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.
Well yeah nobody wants their local water supply to be either disintegrated into subatomic particles or polluted with every harmful substance known to man (whichever one they're supposed to do changes from day to day).
It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities.
"Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply evaporate.
> When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.
Are you arguing that the leaders of a state, who were elected by the constituents, should not experiment and try make things better? By definition, some experiments will fail.
Virginia has more power infrastructure in place but said infrastructure is already seeing significant DC build out; I know little about power distribution in Louisiana but would be surprised if there was extensive spare capacity in the transmission lines and generation facilities. I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake since they had all that manufacturing capacity but the backing power generation/distribution may have atrophied in the intervening years.
> I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake
Oracle's doing something just outside the Milwaukee metro. I'd imagine there are others. Datacenter buildout is wildly unpopular around the Great Lakes, and that's not new. For Wisconsinites specifically, the whole thing has a whiff of Foxconn about it.
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.
With the amount of cash OpenAI is splashing around they could easily write it into the contracts, but the current incentive structure prioritizes time between ground breaking and powered GPUs in racks. OpenAI has shown complete disinterest in the impact of AI writ large and will only reduce their community/infra impact to optimize that time to racked GPU along the Pareto frontier.
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.
Not legally binding, no. This is more of a lobbying attempt, Abbott just paused all new data center development in Texas until the state can audit them, they have an interconnection queue of about 474GW, ERCOT can't handle it that's more than 5x Texas's peak electricity demand.
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.
People will run to point to the spate of new nuclear plans, but the point be made here is that nuclear regulation is so suffocating and costs so extreme that it's "effectively illegal" to build reactors.
You don't seem to realize Texas has huge number clean energy build outs and has been for quite a few years. They lead in wind generation and commercial solar generation.
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.
Polling shows a fairly bipartisan opposition to data centers, so it could encourage more states to join in with pauses of their own.
Tracking at:
https://aidatacentermap.org/
https://www.datacenterwatch.org/
https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/
Well yeah nobody wants their local water supply to be either disintegrated into subatomic particles or polluted with every harmful substance known to man (whichever one they're supposed to do changes from day to day).
It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities.
"Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply evaporate.
When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.
> When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.
Are you arguing that the leaders of a state, who were elected by the constituents, should not experiment and try make things better? By definition, some experiments will fail.
The constituents elect the experimenters, and generally become the experimenters thereby.
Maybe they should consider voting.
Nevertheless, experiments are necessary. Political entrepreneurialism is necessary if you want anything to improve.
You can experiment on everyone, or you can experiment at the local level. One is obviously preferable over the other.
Nobody has all the answers.
Virginia has more power infrastructure in place but said infrastructure is already seeing significant DC build out; I know little about power distribution in Louisiana but would be surprised if there was extensive spare capacity in the transmission lines and generation facilities. I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake since they had all that manufacturing capacity but the backing power generation/distribution may have atrophied in the intervening years.
> I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake
Oracle's doing something just outside the Milwaukee metro. I'd imagine there are others. Datacenter buildout is wildly unpopular around the Great Lakes, and that's not new. For Wisconsinites specifically, the whole thing has a whiff of Foxconn about it.
For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconn_Valley_Science_and_Tec...
> It is a machine for us to iterate on our present and future prosperity.
The former middle class has entered the chat.
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".
Yeah if they were so committed to doing good, you'd think the billions of dollars they have spent would bear some evidence of that by now.
They’d do better with a bribe, Texas runs on corruption. I’m sure the campaign contribution checks are already written though
That's probably already happened. This is smoke and mirrors. Monorail...MoNoRail...MONORAIL!!!!!
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.
OpenAI et al can establish a Data Center PAC or contribute to one then lobby our political leaders like citizens (see Citzens United)
> How much does OpenAI actually control the way the data centers are built and deployed?
Assuming OAI is the sole tenant in these facilities, I'd say we are approaching 100% control.
With the amount of cash OpenAI is splashing around they could easily write it into the contracts, but the current incentive structure prioritizes time between ground breaking and powered GPUs in racks. OpenAI has shown complete disinterest in the impact of AI writ large and will only reduce their community/infra impact to optimize that time to racked GPU along the Pareto frontier.
Yes, the cheque's in the post.
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.
Not legally binding, no. This is more of a lobbying attempt, Abbott just paused all new data center development in Texas until the state can audit them, they have an interconnection queue of about 474GW, ERCOT can't handle it that's more than 5x Texas's peak electricity demand.
That would be more half the entire grid load of the USA
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.
Oil companies squash all kinds of clean energy regulation.
Because the federal government made it effectively illegal to build nuclear reactors, and there are no more rivers to be dammed.
People will run to point to the spate of new nuclear plans, but the point be made here is that nuclear regulation is so suffocating and costs so extreme that it's "effectively illegal" to build reactors.
To answer your question: Texas. Running on a platform of clean energy is political suicide in half of America, particularly in the south.
Texas leads the nation in raw renewable energy production. Solar, wind, and nuclear are hardly maligned there.
You don't seem to realize Texas has huge number clean energy build outs and has been for quite a few years. They lead in wind generation and commercial solar generation.
Clean energy development was doing well, was powering more than half our needs, and was creating more jobs than oil. Guess that wasn’t good enough.
Oh and it reduced our green house gas emissions. That was the catch.
(I got coal rolled just yesterday, in Tahoe. Who knew that was still a thing…)
Counterpoint: you're wrong
https://texas2036.org/news-analysis/gale-force-growth-texas-...