Ben Thompson makes the case in today’s article that AI data centers should pay local residents, a sort of corporate-run UBI:

I do get how ridiculous this sounds, but ridiculous is how we do things in America.

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@manton I don’t think that sounds ridiculous at all.

@manton I feel like they should bring at least two things to the party. Their own power and their own cooling system not based on water.

I know, big requirements, but it’s the right thing to do. They’re not even trying to solve environmental problems. They’re just making them worse!

@fahrni 💯

What’s ridiculous is expecting people to go along with a neighbor who consumes all of the water and electricity resources in an area and in return charges a fee for access to AI results of unproven worth.

@manton maybe *all datacenters* or maybe even all industry that takes natural resources or contributed to climate change🤔

@brandonscript For climate change, instead of blocking data centers we should be requiring clean energy for new construction. Pauses are temporary, clean energy will benefit the grid for decades.

@manton totally agree

@manton Both are needed. It’s not a case of either/or. Data centers need to pay for themselves without pillaging taxpayers and ratepayers, while at the same time we should be ramping up clean energy sources.