> are often misguided

Dude, they're literally watching Flock Cameras go up in their neighborhood, being told they use AI, and anyone with a brain who can add 2+2 (or read Larry Ellison on "best behavior") concludes these data centers are not merely for ChatGPT.

In which case, they see noise pollution, water pollution, construction pollution, property value damage, utility bill cost explosions; and what's the reward? Surveillance and white-collar job loss, possibly culminating in home loss. With the added irony of corporations saying data centers will create jobs, simultaneously as they run record-breaking layoffs and increase outsourcing. "Misguided."

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scarecrowbob a day ago | parent [-]

I agree with you.

Maybe consider my conciliatory rhetoric ("folks here think") in the original post as statement about what I think the vicious and hyper-authoritarian tech bros here believe, namely everything from obviously dumb crap ranging from

- "it's ccp propaganda"

- or "you don't have a right to provacy in public"

- or "the environmental concerns are overblown"

- or "you already have a cellphone so why you bitchin"

- or "it's a private company so you don't have to worry about the gov"

to less arguable but widely held neoliberal premises like "the state has a perogative to do what it wants so if you're not able to participate in the [typically closed] {city council|senate|NSA} decisions that lead here then you have no right to take direct action".

Thus you might understand what I am writing here is an attempt to not trigger the VC bros and to get them to consider that all us unwashed masses might have some kind of point?

I am often not the clearest writer, but the first sentence literally is about what I understand a lot of people on the site to believe, not a statement about what I belive.

People on this site have a highly propagandized view of what (they think of as) the proles think, and I'd like the folks of the site to consider that people really do understand the vicious ends to which these technologies are put, hence the rhetoric.

To be clear, on some level, I think my average no-kings/Tucker-Carson-stan-ing friends can accept the argument that cops will use this tech to give worms to ex-girlfriends. While that should be enough of a reason to reject the tech it really doesn't go far enough into why that tech is objectionable: forcing warrants for the mass-survellience network aren'r really sufficient to remedy my own worries.

From my position, that idea of tech/policy-as-solution is indeed misguided because my deeper worry is that the state will use it for "counter-insurgency". Considering oneself a potential insurgent is foreign to about anyone in US mainline politics. It is, however, what I feel deeply when think about how folks might indeed be "misguided", and I am not sure if you'd agree with that or not. I can read that into a lot of the posts responding above. But that more radical concern not what I wrote about when I wrote that post.

So sure, you're 100% correct and I agree with your point.

I do not think the idea that "folks undrstand the survellience aspect of all this tech" is generally legible to the fascists and other anti-leftist US "centrists" who populate this specific message board- I think the conversation in this thread supports that view.

It's hard to make that point into something they are able to read. I'd still like them to consider it.

	▲	fc417fc802 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Be careful with the shallow dismissals. There's often truth in the isolated statement while it misses the mark in context. Thus dismissing it directly will easily make you look like you don't know what you're talking about. For example: > you don't have a right to provacy in public You don't. That much is simple enough to work out given various highly entrenched cultural and legal values that have stood the test of time. The problem is that a network of surveillance cameras isn't remotely the same thing as an unrelated individual snapping a wide angle photograph of a street that you just so happen to be walking down. So it's more like we need (but currently don't have) a legally recognized right not to be systematically surveilled in public spaces. Or better yet to make blanket surveillance outright illegal (which would also resolve many of the issues surrounding adtech). > the environmental concerns are overblown In many cases they are. In a few they aren't. As usual some businesses in some cases are exploiting holes in the regulations.
	▲	neutronicus 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think public sentiment about surveillance is complicated. People have a lot of fears about being done injury by rogue antisocial actors. Ranging from nuisances like dog shit everywhere, stolen Amazon packages and car break-ins to life-defining traumas like sexual assault. Broader surveillance, in some form, is the first step towards getting traction on these kinds of problems. Leftist commentators prefer the more "grass-roots" varieties like cell phone videos and word-of-mouth name-and-shame campaigns, but, in general, disseminating awareness of antisocial behavior and coordinating a punitive response of some kind is the goal. I think this internal tension in public opinion pre-dates LLMs, and my personal opinion is that the surveillance applications of AI are secondary drivers of the bipartisan anti-AI sentiment, which is more about revulsion at the possibility of a future where not only "artist" but "mathematician" may be lost as vocations.