AI companies would do well to realize that civil disobedience is a thing.

Take what's currently happening to Flock cameras as an object lesson. People are so fed up with Flock that they're cutting their cameras down en masse, sometimes wiping them clean from entire jurisdictions. Tens of thousands of other people in those jurisdictions are cheering them on, even offering alibis for them before they've been caught. Law enforcement doesn't seem too keen to catch them either. You absolutely can be so hated that the law will not be enforced to protect your property.

If AI companies don't slow down and build some good will, AI data centres are probably at risk. They'd probably have been targeted before Flock were they not harder targets. A higher degree of cooperation and organization will be required to sabotage them, but it would be foolish to believe it won't eventually happen.

Monopolizing memory production for another year suggests that lessons have not been learned, the mad build-out will continue, and we're headed for some truly crazy stuff.

> Take what's currently happening to Flock cameras as an object lesson. People are so fed up with Flock that they're cutting their cameras down en masse, sometimes wiping them clean from entire jurisdictions.

It seems inevitable that these lost cameras will simply be upgraded to drone fleets. Not an identical replacement, but still "good enough" for the original purposes. Had they anticipated this problem and skipped the first phase, it might have been harder to manufacture consent for privacy invasion. But now anybody who was okay with the original cameras feels like a victim having them torn down, which makes it likelier they'll be okay with drones everywhere.

> Tens of thousands of other people in those jurisdictions are cheering them on, even offering alibis for them before they've been caught. Law enforcement doesn't seem too keen to catch them either. You absolutely can be so hated that the law will not be enforced to protect your property.

At least one third of the country is still okay with them, because they believe it helps rid them of illegals and deter crime, with downsides small enough to ignore, in their mind.

In sum, we don't have as much control over these things as you seem to believe. Capital was always in control with its crude but effective propaganda pipelines to manufacture enough consent. Now imagine those pipelines becoming even more effective thanks to AI. Not looking good.

That's a really great point. So much about our world is about perception. I think the datacenter concern is overblown for the most part (except putting them next to houses), but the perception is stronger than the facts.

And if AI is putting people out of jobs and making everything expensive - or that's just the perception - that's gonna set AI back for years.

Except nobody knows where the AI data centers are actually located.