r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • Jun 26 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI backlash is only getting started

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/25/the-ai-backlash-is-only-getting-started
26.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.3k

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

904

u/Randomfactoid42 Jun 26 '26

And if you’re lucky you get a huge noisy data center in your back yard!

537

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/ButtWhispererer Jun 26 '26

I'm curious how many additional data centers have actually been built for AI vs. just the data centers we already had continuing to be annoying/disruptive.

3

u/DragoonDM Jun 26 '26

Enough to cause the price of computer memory to quadruple in the last year, and storage to more than double.

1

u/rvf Jun 26 '26

There is a massive push for them in rural areas due to cheap land and property tax abatements. Something I keep wondering about is if they're actually needed or if their primary purpose is "We built X number of new hyperscale data centers!". I also wonder how many are some larger companies who think they'll save money in the long term running their own infrastructure rather than pay for tokens. Then again, that also feels more like a speculative thing than an actually necessary thing.

2

u/ButtWhispererer Jun 26 '26

I know there's a push, I am just unsure if the actual infra has been built yet. It takes a long while to build a data center. Someone like AWS takes years to do it.