City councilor in Indianapolis attacked in anti-data center attack.

 

Bullet holes in the councilors home and a no data center note. CBS News/Ron Gibson.

A city councilor in Indianapolis reports that his home was attacked in an anti-data center attack. CBS News. Ron Gibson reported that his house was shot at 13 times at midnight. A note saying "no data centers" was left at the door. He was with his 8 year old son at the time, and neither were injured. Data centers are used for AI applications but have come under heavy criticism due to the effects on energy prices, water usage and reducing jobs. Gibson was advocating for a new data center in Indianapolis at a recent meeting and faced heavy opposition. 

My Comment:

Of all the things to get upset by, a new data center doesn't seem like it should be one of them. Certainly not to the point where you are trying murder people who disagree with you. That's obviously an extreme reaction, but it baffles me that opposition to an AI datacenter is that extreme. It's lucky that nobody was hurt and the fact that an 8 year old was put at risk is outrageous. I hope this shooter is caught and punished to the full extent of the law. 

To be fair, AI datacenters do have disadvantages for locals. They use a lot of water, most of which ends up being evaporated into the atmosphere. In arid regions where water use is already a problem, I could see that being a legitimate concern. Indiana is not one of those regions, they have the Great Lakes and many rivers to cool these data centers down. 

Power use is another problem and it does lead to higher prices. These datacenters do suck up power like nobody's business and some of those costs are put on consumers. This is compounded by the fact that the same NIMBY people who hate datacenters also hate building new powerplants, most notably nuclear ones. 

There's also general opposition to AI in general. Folks are indeed afraid that they are going to lose their jobs to AI and that isn't really inaccurate. A lot of tech jobs, for example, have already been lost and many of the white collar "do nothing daycare" jobs will probably go away as well. Stopping data centers isn't going fix that but people feel like doing something to oppose AI given how much of a major social change it is. Indeed, I feel a bit of this myself as it's pretty obvious that this blog is obsolete when AI chatbots exist...

Still, the AI genie is fully out of the bottle and these data centers are going to be built somewhere. The demand for more AI generation is extreme, and unless there is a massive crash in AI demand, more data centers will be needed. 

I would rather these data centers be built in the United States. Sure, there are some places they shouldn't be built, like anywhere with water issues, but I absolutely don't want what could be critical infrastructure to be built in foreign countries where China or other adversaries could target them. AI is going to be important and I don't want the United States to be cut off because NIMBY's couldn't deal with it. 

And it's not like the datacenters don't have benefits as well. They do involve some high paying construction jobs and when complete there are also some well paying maintenance tech jobs as well. Those jobs can help locals. Plus there is a large property tax base that these datacenters can provide which will offset some of the costs. 

Regardless, the pro and anti-datacenter arguments should remain those. When folks are shooting up the homes of politicians then things have gotten too heated too quickly. I do think that the anti-datacenter people are going to win a lot of these fights but if they keep resorting to violence it's not going to go well for them...