One of the Big Lies you'll hear proponents of AI data centers spout is that if you stand in their way you will block progress toward new cancer cures and other medical progress. This is total bull. The vast amount of this AI data center capacity is aimed not at that kind of AI work, but at LLM generative AI SLOP: Creating sexualized and other deep fakes, automated phishing scams, misinformation-filled search query answers that starve sites of views, agentic agents that destroy your data and wallet while the AI firms take no responsibility, AI chatbots that urge users toward murder and suicide, cheating machines for kids in school, vibe coding systems that generate garbage code and create an excuse for mass layoffs -- and so on. That's the reality of Big Tech LLM AI, and that is what these horrific data centers are mostly all about.

@lauren

Spot on. Analytic AI combined with machine learning has vast potential. It has already yielded breakthroughs in many areas, and will continue to do so.

Generative AI... produces slop and, more dangerously, misinformation. At great expense. And environmental destruction. The demand for data centres is almost entirely driven by generative AI.

Oppose those data centres

@lauren

Things AI will be good at (even if it isn't yet):

Interpreting medical images - mammograms, X-rays, scans

Interpreting other images - eg, maintenance of motorway bridges used to require a scaffold for a person to take a look. Drone imaging plus AI will be more efficient.

Generating hypotheses - seeing patterns in data, for humans to question and interpret.

AI will learn to do these things better than humans.

Humans are still needed, to check and be accountable.

@regordane @lauren But not generative AI which is what these data centers are for.