The Summer of Our Discontent*

Last week at Harvard’s Class Day speech political commentator and comedian Ronny Chieng proclaimed that the graduating class’s great task would be to destroy AI and the data centers being ​built across the country. This Luddite cry was met with cheers and raucous applause, reflecting the growing, and now majority, sentiment of deep skepticism, distrust and fear at the Advent of AI. Especially when it comes to building large AI data centers in their local communities.

The AI data center is the ultimate representation of the current state of our undemocratic government. It is a technology originally funded and fueled by research dollars from the federal government and our collective knowledge, which has been subsequently privatized for enormous profit by a few, while the rest of us pick up the tab. And that tab is getting large: it takes enormous amounts of scarce land, energy, and water resources to power these AI data centers even as rising prices leave the everyday Americans feeling the crunch.

Trump may not care about the midterms perhaps because he recognizes his unpopular policies have already made the Republican Party a lost cause for this upcoming election. With his unpopular actions on immigration, the war in Iran, skyrocketing gas and food prices pinching affordability, and worsening consumer sentiment; the Republicans might already be cooked, However, if Trump did care, he’d recognize that his administration's slavish bending of federal power towards tech oligarchs is not making his political job easier come November.

In fact, the rising backlash against AI development and implementation may be the only thing rising faster than gas prices, or temperatures in a super El Nino charged climate this year.

Across the country we have seen flare-ups in battles with between billionaires attempting to build large data centers and local communities fighting back tooth and nail against them. Sometimes the communities win, often the tech oligarchs prevail, but it's clear that this is an issue that animates Everyday People because they can see the effect on their health, in their environment and in their pocketbooks.

Republicans have made their bed, and have thrown in entirely with the tech overlords for a future of AI and Tech domination. There is an enormous lane open if Democrats are willing to take it, rather than being captured by billionaires who will never fundamentally support our democratic institutions and traditions. This is an election year, and a functioning opposition party should be riding this political wave.

If you’re looking for a place to start, try Bernie Sander’s new proposal to give 50% ownership of AI companies to the people instead of the crumbs and social destruction tech CEOs have promised.

This summer and fall we have the opportunity to fight back and say no! The cracks in the AI framework are already showing: AI implementation is too expensive, and costs, like everywhere else, are rising. We need to stop the breakneck development of these Centers before they become baked into the infrastructure equation, and before we the people are put on the hook for massive data centers we can't afford and don't need. Together we can stop these data centers and make sure that it is humans, not technology, that makes the final call in a democracy. So, join us each Tuesday in growing solidarity in the fight against the reckless development of data centers over town centers.

Don't shop on Tuesday

  #DSOT. #UPM

• a reference to the John Steinbeck book- read that not listen to AL slop

p.s watch #DSOT's chat with Ren Brabenec describing the destruction Elon Musk's Data Center is doing in west Memphis

Watch our Zoomchat with Ren Brabenec