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Point out that data centers don’t bring real benefit to the community. Unlike a factory, they don’t create lasting jobs, only temporary construction positions. (And honestly? once the AI bubble pops I’m not convinced there will be any demand for large data centers.)

Is the water usage thing debunked? Data centers need cooling. There are a different ways to cool them, but water-cooled seems to be more common. (Likely it’s cheaper to build.) Regardless of whether AI uses absurd amounts of water compared to other tech, a data center will reduce the amount of water available to the community, and depending on your area that could turn people against a data center.

Power consumption is a big one. Data centers need a lot of power, and that will drive up consumer rates as A) they increase demand while supply lags and/or B) electric companies build new power plants to meet the demand, then raise rates to recoup costs. Bring up the actual impact on people: higher electric and gas bills.

Precisely. AI by itself can be useful, the same way spellcheck or autocomplete can be. The root of problems related to AI are that managers overwhelmingly demand that AI be used to increase output at the expense of workers. Say your boss tells you that you need to double output. Will you be paid twice as much? Will you get to work fewer hours, without a loss in pay? Of course not.

Secondly (and this is related to the first point) managers overwhelmingly have unrealistic expectations (or pretend to) regarding AI’s capabilities. AI can write code to do a thing, but it cannot do the crucial work of planning how to write the code to make it maintainable. Managers rarely do the actual work that their employees do (whether that’s scanning groceries or software engineering) and tend not to value or understand it.

Have you ever heard of the Radium Girls? They were factory workers -by and large women- who painted watchfaces with radioactive paint, which let the numbers glow in the dark. These workers were taught to form the bristles of these tiny paintbrushes to a fine point with their lips, like you would wet a frayed thread. Each time they did this, they ingested a little bit of radium-infused paint.

When it became public knowledge (well, more public) that radium was dangerous, the workers’ bosses told them to use their fingers to make the thin points on their brushes. But this was slower, and the workers were paid for each completed watch face. So these desperate, underpaid workers kept using their lips to get through more watch faces, each time swallowing a miniscule amount of the radioactive paint that was slowly killing them.

There’s a parallel here. The people who own AI companies can slap a disclaimer on their chatbots that it isn’t therapist and shouldn’t be used for medical advice. But when you can’t afford a therapist and yet you know you need one, that free chatbot sure sounds appealing.

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