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from the Where-can-I-get-a-bot-to-work-my-farm? dept.
The Global Government Affairs team over at X dropped a bombshell Thursday night, revealing that the X Safety team had uncovered proof positive of a foreign influence campaign targeting the build out of AI and data centers in the United States:
It turns out that, after launching an investigation, the team uncovered a massive bot farm consisting of roughly 200,000 "suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts," including hundreds that appear to have been trying to manipulate debate in the U.S. over artificial intelligence, data centers, and the associated energy costs.
This development comes after President Trump warned last month that "other nations are trying to get us to slow down" and are spending money on "propaganda" to convince Americans that data centers aren't a positive thing.
According to X, about 200 accounts within the bot farm network were posting claims that data centers drive up household electricity prices and put excessive strain on the power grid. Some of the accounts, ironically, posted AI-generated cartoons depicting data center operators getting rich while ordinary American citizens were stuck paying the bill.
[...] The insidious thing about this kind of foreign influence operation is that it preys on the concerns that many Americans already have about the data centers popping up in their communities – debates about things like electric bills and the robustness of the power grid are already happening here. All a foreign adversary like China has to do is amplify those fears and sow distrust to make it harder for the U.S. to keep building out its AI infrastructure.
Related:
- Protesters Haul A Guillotine To City Council Meeting About A Potential AI Data Center
- Texas Halts Data Center Connections to Power Grid Amid Overwhelming Demand
- The Fight Against AI Data Centers is Important – but It's Just a Starting Point
- 'Cost Me the Election': Data Centers Trigger Voter Backlash
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arslan on Sunday August 30, @11:55PM
Maybe you're missing the point. Regardless of the preference, merits and economic "right" and "wrong" with building AI DCs here, the democratic system where masses can influence governance is being systematically exploited by another country for its own benefits - in this case the nation's competitive advantage in the AI race.
Specifically by a nation whose own system of government do not suffer from the same flaw due to their totalitarian nature and who is already attacking your nation on the other fronts of your nation building system - namely the capitalism side, such as funding frontier model building and dumping it for free, regardless of how you feel about the big western companies exploiting the market to create a bubble, they're sticking a knife in capitalism.
So regardless of how one feels about AI/genAI, some superpowers are taking it seriously and see the AI race as important as the other facets of the superpower superiority race. Yet here you are bickering amongst each other still.