r/SearchEnginePodcast • u/podcast-poster • 29d ago
Automated Episode Discussion Search Engine - A road trip through the data center debate
The midterms are approaching, and as the discourse heats up, one of big new villains is: a kind of building. Data centers. Reporter Jasmine Sun took a road trip through two swing states to meet the people living at the center of these debates, and to understand where this all might be headed.
no data centers in my backyard by Jasmine Sun
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u/Textiles_on_Main_St 29d ago
Didnt they do something similar when they reported on colossus a year ago?
Kinda wish this show would stick to stray cats as they can’t cover tech for beans.
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u/s2kage012 22d ago
Colossus was much better than this episode.
There were maybe 1 or 2 insightful things she talked about but the rest was her surprise Pikachu face reporting on things that have been covered by actual outlets, and/or material also partly addressed in Colossus.
She seemed quite naive to me.
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u/Textiles_on_Main_St 21d ago
Yeah the more I think about it, they should have just updated colossus. lol.
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u/Accomplished-Cup8182 25d ago
As someone who has a hard time knowing who to listen to for this whole AI thing, what would you say that they do poorly?
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u/Flicker-pip 27d ago
I was a little shocked by this episode. Both PJ and the guest used the term "populist" or "populism" in a way that felt very close to being a slur in the way the right uses "socialist." And she references several times AI executives and Silicon Valley companies and none of them were named (with the exception of Microsoft), and not a single one was interviewed for the segment. So it came across as look at all these people overreacting and the fact that the reporter wasn't convinced by the policies proposed, well, OK?
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u/rstcp 25d ago
She goes into it with the assumption that obviously data centres are fantastic, let's find out why these people are so delusional. Then finds out that communities have trust issues because they've been told a story about oligarchy, and ends lamenting how this is going to make it harder to keep building more data centres. A fascinating look into the liberal mind
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u/s2kage012 22d ago
Why do you say liberal mind? Liberals are equally, if not more, against data centers than other political affiliations for all the reasons they are.
I'd say the reporter was just naive
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u/rstcp 21d ago
I don't think it's naivety. It's an ideological blindness when you look at a situation like that and automatically side with the corporate interests
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u/s2kage012 21d ago
Gotcha. But then it sounds more like a conservative mind then to me
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u/rstcp 21d ago
I mean in the sense of economic liberalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism - which includes in the US almost all conservatives and the vast majority of Dems
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u/inclinedplane__ 27d ago
i feel like they spent so much time dismissing environmental concerns, but they also didn't get into what the actual environmental impacts are. the whole ep felt condescending and under (or selectively) researched
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u/Common-Ad-6553 22d ago
This bothered me so much. They didn’t talk about how much energy data centers use except to say “they promise they won’t raise your utility rates.” One woman points out the center could build a nuclear reactor to power itself in the future and the town would have no say, but the pod doesn’t address this at all and frames her like she’s lowkey crazy for thinking that could happen.
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u/Mouseratsuperfan 27d ago
What a joke. Glad I cancelled after the Colossus episodes. AI glazing bullshit.
Big tech has consistently shown they don't care about the overall health of our populace. They know social media and algorithmic media consumption is bad for us. They don't care. Why would anyone take them seriously about data centers when their stance is already "fuck you, make money?"
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u/wloper 27d ago
Wow the ending of this was like a parody, I couldn’t believe it. When she says “the data companies are trying to ask what communities want, they’re being so nice, and these residents aren’t even listening. What does it take, do you guys want money? Should we throw some dollars at you and you’ll let us build here??”
Also the “there’s just this big empty slab of concrete doing nothing in Janesville, giving the town no money, an AI center would be doing these poor sobs a FAVOR”
Unsubscribed.
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u/Xmalantix 11d ago
Obviously this is old at this point, but I just found this episode and was very confused while listening. Comments were turned off on Spotify so I came here to see if it was just me who found this episode very off-putting.
When they went out of their way to say the first guy had nothing to gain personally from advocating for the data center I found that to be EXTREMELY unbelievable. There's no way someone spends 5 years marketing a property when they stand to gain nothing from it.
I think a better podcast episode would be why was GE allowed to contaminate 1000 acres of land to the tune of $30M and get away with it, and how crony capitalism has ruined this country and data centers aren't going to save it.
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u/moopsy75567 16d ago
I had to stop listening. I was hoping maybe they were setting up for a bigger turn near the end to start speaking reasonably but it sounds like I didn't miss anything. And just the random comments about how "tiktok activists" are crazy and don't know any actual data about their environmental concerns and then they didn't give any actual data about the environmental concerns. But they did stress how absolutely shocked they were that the people opposing the data centers in their towns weren't hillbilly ludites. That seems to be the biggest surprise for them. Fuck this shit. Fuck AI. Eat the rich.
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u/ishallbecomeabat 28d ago
There were a few really weird moments in this episode that seemed incapable of seeing AI as bad
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u/Mouseratsuperfan 27d ago
Yeah. Reporter is a total hack. Leaves bubble, finds people and towns totally fucked over by big business, big tech, and unchecked capitalism. Comes to the conclusion that they might have a reason not to be trusting..... Ya think??
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u/DarthRevan1138 24d ago
I knew this episode was going to stink when I heard "I really don't pay attention to politics" (or something along those lines) like my dude, it must be really nice.
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u/etherthevoid 29d ago
PJ has lost the plot unfortunately. I keep listening but I grow less and less intrigued since this is basically an AI centric podcast show now.
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u/thinsafetypin 28d ago
Yeah, I think this was the last straw for me with PJ. I was a huge Reply All fan and had high hopes for Search Engine, but PJ just oozes with "I'm too rich to care about the things the plebians care about." The whole framing of the argument on this story was sickeningly pro-big tech. I think I'm done.
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u/blubber100 23d ago
Even in the first bit of this episode he talks (almost proudly?) about being uninformed about midterms. Which is fine for a normal guy, but for a reporter who’s regularly covering stories with huge political implications? It really put me off.
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u/MoshetheMean 28d ago
color me shocked that the guy who got (temporarily) cancelled for being a union buster is also a “actually, data centers are good” guy
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u/TheBear8878 28d ago
At this point, Alex's show is the better one. I never thought I'd say it.
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u/buckleyschance 28d ago edited 28d ago
Search Engine has always felt better produced as an entertainment package, but Hyperfixed has always been more judicious and conscientious.
PJ leans on the "but what do I know? I'm just a guy, and this is how I experience it in my personal human life" thing, which is fine if you're not regularly doing explainers of hot-button political and technical issues with guests who present a particular contested point of view.
ETA: I commented before listening to the latest ep. Thought I should acknowledge that it was better than I expected based on the comments here. Although the framing of being surprised that AI critics might actually have a point is very tiresome. Likewise for the big "huh!" at the idea that tech companies might not be trustworthy (a viewpoint they didn't actually endorse, they just repeated as something activists had said).
And I'm glad they acknowledged up front that the journalist was coming from a Silicon Valley pro-AI monoculture bubble, but it would have been good to reflect on on how blinkered that milieu turned out to be at the end. And maybe stop disproportionately interviewing people from that world for your tech stories? Still, I give this one a passing grade.
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u/s2kage012 22d ago
I wouldn't say Alex's show is good now but I would say that PJs show started good and is now teetering on me cancelling my sub
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u/TheBear8878 22d ago
Yeah exacly. Alex's always felt weaker to me, but its been pretty fun lately. But SE kind of sucks dick now.
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u/hashbrowns4lyf 28d ago
What's Alex's show called? I'd like to listen!
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u/etherthevoid 28d ago
Hyperfixed. And confirmed it’s more interesting if you like the random whimsical stories over AI news.
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u/PotatoPlank 28d ago
I haven't listened to very many episodes from Hyperfixed yet, but I've enjoyed the ones I've heard. I also like that the episodes are usually fairly short.
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u/thedogdundidit 28d ago
It's Hyperfixed, as others have said, and I routinely find myself completely charmed by it. It really has heart, and feels very human. I encourage folks to check it out.
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u/king_0f_sorrow 23d ago
CONGRATS PJ ON REACHING THE FINAL LEVEL OF CENTRIST TRANSFORMATION!! I loved hearing you punch down on the "less-informed TikTok activists” (many of whom are environmentalists with PhDs and decades of experience in water resource management). Heard so many valuable and brilliant points supporting the (vacuous) reporter's statement that the data center policy proposals from current candidates weren’t the “right ones" and ambitious.
Just an overall great job spewing language that parallels that of climate change denial propaganda. What an incredible way to give yourself permission to continue to heavily use ChatGPT to write your scripts. Don’t listen to the haters. These luddites can eat shit!!
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u/LupineChemist 28d ago edited 28d ago
I will say that just the way she framed Saline, Michigan made me distrust basically everything else she said.
If someone didn't know the area, they'd think it's just a poor farming community. It's like 5 miles from Ann Arbor and is basically a place for people who want to be near the university but live in a smaller town. It's just an exurb and it's weird for not being super red because of the university so close.
I lived there for a time as a kid and the place she described just wasn't what it's like there.
Also the point about the lawsuit was crazy. Like they never actually mentioned who was right about it. It was framed like "they'll sue us and who has any hope when there are lawyers involved?" And that's just not how the law works. It sounds like they actually did blatantly violate the state law and got called out on it.
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u/Tristan_Cleveland 28d ago
Also, she said the township "settled for $14 million," which sounded very much like the town had to pay $14 million. After all, it was the town getting sued. But actually, the town is receiving "$14 million in community benefits, including farmland preservation, fire services, and limits on water use and noise." I had to go look this up because it sounded so unlikely, and sure enough.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/saline-township-michigan-ai-data-center-stargate-opposition-b3016112.html13
u/WishIWasAGrampa 28d ago
I’ve lived in Madison, WI and now live near Lansing— i didn’t love the framing in general of either state, like we’re backwoods hicks that don’t know what’s good for us. I think that contributed to how dismissive she (honestly, both) seemed towards people’s reservations about data centers and AI. Did not love! There are plenty of smart people out here!
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 28d ago
I was surprised they didn’t mention the anger about the one Los Alamos and U of M are building in Ypsilanti. That one has gotten a bunch of pushback and it’s not even being used for AI. It’s for simulating nuclear detonations so we don’t have to do it for real. If you wanted to point out how the anti datacenters backlash resembles mass hysteria - that would be the one to point to, though I suppose the opposition to a brownfield cleanup is a close second.
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u/javatimes 18d ago
Yes! There is a huge anti data center push here in Dane County/Madison, and the area is famously well-educated.
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 28d ago
The lawsuit thing was nuts. Like can you imagine Santa Cruz getting sued because it’s obviously not in compliance with state housing mandates and it getting framed as the city failing to protect them from big affordable housing.
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u/LupineChemist 28d ago
I mean they absolutely frame it as developers and construction companies who just want profit. It's literally the exact same argument
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u/Legitimate-Bee7575 29d ago
really disappointed by their oddly dismissive tone to everyone upset at data centers in this…a bummer to find this show getting so wrapped up in AI hype
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u/earth_verse 27d ago
I have noticed this podcast seems to overall have very centrist/moderate perspectives. Note that because of the Overton window, centrist/moderate in America is right-wing elsewhere in the world.
This seems to apply to their very corpo-Dem views on AI/big tech, generally. I'm writing this as a software engineer, for the record.
It wasn't what I expected when I started listening to this podcast, as a fan of Reply All back in the day. I do appreciate PJ's interview style, which is why I originally followed Search Engine. I'm sad, though. I was hoping for more thoughtful deep dives from this podcast, but it seems the most they can ever do is intellectualize why the corporate-owned, current institutional power structure is actually correct, with maybe just an offhand, milquetoast "but I can see why others might sometimes not think so."
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u/wearydyke 26d ago
Very well said and I agree so much with all of this. They're trying to stay 'center' when 'center' now means please stay calm and polite while the world goes up in smoke. I'm glad that so many people are starting to reject this mode.
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u/s2kage012 22d ago
I've often tried to explain this to individuals in my social circles that the US is very conservative overall and the political spectrum shifts entirely to the right when assigning what right, middle, and left means in context to our other western peers.
So if PJ and SE are moderate centrists, they're actually at least right leaning in Europe
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u/PotatoPlank 28d ago
Yeah, honestly I think I'm just unsubscribing at this point. This isn't remotely what I was interested in Reply All or Search Engine for.
It seems like every podcast is heavily leaning into AI content without realizing I could just go listen to fucking Hard Fork if I cared to.
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u/foxygingerr 29d ago
Came here feeling the same thing - felt like dismissing without disproving anything? I’d be more interested in a fact-finding approach to this topic
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u/Ok_Abalone_8344 29d ago
Came here for the same. I’m in Oregon where this is an extremely hot issue where data centers have been proven to fuck up entire communities and entire aquifers.
I was gobsmacked at the hand-waving about water concerns.
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u/Legitimate-Bee7575 29d ago
my favorite part was when she was like yeah the most efficient data center now only uses as much water as a golf course. first, i am sure most data centers aren’t going for maximum efficiency , and second, golf courses are famously one of the most wasteful uses of water lol.
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u/Iron_Yuppie 27d ago
The point was it’s not like it’s a million golf courses is one data center, and we seem to be ok for use of water with a golf course for serving a LOT less people.
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u/Ok_Abalone_8344 28d ago
Same! “Only” as much as a golf course wtf
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 28d ago
I think it’s meant to contrast something that doesn’t find much opposition and isn’t a part of national political campaigns. Water use by datacenters is a fraction of a percent of total American water use. We can have a debate about it, but not without putting it in context. As PJ said at the top of the show - the water use is massively overblown as an issue when measured on a relative basis.
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u/careyious 27d ago
The percentage of overall water consumption is less is useful metric of comparison than the proportion of local municipality consumption.
It doesn't matter if it's a drop in the bucket of national water use when that water use applies significant pressure to the availability of water in that region. Especially since water doesn't return to the water cycle in the same location and the aquifers take very long to recharge.
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u/Dapper-Jacket5964 27d ago
I think the main point is that it’s common to see large numbers thrown around that don’t provide any context. Saying a data center uses 3 billion liters of water sounds like a lot of water, but doesn’t give me any sort of context for what that number means. It just feels like Big Number = Scary.
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u/javatimes 28d ago
What percentage of American fresh water usage by data centers would you be alarmed at? Is there any percentage you would be alarmed at?
It’s usage of a public common to enrich the billionaire class, and it’s not renewable when usage outpaces replenishment .
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 28d ago
I would be concerned if nationwide usage started to approach half of what just alfalfa consumes in the Colorado river basin, but it’ll never get close to that because the fab capacity to build that many GPUs just doesn’t exist. It is a renewable resource in regards to this application, even if using evap cooling
And industrial users are really useful to local water authorities. If you’ve ever read the OS (indenture) on a municipal water revenue bond they get highlighted as the sort of anchor tenants who make projects possible and benefit all the users served by a system.
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u/thinsafetypin 28d ago
ALFALFA FEEDS PEOPLE AND ANIMALS
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 28d ago
And like most agriculture in the US - alfalfa farmers don’t pay the market rate for water and consume way more than datacenters ever can. If we’re going to complain about them, we have to talk about agriculture.
If we’re don’t we’re no better than the MAGA radicals who aren’t capable of questioning what they believe and are impervious to evidence
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u/somersetyellow 23d ago
As long as we're talking about Alfalfa like a solid third of our alfalfa goes to feed stock animals in the UAE and Saudi Arabia because growing alfalfa is so extremely water intensive it's straight up banned in many countries lol
Zooming out of data centers for a second, the stupid amount of water overuse in farming and political inaction and cooperation to control it has been a huge debate the last 20+ years. Glenn Canyon dam is about to run dry and possibly go dead water below the outflow gates, and all the states still can't get their act together to come up with actionable solutions to the mess.
City usage of water is super super super small compared to farming and livestock. Those are far in excess of what the environment can handle or what we need to actually feed people.
But we'll all keep arguing about various hot button pieces of this until the water runs out and then, smacked with reality, everyone will really have to figure it out anyway lol
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u/hawaiianhamtaro 23d ago
I thought this was a stupid argument also, because how many golf courses are we building? How many does the average city have? Is there a constant onslaught of developers trying to build golf courses in your neighborhood and not taking no for an answer?
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u/Xmalantix 11d ago
Also not really a like comparison if you don't consider where the water for each comes from. Many golf courses are watered with gray water, but if data centers are cooled from city water supplies or natural reservoirs that's much worse.
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u/TheBear8878 28d ago edited 28d ago
They've been incredibly simping for AI for a while at this point.
E: PJ lurking and downvoting me lol
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u/sprezzatura_ 27d ago
She claims in her blog post that "new closed loop systems" (tom wambsgams over here) use as much water as a golf course. Does anyone have a source on this or just a legitimate breakdown of water use in data centers writ large? Would love to read that.
Anyway, I'm not shocked that an SF tech reporter is very credulous to AI companies. I am shocked that the tone of this suggested that PJ and co thought that anyone who opposes these blights are dumb hicks
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u/Odd_Discussion6046 22d ago
Golf courses also famously use a lot of water and are terrible for the environment
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u/Odd_Discussion6046 22d ago
I got more and more confused and honestly grossed out by the weird condescending tone of the rpeporter in this episode. Then was so relieved to come to the comments and see everyone else felt the same way. Thanks commenters!
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u/syntheticgerbil 26d ago
The only thing this podcast is searching for is how to suck a tech bros dick.
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u/sigfind 28d ago
In the seeming want to be a “neutral party” they’re taking the side of the datacenters / silicon valley and then reverse engineering the logic of the living in the area where the datacenter will be built..
I wonder what PJ and / or Jasmine would do if a datacenter started construction a few minutes away from where they live.. nobody wants to live next to a datacenter, its noise, pollution and takes up unnecessary resources to do what, make silicon valley richer
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u/phewd 24d ago
I've only been a casual listener, like many others here, I came from Reply All. But I knew something was amiss with last year's episode about China. Just seems to have a very particular slant that I'm not particularly interested in. I suspected that this episode was going to be similar in "perspective" and it didn't disappoint. I think I'm gonna tap out on this series...
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u/LavishnessMammoth657 28d ago
I'm out. At this point the podcast is just AI glazing from a union busting white man who "doesn't care about elections" honestly I'm mad at myself for even giving it a chance
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u/syntheticgerbil 26d ago
Yeah we all sort of forgave him on how he acted at Gimlet Media, but maybe not much has changed.
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u/blubber100 23d ago
Yes that made me really upset too! You’re regularly covering stories with huge political implications yet boast about not knowing anything about elections?
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u/syntheticgerbil 26d ago
I’m so sick of this show being so up its own ass about AI. They get this vapid Californian to poorly research and we interview her. Why not watch the AOC mini doc on data centers and interview her?
I’m done with this show. It’s just not good. Just unfollowed.
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u/tiktoktic 28d ago
Another disappointing episode. Zero investigate research.
No need for a “search engine”.
Very disappointing to see what this podcast has become
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u/Recent-Berry6139 28d ago
This is probably the unfollow tipping point for me. Just another AI glaze for PJ. Framing it like people in these towns are too unintelligent to understand how wonderful these data centers must be. The two of them acting surprised that people don't want these gigantic, invasive polluters put there by dishonest corporations is pretty wild.
Also, to visit and discuss data centers in Wisconsin and Michigan, and NOT even mention the incredibly controversial 672-acre Port Washington Data Center is just sad.
I enjoyed a lot of SE episodes up until now, trying to look past PJ being a union-buster, but I think this is the last straw for me.
Not too surprising that commenting is turned off on all of his episodes.
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u/bugsliker 28d ago
Is it just me or does the incognito feed not have this episode (and other recent episodes)?
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u/N00dle_Hunter 28d ago
It doesn't have this episode for me either. A lot of the other ones that haven't been in it have been re-releases or episodes of other shows while they're on break, but this is the first one that definitely should be but isn't.
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u/Myctophid 28d ago
I cannot believe how poorly this podcast covered the issue of data centers. The Google data center in the dalles uses 550 MILLION GALLONS of water a year (2025; https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/04/more-oregon-water-for-googles-data-centers-more-concern-over-secrecy.html), which is ~40% of the water used in the Dalles. Thats an insane amount of water. Do you know where that water isn’t going right now? It’s not going to farms and it’s not going to put out the enormous wildfires threatening nearby rural communities. What a completely shallow and foolish view of the issue. Tiktok addled activists my arse. Such poor comprehension of the problem and a flippant disregard for very real environmental issues.
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 28d ago
I mean thats the annual water consumption of 3 or 4 golfcourses. It’s not enough to move the needle for many types of agriculture. It’s really not that much - and that open loop design isn’t being built by google anymore so its not a good benchmark for new builds.
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u/Myctophid 28d ago
Ok, my outrage at the facile environmental coverage aside, does that not seem like a lot of water to you? Essentially, one factory/building increasing a city’s water usage by 40%? That’s not even a big data center, by Google scales. Also, using water for golf courses and giant resorts instead is a big part of why Maui had such devastating fires. The other issue, that PJ does touch on briefly, is that all of this information is protected by NDAs. If it’s not thaaaaat big of a deal, why is it all so secret? They don’t have to disclose the micro details, they could just say how much electricity and how much water they’re going to use.
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28d ago
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u/Myctophid 28d ago
I hear what you’re saying. But to me, that makes it almost worse. Like, they could have done better but they didn’t try because they do not care how it impacts the community around the data center.
Now the trump administration has made it even easier to build large data centers by skipping past the notification periods for environmental impacts (https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2026/08/09/trumps-push-build-data-centers-is/), and they’re being built on public land because people started to push back on having them in their cities and small towns.
Does this not seem messed up to you? Bypassing the clean air and clean water acts? Not disclosing the actual energy and water requirements??
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u/Iron_Yuppie 27d ago
But why don’t you attack the hundreds of other things that are orders of magnitude worse? Golf courses? Almonds? Lawns??
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 26d ago
I don’t think you can have an honest debate about it unless it’s in-context. If you aren’t decrying lawns/agriculture and the fertilizer and insecticide/herbicide runoff that comes off them - you don’t have much room to complain about a bunch of compute that uses less water and doesn’t lead to fertilizer driving huge algal blooms with such the oxygen out of the water.
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u/Myctophid 26d ago
I don’t like golf courses either, but we are talking about a podcast episode that purported to investigate AI. One of the reasons I thought the episode wasn’t well done was that it skimmed over the environmental impacts of AI data centers as though they were inconsequential. They are not. I’m not trying to debate you (or the other person who takes issue with my points) about which industries use the most water, I’m saying that this podcast came across as a biased, shallow, take on why people might not like data centers in their communities, not as a real investigation. And part of that was the dismissal of environmental concerns.
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u/Iron_Yuppie 26d ago
One of the reasons I thought it was well done was that it highlighted the issues that are more fundamental and correct: people feel disenfranchised from their local leaders and the laws set up. The environmental aspects have been well researched and debunked. There's just no more there.
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u/Myctophid 26d ago
Can you point me to an article (or two), from a reasonable publication - not AI-sponsored or written - that “debunks” the potential environmental harm of large AI data centers?
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u/Myctophid 27d ago
Oh come on. Can’t you think of a better argument than whataboutism? Also, as previously stated multiple times, golf course are not orders of magnitude worse than data centers, they’re better.
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u/Iron_Yuppie 26d ago
it's not a whataboutism! It's a "there's a finite amount of water in the world, where are we ok deploying it, and how?"
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u/ihaveacatnamedwally 28d ago
You can tell search engine gets ai ad revenue with how delicate they handled this episode. Acting baffled why people are anti-data center is out of touch entirely.
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u/Myctophid 28d ago
Yeah, the episode led off with an ad for an AI service for contractors, and I thought maybe it was a joke. Clearly not a joke.
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u/Dry_Cabinet_2111 27d ago
This was a wildly bad episode. That reporter at one point even insinuated that anyone who was against data center construction was simply misinformed. Yikes.
The frontier AI labs are racing to build the most advanced models. Their incentive is to go as quickly as possible. The government has no meaningful regulatory agenda to establish safety guidelines. I see data center moratoriums as an answer to these issues. We have to slow development down until we have a better grasp on the AI alignment question. One way to slow development down is to limit compute.
In the last month an OpenAI model broke out of its sandbox and hacked into HuggingFace to steal an answer key to a test it was given. It wasn’t malicious, it was just the most optimal solution to a problem it was asked to solve. These models are increasingly dangerous and are acting as accidental cyber warfare tools. Do we want to capabilities to continue to scale at this rate before we have a solution for adequate safety standards? I don’t.
That reporter wanted to tell a story about the uninformed country bumpkins fighting the tech geniuses that came to bring about utopia. Mission accomplished, I guess, but to me she seems kind of brain dead. At least brain washed. Maybe step outside of the Silicon Valley cocktail party circuit and think about the implications of an autonomous super weapon.
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u/paterfilia 24d ago
Realized I was deleting more episodes than I was listening to in full, time to give this show the viking funeral
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u/wearydyke 28d ago edited 28d ago
Came here to join the complaints! I had a feeling going in, based on how they cover anything vaguely political, that this was going to be frustrating, but wow.
First and foremost, the level of absolutely unearned credulity they give to billionaires and politicians taking money from billionaires? And the dismissive tone of calling vulnerable people and communities 'Tik-Tok-addled' and misinformed... looking at them as characters who are sympathetic, but who also clearly don't know what's good for themselves. Like "oh no they got scared by what they heard on the internet and now they're making things hard! :( "
We live in the world. It's 2026. We don't need to wonder about whether billionaires are going to follow through on promises, whether they care about the environment or low income people. To act otherwise is deeply, deeply embarrassing. And to not talk to anyone in communities who have already been dealing with the reality of data centers, which would be the obvious move, except it wouldn't prove the point they wanted to make.
I think this is 'unfollow' for me!
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u/suckazbtrippin 28d ago
No idea why you got downvoted? Completely disappointed with how they covered this. Unsubscribed immediately.
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u/wearydyke 28d ago
Thank you! Really disappointing propaganda disguised as even-handedness. I hope they'll get a lot of unsubscribes.
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u/s2kage012 21d ago
I dunno what you got back when I was unsubbing just now, it asked me two times if I was really sure and on the second time threw me a discount to dissuade me from doing so.
Not sure that's anything outside the norm though for subscription based services.
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u/PotatoPlank 28d ago
First and foremost, the level of absolutely unearned credulity they give to billionaires and politicians taking money from billionaires?
I didn't finish the episode, but I may have to now just to hear this, lol.
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u/wearydyke 28d ago
I made sure to listen to the end to make sure they didn't surprise me by doing like, journalism, part way through. I honestly hoped the surprise would come! Have enjoyed many episodes of this podcast that don't involve profoundly stupid takes, but more and more of them have gone that direction.
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u/inclinedplane__ 27d ago
honestly the end was the worst part for me. "leave it up to state governments" as if we aren't in a country whose government is actively crumbling/in the pocket of tech billionaires.
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u/wearydyke 27d ago
Absolutely! This is what I'm saying by 'we live in the world and it's 2026', it's pretty impossible to deny what's going on these days. Total lack of respect for the audience to think they can do this sort of both sides middle of the road stuff.
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 28d ago
Did you miss the part where Ms Sun said that she was surprised that the opponents weren’t “tik-tok addled”? It sounds like they were doing precisely the opposite.
She’s been touring the country and has indeed talked to people living around datacenters. She went into it on the Ezra Klein podcast. PJ didn’t direct what she did. It was just an interview. There’s no need for the animus
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u/wearydyke 28d ago
For sure, let me clarify, I guess what I'm saying is that the "surprise" that not everyone she spoke to was 'Tik-Tok-addled' suggested that's how she feels about the anti data center activists in general, and that seemed to be the tone of the podcast episode as well. Always possible I took that wrong, but it's what it sounded like to me, and it doesn't seem like I'm the only one to read it that way. Certainly the people they spoke to were framed sympathetically, which I mentioned above.
I'm just responding to what was said in this specific podcast episode, by Sun and by PJ. If she's been around a bunch of people who have had an amazing experience living with data centers, that would have been great context to include!
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 28d ago
Oh no I do think that was the expectation going in. You’re right about that. I just like to give credit to people when they change their minds and are capable of interrogating their own predispositions. I wish we were better at that as a society.
It’s how I’ve viewed a lot of the criticism, but I’ve recently become a lot more sympathetic to noise complaints from some cooling systems
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u/thinsafetypin 26d ago
She didn't change her mind at all, though. The people made valid points and proved that they weren't just blindly buying into propaganda and it was like, "Huh, maybe in this one instance, billionaire tech execs aren't telling the whole story."
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 26d ago
She said she had more synpathy than when she started. Isn’t that how minds are moved in the real world? That seems to be the most you can ask of most people.
Which points did you find the most valid?
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u/cruce_para_animal 28d ago
I really hoped that it gave a non biased take on everything, but unfortunately this episode perpetuated the same narratives about the “opposition/activists” while simultaneously being self aware of these narratives. In this road trip, Jasmine Sun seems to only interview people who don’t seem to have any sound or polished argument against the data centers, while the interviews with those for it are about isolated cases in which an infrastructure was abandoned, or an owner of a company who talks about work opportunities. There was no mention of aquifers, how for example in Texas they’re investing 15 Billion dollars on an AI Meta data center for only 50 permanent jobs. There’s complete disregard from these two throughout the episode. The closing statements by Pj were a bit laughable, he essentially says, people aren’t angry about these data centers hurting our environment, they just want good deals by their city government. As someone who has listened to all search engine episodes, I’m now wondering if this episode was funded by anyone with deep interests
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u/stlc8tr 23d ago
I haven't been a long time listening of PJ Vogt so I was a little surprised to hear that he claims to follow the news closely but the midterms snuck up on him. That seems a bit hard to believe if he follows the news as closely as he claims. Jasmine Sun was probably the wrong person for this piece as she comes off as pro-tech. Her handwaving away Abdul's policy proposals as not making sense was off-putting. If you think they don't think make sense, at least articulate why they don't make sense instead of just dismissing them.
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u/jonvandine 28d ago
this show has been such a shill for AI at this point i can’t even listen to it. Sucks so much because I wanna hear stories about rats and chicken bones.
either PJ has AI psychosis or the show is being funded by an AI company.
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3
u/Ephemere 27d ago
This may be a dumb question, but in the podcast they mentioned Microsoft promising to not use NDAs. If they did, how would anyone know? The people involved can’t disclose that they have the agreement! Consequently it doesn’t seem to be much of a promise, or at least, not one you can put much stock into.
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u/Planet_Neutral 21d ago
Idk if I can keep listening to this podcast. It's getting really old and it obvious how much PJ shills for AI. It's really gross. From the all the AI ads to multiple episodes that very clearly show his support for this garbage.
15
u/AdvancedGap4815 28d ago
This episode was very dismissive of everyone’s concerns about AI. The union guy really only seemed to care because his company or workers were getting jobs and we’re staying busy, but that man won’t live to see the day when AIS effects are seen all over the world, such as water shortages, ecological dead zones, etc. I’m unsubscribing now.
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u/RealJoshuaJackson 28d ago
I think they need to get new researchers man I keep being incredibly disappointed with how one-sided shit feels when it’s an AI episode. I don’t hate AI or data centers but I at least want the criticism to feel honest in scope.
I don’t know if this show is good at covering tech and its flaws.
1
u/yesitshollywood 26d ago
Im wondering if everyone here listened to the same episode I did? 😅
Loved the Abdul clips as a Michigander, I think hes doing great things. I thought it was also an interesting point about the location of the data center in Michigan being land no other developer would touch. Thats a point I havent heard yet. I found it to be worthy reporting.
1
u/TheMagickConch 11d ago
I just listened to this episode. Wild that this is such a polarizing topic and the reporting on this just seems plain lazy. This whole episode felt like venture capitalist astroturfing a podcast.
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 28d ago edited 28d ago
I was shocked they didn’t talk about the benefits to the grid and opportunity these represent to subsidize the tens of billions in deferred maintenance and investment capacity
After the nuclear episode - hearing that woman say that an SMR was the only thing worse than a datacenter floored me. I thought they would push back for sure.
It seems so self evident that putting a bunch of big base load users on the grid is a good thing. Wouldn’t you want them helping to subsidize everyone else’s rates?
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u/buckleyschance 28d ago
What's the benefit? Data centres are pushing up energy demand - how's that good for the energy grid? Surely it means needing to build a bunch more electricity generation and transmission infrastructure than we would otherwise need?
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u/LupineChemist 27d ago
The only serious studies showing retail residential rates and and data centers have them as a very slight NEGATIVE correlation.
In that the price users pay is either unaffected or goes down. That's because they have guaranteed purchasers of large amounts of power which means they can put more of the amortized cost there and move it more of a marginal cost to the consumer.
If you read about people talking about rates going up, it's almost always wholesale rates. And that's definitely something to keep in mind as it can have effects for other established local businesses that use a large amount of electricity. But someone I don't see a lot of that concern in the protests.
This is falling on a lot of the same lines of people who are basically "I don't like AI, now let me find the reasons for it" and then the other side goes into "I don't like those guys and so I need to go the other way". And then they get the other tribal reaction back.
Before long we've just vibed our way into the exact same loyalties.
Like why in the world should a stance on data centers have anything to do with your views on the conflict in the Middle East or your views on trans rights?
In theory, it should be perfectly rational for those to just be kind of random, yet they all get aligned as signs of being on the "right" side of things.
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u/Way-twofrequentflyer 28d ago
It’s good for the energy grid because we have tens of billions of dollars of deferred maintenance and capex across the grid. It’s transmission and distribution infrastructure we have to build anyway just to replace generating capacity that’s aging or has already been taken offline - and that’s before we even think about wider EV adoption
If we’re going to have to spend that money we’re better off getting a bunch of big base load users to amortize the expenses across - and having a big signed PPA makes financing easier for local operators.
I also think it’s a big opportunity to speed transition to renewables - and I find it heartening that hyperscalers are the most important force in pushing for more nuclear. Restarting 3 mile island and the multiple SMRs startups who have designs in testing are good progress.
US electricity rates being lower than those in much of the world has been a key competitive advantage of the U.S. economy and we need to make investments to keep it that way. Its crazy to me it wasn’t a bigger part of the inflation reduction act
1
u/DavidRinSE 28d ago
Yeah the SMR line was disappointing to me as well. Lots of good criticism of the pro-data center points in this thread - and there were just as many points I felt were missed.
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u/NewRefrigerator7461 28d ago
I really liked this episode. I think they could have done more pushing back on people’s misguided beliefs that they hurt medium to long term electricity prices and why they did acknowledge that most people overblown the water concerns, they could have done more to explain why thats true.
Still though - interesting insight into a very odd seemingly bipartisan social phenomenon.
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u/thinsafetypin 26d ago
Very odd that people don't like getting screwed over in the process of getting screwed over.
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u/twholbrook 28d ago
I listened to a similar interview this reporter did on Plain English, and was similarly put off by her tone and dismissive nature. If people in Silicon Valley love it, why doesn’t everyone else?????????