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"Fnord666" writes:

AI companies want to capture the value created by entire industries. That concentration of wealth and power is society's greatest risk:

Opposition to AI datacenters has emerged as a primary theme in US politics, one that – surprisingly – doesn't fall along party lines. We applaud people coming together for constructive debate on any issue, and agree that communities need to evaluate whether any economic benefits these datacenters bring is worth their costs. Still, we worry that a focus on datacenters obscures the larger impacts of AI on people's lives: the concentration of power of AI companies, and their widespread political and financial influence.

Local datacenter opposition is grounded in legitimate concerns about misallocation of land resources when housing is at a premium, pressures on already higher energy prices, and localized environmental impact. Unlike other resource-consuming and polluting industrial facilities, datacenters produce very few jobs . The fact that US opposition to datacenters seems to be most fierce among lower-income communities reflects righteous indignation with an inequitable bargain, where tech companies and developers profit from exploiting local resources but offer little in return. On a global scale, their carbon footprint could grow unsustainably if usage accelerates. And all this is in aid of a technology that many fear will propagate misinformation, take their jobs, or even cause existential risks for humanity.

For some, datacenter opposition may feel like the only tangible mechanism for registering their concern, disapproval, or even anger about AI. The problem is that this may be exactly what the AI companies are banking on. They can overcome the protest when it matters to them, and live with a significant fraction of proposals being defeated. More importantly, focusing political opponents on the datacenter issue obscures the bigger prize they're after.

While there is a staggering three-quarters of $1tn being spent on datacenter infrastructure by US companies this year alone, this investment should be taken in perspective . The market for enterprise software, for example, is about twice this size. And it's small compared with what these companies actually want.

AI companies have their eyes set on capturing all the value created by entire industries. The technology has arguably already conquered customer service and consumer sales. But on the horizon are bigger targets, such as enterprise software development, creative design, management and even legal services. In AI companies and their allies' vision of the future, AI replaces teachers and doctors . The companies would rather spend time fighting resistance to how fast they are building computing infrastructure than dealing with issues of how their products should be used in those fields, or how those fields should be protected from their products.

And while datacenter opposition campaigns have been successful in building widespread appeal , their effectiveness in the US is mixed. They seem to be most successful when organizing against speculative , early-stage datacenter proposals that have a relatively low likelihood to ever see fruition. Meanwhile, advanced-stage, well-capitalized datacenter projects have proven to have the resources to overcome local opposition. An OpenAI- and Oracle-backed facility in Saline township, Michigan, is breaking ground on construction even after local officials voted to reject it. The developers sued the town of 3,000 and forced a settlement that involved their project going forward. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, a vigorous ally of corporate AI, has signalled its willingness to advance AI infrastructure development by overriding state objections and even using federal lands .

[...] As for AI itself, the concentration of power and wealth in these tech companies is the greatest existential risk facing society today. This means we must limit corporate power, especially corporations' ability to exploit the public and manipulate our political system.

Opposing datacenters should be just a starting point. We can advocate for states to regulate AI, to reject irresponsible uses of the technology, and shape corporate behavior. We can fight for AI computation to be taxed , so that the public can capture some of the profit of AI use while also forcing AI companies to internalize more of the energy and environmental consequences associated with its use. And we all can join the global movement for Public AI , an alternative ecosystem for AI that is developed under public control with an incentive structure to create public benefit rather than private profit.

[...] Political organizers should call out and reject the AI companies' framing of the debate, and reorient campaign agendas around populist resistance to corporate concentration of wealth and power. When AI companies pump millions into legislative races, the result should not be hyperbolic discussion of AI superintelligence. And when a plot of land in a small town is pitched as a datacenter site, the debate should be about more than the local costs and benefits. It should include out-of-control money in politics, and Citizens United -proof solutions to limit corporate influence like public financing and state regulation .

We all have a vested interest in what's on the policy agenda, and what the outcomes are. Today, the greatest risk AI poses to society is the exacerbation of inequality and the concentration of wealth. The real problem is trillion-dollar AI companies and their trillionaire oligarchs cozying up to political power in Washington and governments worldwide, and using their money to enact their agenda over the popular will of the people. This is the issue we'd like to see put front and center, and it requires solutions much more extensive than slowing datacenter development.

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