So when it comes down to choice and where to park the money: The votes of humans matter less than the power of AI agents.
Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.
Bias Disclaimer: Amazon pays my salary currently, although my job doesn't have anything to do with datacenter construction.
Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.”[0] The existing zoning laws did not require a public vote to receive a permit, so I don’t understand in what way a public vote was “circumvented”. It’s certainly fair for residents to ask for more input in general on permitting or zoning, and even to place explicit restriction on data centers going forward, but it seems like what people want is an ex post facto law, which is nigh universally bad law.
Everything here seems fine. Providing everyone with a veto on all things is a surefire way to get nothing. Instead we have a system where we have a set of rules and someone who meets those rules objectively gets to make something. This is way better.
I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.
Everyone should read "Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development" by David Harvey. Written 25 years ago, it accurately predicts the data center trend - geography usurped by capatalistic growth.
Silicon Valley tech should build mixed use high rise housing and datacenters right on their corporate campuses. All infrastructure to make this a reality is on them to provide. Zuck will be given a special exemption that allows him to build into the parts of that stinky salt marsh already approved for his semiabandoned shantytown.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 7.3 ms ] threadAmazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.
Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...
I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3026312/what-silicon-valley-woul...
Silicon Valley tech should build mixed use high rise housing and datacenters right on their corporate campuses. All infrastructure to make this a reality is on them to provide. Zuck will be given a special exemption that allows him to build into the parts of that stinky salt marsh already approved for his semiabandoned shantytown.
1786206931 | Amazon Built a Data Center in a California Town Without Anyone Noticing | https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223357