I only have one question is this legally binding in US in any way if not what's the point virtue signalling? Can openai make it's books public to ensure that it has the money to fulfill it's extra commitments.
This is a collection of "OpenAI will boldly act in the abstract to provide air coverage for Texas leadership." With data centers under construction one would think they would have examples of successes or projects in progress available for reference. They'd claim credit if they had it so the silence is telling.
Big tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI to demonstrate that any of these claims aren't fluff with the projects that are already greenlit. When OpenAI presents plans to the communities prior to/alongside city counsels and drops the NDAs then there will be merit to this but our expectations should be somewhere between "super deep kola borehole" and "upper mantle".
How much does OpenAI actually control the way the data centers are built and deployed?
I don’t know much about the impact of their data centers compared to others, but there weren’t many (if any) concrete commitments in this letter. The promises all seem like areas that even an evil corporation could pay lip service to.
If Virginia or Louisiana should profit by this then so be it. Californian land-use laws will have a net effect of -8 house seats against Texas. That is good. It should happen. If Texans will be poorer so Virginians will be richer, that is also good. May the American federal system reign forever. Allowing for states as experiments and letting them suffer their consequences is good. It is a machine for us to iterate on our present and future prosperity.
Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.
It's more time consuming, expensive, politically fraught, logistically difficult, and hard to acquire land + permits for, than new gas generators and maintaining coal plants. Renewables are a worse idea in the short term, and all they want is short term solutions. They're on a half-trillion-dollar clock.
pittsburgh has many old power plants that are perfect for data center converts
when i go home and hear about this i'm conflicted. it brings short term economic prosperity. what's the cost if there's no commitment to clean energy in reality
the developers on these projects will do whatever it takes to simply get the project done
This reminds of the times when companies made large public statements on clean energy and going carbon free during the Obama (and partially Biden) eras. The only difference here is now is a letter to a governor, which is signaling 1) companies believe the way to solve data centers is on a state basis and 2) if they don't do it, they can perhaps blame a lack of "guidance from local officials" versus any part on their own, they have done their due dilligence. I am curious to more see what states don't get any personal mailings, I think that's a better indication than anything actually written.
https://texas-connects.com/ is also running lots of commercials locally. But both this open letter _and_ the commercials intentionally skate around the resource needs.
> OpenAI will pay our own way and protect residential and small-business customers [...] OpenAI will work to support new power generation in Texas
Notice how this very intentionally doesn't say they will work to support generating as much or more power than they will use? Because if they could do that, they would just generate their own power. It doesn't matter if they "pay their own way", they are now competing with households.
Same with water, all of these projects want to leech on existing systems because they don't even want to entertain developing their own systems.
However, having worked inside Texas DCs for a long time now, I think it's just the burst that's the issue, not the concepts. Sadly they'll share our resources, but I think they should pay a premium on their energy compared to residential (but it's hard to reconcile this with other commercial ventures that do not).
The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and power needs. I believe them, they probably will do that, thats not even too expensive. They need to however recoup this investment somehow, which is the fundamental problem with a technology like AI.
The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.
Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.
But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.
Every single investment aimed at deploying labor-saving innovation has the impact of reducing the number of workers you need per unit of output.
That does not mean fewer jobs, it means that jobs graduate to higher order ones that produce more, and it means more goods/services chasing the fixed supply of workers, translating to deflation (higher real wages / more purchasing power).
It is amazing seeing how openly corrupt red states are in recent years. At least blue states still attempt to maintain a fig leaf. Has it always been this way with the red states or have things legitimately gotten worse?
The main issue with wanting to block data centers in any specific location, is the hyperscalers will just move to building them wherever politics are most favorable. If protesters in your blue state block construction, they'll just build more in red states, giving the red states more leverage in how AI progress continues. If they are blocked across the board in the US, more will be build abroad, in countries that would never give credence to anti-datacenter movements that would stall economic growth.
The best option is to get everyone on the same page about AI benefits and hazards, and not be unrealistic about the way AI could shape up as a transformative element of human society.
I'm guessing the people who successfully block construction will be happy the data centers are built elsewhere. I doubt they care that much about AI progress, given the goals of those building the data centers.
Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys?
I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is benefiting from xAI's Memphis data center that is violating (previous, not anymore!) EPA standards, causing disproportionate impacts to nearby African-American communities. All the while, Ants appear to be floating on some higher effective altruist / B-corp plane. The little people and their petty concerns are just bumps on the road to RSI and ASI after all.
Commit to 117% of your datacenter power demand to be supplied by nuclear, wind, and solar, so it arrives the same day (or sooner) than your demand starts.
I wonder if AI will be the thing that gets Texas to finally connect to the rest of the country’s regional power grids rather than being isolated to one state.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 51.1 ms ] threadBig tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI to demonstrate that any of these claims aren't fluff with the projects that are already greenlit. When OpenAI presents plans to the communities prior to/alongside city counsels and drops the NDAs then there will be merit to this but our expectations should be somewhere between "super deep kola borehole" and "upper mantle".
I don’t know much about the impact of their data centers compared to others, but there weren’t many (if any) concrete commitments in this letter. The promises all seem like areas that even an evil corporation could pay lip service to.
when i go home and hear about this i'm conflicted. it brings short term economic prosperity. what's the cost if there's no commitment to clean energy in reality
the developers on these projects will do whatever it takes to simply get the project done
> OpenAI will pay our own way and protect residential and small-business customers [...] OpenAI will work to support new power generation in Texas
Notice how this very intentionally doesn't say they will work to support generating as much or more power than they will use? Because if they could do that, they would just generate their own power. It doesn't matter if they "pay their own way", they are now competing with households.
Same with water, all of these projects want to leech on existing systems because they don't even want to entertain developing their own systems.
However, having worked inside Texas DCs for a long time now, I think it's just the burst that's the issue, not the concepts. Sadly they'll share our resources, but I think they should pay a premium on their energy compared to residential (but it's hard to reconcile this with other commercial ventures that do not).
Just like it supported 'Open AI'?
The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.
Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.
But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.
That does not mean fewer jobs, it means that jobs graduate to higher order ones that produce more, and it means more goods/services chasing the fixed supply of workers, translating to deflation (higher real wages / more purchasing power).
The best option is to get everyone on the same page about AI benefits and hazards, and not be unrealistic about the way AI could shape up as a transformative element of human society.
It's a letter to texas... Know your audience and all that...
I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is benefiting from xAI's Memphis data center that is violating (previous, not anymore!) EPA standards, causing disproportionate impacts to nearby African-American communities. All the while, Ants appear to be floating on some higher effective altruist / B-corp plane. The little people and their petty concerns are just bumps on the road to RSI and ASI after all.
Commit to 117% of your datacenter power demand to be supplied by nuclear, wind, and solar, so it arrives the same day (or sooner) than your demand starts.
This isn't that hard.