The AI companies look at something called the "endless government bureaucracy" and they think to themselves "fuck that, I'm not waiting 10 years for all that bullshit, I'll just use the loophole." I truly cannot comprehend any other reaction because I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
Government beauracracy, which provides things like democratic oversight, environmental protection, enforcing power grid standards and interoperability, construction regulations, etc? Would you rather we just didn't have those things?
It should be mind numbingly trivial to stand up a solar farm and ram through some transmission lines in the desert, and mind numbingly hard to set up a temporary gas generator. We needed regulatory exemptions yesterday for clean energy, public transit, and EV charging.
Oh it would be if AI actually made money. Turns out all those companies cheap out and don't actually want to put down the 20 billion for a nuclear reactor- which should be trivial if they were really the future!
They have billions of dollars, they're short on TIME.
They want computers in racks now and (rightfully imo) look at yearslong approval processes with disgust. Look at Ashburn, VA - they extract loads of money from these companies, and they keep getting investments because constructing new datacenters is easy thanks to state laws.
It's not about the money here it's about the time.
Yes, it does. If you want solar? You need lots of panels on lots of land far away from the DC. You need transmission lines connecting the two. You need to fight NEPA/CEQA/whatever lawsuits for each element of the plan, the local town councils of wherever the hell you're trying to build, and the worst part is that they aren't even required to give you an answer - they can drag out the approvals for years until you give up and leave.
Compare that to a gas turbine, which can be trucked in, plugged in, and running inside a few days. Yeah, I think we should take measures to limit gas turbine deployments and encourage companies to spend more of their money connecting renewables to the grid, but that means that they need to be able to do it quickly and without catering too much to local interests.
> The rest of us have to follow the rules, but not them.
The rest of us are not installing 1MW gas turbines in our backyards. Even if we were, I don't think the current administration wants to enforce environmental rules on anyone unless it's to block renewables construction.
They don't care if you have to follow the rules either. Why don't you get mad about the fact that you are forced to obey all these idiotic rules instead of somebody else finding a way around them.
All of them are good except for democratic oversight. Those other things are beneficial and cheap and easy to comply with. It's the democratic oversight of what gets built and where that is nothing more than a giveaway to worthless bureaucrats, lawyers, activists, and NIMBYs.
The alternative to democracy is wealthy guys who can buy their way into anything being done forcing their will upon the "worthless" rest of the populace, as you called them. If only billionaires weren't held up by the monsters that are activists protesting their activities and lawyers acting as a check on their legal power.
Let's be clear, democracy isn't perfect and it usually isn't fast. But to date, it's the only system that has any hope of keeping the most powerful in check. Rejecting democracy is begging for someone who doesn't care about you to tell you what's right and wrong.
I get that anyway. It's just that in democracy it's a mob of millions of idiots who don't care about me. I guess I'd rather have it be the billionaires because at least they want to build things and advance our infrastructure and technology.
You're not thinking like a techbro. My startup shouldn't have to adhere to those regulations, but everyone else should. In fact, once my startup gets established we should make even more regulations
> I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than deal with years of government bureaucracy.
These are just words. What matters are your actions. Your action is that you will cause other people to suffer pollution in order to enrich yourself. Why can't you stand up like a man and just say that that is what you want to do?
And if you say "I am doing this to benefit humanity who need even more AI so badly" - Well those are also just words.
Who is causing what here? If there is no demand for those services then the data center will sit there idle and cause no pollution. You can't consume services that cause pollution without accepting your share of the responsibility.
Employees at the companies that do this stuff know exactly what these regulations are for and are violating them quite deliberately. They don't actually think it's "government bureaucracy" whatever they tell the public.
I would rather take /them/ going through fingernail ripping government bureaucracy for 10 years over /me/ having acid raid, but hey, I'm just a egoistical and don't see the Big Picture or something.
What you label "government bureaucracy" is very often environmental protections working as intended.
One AI company's "bullshit" is another citizen's "clean air and water". Since the AI companies don't care about those negative externalities, the government can act help to mitigate the damage.
