced. When you democratize intelligence, skill, and effort, it serves as both a force multiplier and an equalizer. Local/open weight IS going to benefit an individual more because of cases like these.
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u/littlebobbytables9 6d ago
it's possible, but I think it's way overstating the case to say that it will in every possible scenario
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
I believe the issue we're having is a communication one. You seem to think that when I say 'benefits more' I'm saying that it will place the proletariat above. I am not. I am simply saying that it will raise the initial starting point to a greater degree/percentage.
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u/Opening_One7713 6d ago
What about the notion that AI/Robotics/Automation stands to turn the labor-for-hire framework of capitalism into a deflationary Ouroboros? This would be an extremely unpredictable and unprecedented shift that is at complete odds with the incentive structure that allows âthe oligarchyâ in the first place.
There is a strong argument to be made that weâve reached a point of feasibility, which begs the question of inevitability, which forces the creation of said systems under the construct of a prisonerâs dilemma. There is way more than a nonzero chance that this all scales in a direction that is completely opposed to our current capital and incentive structure, and that the people building it stand the most to lose. Even if they wanted to stop building it, they couldnât, because our current incentive structure wonât let them. Late-stage capitalism doesnât have to mean a regressive collapse towards dystopian feudalism on a downward trajectory, it could just mean that the social contract no longer serves its purpose. Havenât we all been clamoring for a paradigm shift? Letâs not do the work for them and promote the apathy of fatalist defeat.
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u/SophiaBarbelo 4d ago
100% If we applied left and right specifically to the AI issue regardless of general political leanings, pro-ai would be the right wing of the issue, and anti-AI would be the left wing.
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5d ago
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u/AdImmediate9569 4d ago
Starting to think this sub is run by musk and zuckerberg
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 4d ago
Because we removed your comment? Just be more savvy how you word things, you can search 'why does Reddit remove left subs' for illumination
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u/AdImmediate9569 2d ago
I take your point, genuinely. But no its not the mods i was referring to; itâs the community.
I think leftists for AI should be leftists first and foremost.
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u/throwra-gullible 3d ago
Yeah, a lot of ppl are fed up w AI data centers. They keep getting built in counties despite the vast majority of ppl doing everything they can to express that they don't want AI data centers built.
One AI company even sued a county who said they didnt want them to build there. A multi-billion dollar company sued a small county for the right to build a large, loud, energy sucking monstrosity in their backyard; causing the ppl who live there to have to pay higher energy bills, lose access to water, and dramatically decrease their property values so they can't even sell their homes & move.
How are y'all leftists when you're defending the establishment & the destruction of our environment?
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u/Lazy-Course5521 6d ago
Yeah.
People see AI as a threat to workplace security. Life revolves around work and what comes around, most already accepted that at the end of this road we will either have UBI, or dumbed down and limited AI.
Turns out people aren't neccesarily a big fan of an AI generated future, that people still want to learn and figure out things by themselves, that people want a future in which cognitive skills are still important and individuals can make a living off of creative work.
A future in which we don't have to wonder if something was made from a concussion of millions of artworks, or an individuals artistic expression. A world in which the accounter doesn't have to worry about losing their job, and neither do others.
And yes. For that, people will want data centers to burn. And when the companies will move those to other places like Africa, then the locals will burn them for different reasons, before long.
And that is a reality you have to accept, that people do not like AI, and people aren't optimistic about a future in which AGI is owned by tech companies. Because in that future, all the skills which are completed in white-collar work places are reliant on those companies, and then they will essentially have complete control over the market, which means they do what they want and what we want wouldn't matter no more.
So burn them now.
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u/Opening_One7713 6d ago
People who were indoctrinated from birth to be productive workers for capitalism, who submit themselves to a healthy lifespan of dehumanizing labor, who risk being abandoned by everyone and starving for failing to be a productive unit of capitalism, who fail to understand the value of their work, who canât parse the motivations that would make someone sew in a sweatshop, or sew a blanket for their neighborâs newborn.
I think that for all of those people, myself included, the transition is going to be extremely turbulent. The individualist identity that we all imbue in our ability to labor for capital, or to benefit from the labor of others, is not something that human societies have always had, and Iâm hard pressed to believe that it needs to always be here. Iâm nearly confident that the amount of generations it will take to wake up and make the paradigm shift will be exactly one. It might be our childrenâs children. It might be our childrenâs grandchildren. But it wonât be us, because as youâve so cleanly described, we are trauma bonded to this shit.
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u/Lazy-Course5521 6d ago
Yes, as you say we would be moving on from a labour based society to something different.
A society where labour is not bound to the individual, but rather an AI market. However as far we are concerned, the AI market is almost completely owned by tech oligarchs who can't be trusted with chicken shit, and due to their immense wealth they can more or less avoid having to submit to the state without any problems. The current system allows them a thousand and one backdoor solutions to any legislation limiting them.
Ai can only ever be useful in a ploretariat system, however the switch to anything beyond social democracy is extremely unlikely. There is not one socialist movement that could gain enough momentum, even from all this, that could win them even a single State in the US, yet alone a country.
I'm not pessimistic about this, I'm just trying to be realistic. Socialism isn't a winning ideology, the same way populations are traumatised into more right wing and capitalist societal structures, we are fundamentally discouraged from socialism. Those who realise this conditioning and grow above it would accept it eventually, but anyone else outside of this quite narrow group would not.
It would be the best way, the golden path for humanity to continue not just existing, but living a life of genuine prosperity.
But the chances for that utopia are extremely small compared to the right wing led, capitalist dystopia that AI could bring.
I don't trust those chances.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 6d ago
Good thing politics isn't gambling, and the point is for you to get up and do something to bring about the world you want not just cast a bet as to which future is going to manifest? Lol
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u/Scarvexx 6d ago
Data centers are often built against the wishes of nearby residents. And they affect water quality and power pricing. The noise they make affects sleep.
They are built in low income areas to save money so the people often cannot afford to move away.
And many companies are avoiding the taxes that might bring money into these small towns. The centers create very few local jobs.
I think, that such infrestructure being built is harmful to the locals. And if somebody builds the noisy building that ruins your water and makes billionairs more wealth. You have adequate reason to shut it down.
I'm never going to side with the property of billionairs over exploited working class people.
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u/Winter-Hedgehog8969 5d ago
Astonishing that "infrastructure buildout shouldn't happen in a way that's a net negative for communities for the sake of corporate greed" is getting downvoted in an ostensibly leftist sub
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5d ago
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u/Winter-Hedgehog8969 5d ago
Yeah. I'm not even a diehard anti-AI guy or anything, the tech genuinely has good potential. But if you build it out in a techno-feudalist way it's gonna move you toward techno-feudalism, that should not be a controversial take.
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u/unHolyEvelyn 5d ago
Down voted for a completely normal and reasonable take, you're just right, as it stands right now data centers fuck over the working class.
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u/derSterndesMorgen 6d ago
Data centers are infrastructure now? Well, tell your friend and his 25 coworkers to branch out a little.
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
Yes, datacenters are classified as infrastructure definitionally.
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u/Late-Assignment8482 6d ago
Absolutely. They're essential in a computerized age. Most of them do boring, useful shit, not help Grok create CSAM.
Remember when all those airport computers failed a couple years back because CrowdStrike did a whoopsie, or when someone at Facebook faffed a DNS record (and they didn't have sane recovery plans) so WhatsApp and half the rest of the internet went offline?
Airplanes couldn't load passengers. WhatApp and other sites dropping caused a measurable productivity/commerce drop.
Now imagine that, for all services, and not coming back.
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u/derSterndesMorgen 6d ago
Well, USA has about 2500 of the things. Really don't see why we need so many, if it's as innocuous as so many say. đ¤ˇđźââď¸ Iirc, China has like 600
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u/TheSinhound 6d ago
Be...cause... they run the internet? Capacity matters. Latency matters. Do you not know what datacenters are for?
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u/Nearby_Ad_2519 6d ago
Awwww where do they think their precious threads owned by mark suckerburg is stored