The fact that Americans can be made to vote for NIMBY policies was well known. My question is what Americans think economic growth in the 21st century looks like?
As someone who grew up in a country with near zero growth (some would call it “sustainable growth”) and the resultant stagflation, I wouldn’t wish that feeling of growing into an economy where you can only aspire to take from others, on my worst enemies.
I agree with these voters on almost everything, from the need for more energy and water infrastructure to using this growth to pay for basic needs like healthcare. But when push comes to shove, for growth, the cranes have to show up in your neighborhood and build stuff.
It seems like we are habituating the American public to just reject that and hope it goes somewhere else (tm) while they get the gains and that’s not how this works.
I think this is missing the issue. It's not the cranes and walls that bother people, it's the tech companies. They've shown themselves repeatedly to be bad faith and exploitative actors. Now they're asking to move in. It's easy to understand why people are saying no.
And that's even before we consider the impact of LLMs themselves. Personally I expect LLMs to create tremendous growth, but that should be highly counter-intuitive. They're going to absolutely wreck cognitive labor; society entering into an era of deteriorating wages for cognitive work as well as increase unemployment is quite likely. My prediction is based on 'what comes next' but if somebody's only concerned about paying rent next month, this is all going to be, again understandably, seen as pie in the sky.
Let me translate this for how a person negatively affected by this is going to see what you're saying:
'We are regularly deceptive and unadulteratedly self interested. Now we're going to create a catastrophic problem for you, one that is reasonably likely to be unprecedented in scale, because we deem it to be profitable for us. But don't worry, we promise to throw you a bone in the future to make it a bit more tolerable. Deal?'
I can generally see any genuine viewpoint relatively easily, but I'm having a lot of differently understanding what could possibly lead you to view things like this. Do you genuinely not see that LLMs are very likely to cause significant damage to all forms of cognitive employment?
This outcome is exactly what's driving the multi-trillion dollar valuations. The idea is that companies will be able to eliminate much of their labor and replace it with LLMs, LLM companies will rug-pull and investors get rich(er). A nice way of phrasing this is 'increasing the productivity' of companies' remaining labor forces, but it's the same outcome regardless of framing.
My optimism comes from what happens after this, but there's a high probability of rough waters on the horizon for a very large chunk of the labor force, before we enter into a new equilibrium. Trying to imagine things are just going to stay roughly the same is, in my opinion, just not a realistic view at all, almost regardless of the assumptions you make.
And given how non-independent society is now a days, shaking things up like this will likely have an unprecedented impact, even if the shaking was probably more severe from previous revolutionary leaps.
I don’t deny the transition is rough, difficult and panic inducing . What I ask is for those of us who have historical perspective, we understand that this is just another productivity jump in a chain of many since the Industrial Revolution and that categorically over a decade we will all collectively be wealthier as has been proven time and again. There is zero evidence that “this time is different” just because it’s cognitive activities being automated.
With this historic perspective we know we’ve gotten through this before and we can do better this time. More generous unemployment benefits, better retraining methods, these are all on the table.
What we shouldn’t do is give in to panic populism. We live in a representative democracy not a direct one precisely so representatives can balance the needs for growth, innovation and real across the board wealth creation over a more popular stagnant jobs program.
Utility workers are 10x wealthier than lamplighters and that same job transition is coming to cognitive work as well. The real catastrophe would have been banning electricity distribution grids even though that’s what the rioting lamplighters demanded.
You're all over the place. So right now you're agreeing that there will be a catastrophe which will be 'rough, difficult, and panic inducing.' And this is what people want to avoid, especially when the short-term to mid-term solution comes down to a mixture of relying on big tech and big government. I refuse to believe that you can't understand why people would do anything to avoid this. The companies deploying these buildings certainly do. There's a reason that a substantial chunk of the jobs created by datacenters involve guns!
Never used the word catastrophe, panic can be induced without one. But it doesn’t seem like this conversation is fruitful. Obviously people want things.
The people want zero taxes, 100% services and a $10,000 tax rebates. But turns out you can’t give them that. Stopping new technology diffusion so that panic isn’t induced is no different an ask.
I'm not trying to play gotchas. I'm trying to figure out what in the world your logic is and you seem to keep shifting it every single post. So now you're back to claiming it's nothing but defacto hysteria while in the post prior you were acknowledging that there would be widespread rough and difficult times, significant disruption to employment, and more.
Assuming you're human, this makes me think that you don't actually have any logic for your position and are instead ad hoc formulating an argument after picking a desired conclusion, rather than logically working your way to a conclusion.
It's not that complicated, if you see all help from the government as a "big government intervention" then yes, the thing you are panicking about will come true.
I don't think most people see it this way, and if we can expand government help to help people transition through career upgrades then the thing people are panicking about need not come true.
This is not going back and forth, there is real tumult, but damage can be avoided. And I think we should communicate that reality clearly instead of offering a public veto on all new technologies.
I just don't think you're engaging in good faith. You're now calling people getting forced out of their jobs and onto various government assistance programs a 'career upgrade' that's nothing to worry about. That's so absurdly out of touch that I refuse to believe anybody genuinely believes this.
I literally said retraining (you know..to get the upgrade).
Don’t think I’m the one arguing in bad faith.
Quoting myself again
“Utility workers are 10x wealthier than lamplighters and that same job transition is coming to cognitive work as well. The real catastrophe would have been banning electricity distribution grids even though that’s what the rioting (see: “panicking”) lamplighters demanded”
PS: 90% sure you’re a troll bot mostly because you’re highly engaged with how I’m arguing as opposed to what I’m arguing. Just FYI for anyone else reading this.
I'm only engaged with what you're arguing. The problem is that it keeps overtly changing from post to post, often in mutually exclusive ways. And now you're leaning heavily into completely absurd euphemisms. Nobody's getting a career upgrade from this, let alone because of government programs. That's akin to telling coal miners go to learn to code. And again I refuse to believe any human would believe this.
Fortunately, unlike you, I have the empathy to understand other people's arguments, I know the concept of upskilling is:
a) counter-intuitive
b) change, and therefore scary.
But historically this has played out the exact same way and there is no evidence that it won't play out the same way with AI.
You're ignoring the examples I'm giving you (lamplighters), so I'll use yours: When automation came to coal mines, the coal miners became coal extraction machine operators.
I'm curious now how you'll claim again that I've "overtly changed" my argument: Change is hard, but can be managed.
Most of every humans knows that the issue for coal miners was not about better tools, but about their job being made obsolete, similar as what LLMs are already starting to do, and will likely do to a much greater degree in the future. Coal miners didn't become 'coal extraction machine operators' - they became unemployed.
Countless lives were completely destroyed in spite of 'government retraining' promises. Those who carried on managed to do through some menial labor and other jobs, many with even worse conditions and for worse pay. For instance trucking was a fairly common new profession - where you're away from family pretty much all the time, and getting paid even less. It's a horrible job, but it's the sort of work that was left for them.
>My question is what Americans think economic growth in the 21st century looks like?
I think they have very rationally concluded there is no economic growth benefiting them in massively consolidated capital building the infrastructure to replace their small businesses and jobs.
How are data centers replacing small businesses? That sounds like a politicians broken speech reader.
They’re literally bringing jobs and paying out the ass, the unions love em [1] and absolutely supercharging local tax revenue, just basic economic growth stuff.
Off the top of my head, copywriters, PR researchers, graphic designers, marketers, tutors.
This is the doublespeak that has the public so distrustful: value companies at billions and trillions of dollars based primarily on their ability to replace your workforce, then tell the workforce there will be no displacement. It's insults the intelligence of reasonable people.
Example; my son’s teacher uses AI to make new reading material (mostly graphics), he’s pretty good at keeping quality up and making things relevant to the kids’ real life. But critically without AI, he would not have otherwise hired an illustrator, this is wholesale new economic activity. Not a replacement.
Outside of marketing hype, this is what is mostly happening across the economy. No AI is going to replace someone who truly was always using humans.
>No AI is going to replace someone who truly was always using humans.
I don't really know what this means. If you need a concrete example, just look at Figma's product roadmap. Look at Fiverr. Your son's teacher is, generally, replacing demand for an educational product with direct production. There was a whole supply chain being replaced with an inference vendor. If you're saying that kind of production doesn't also use generative art, I think you're being very selective.
Anyway, economic analysis aside, the pitch for AI is replacement. The explanation of job market contraction is also replacement. The electorate are responding in their own interests to what they are being told.
“ Anyway, economic analysis aside, the pitch for AI is replacement”
That’s a headline read of the situation on the ground is what I’m saying. The frontline is a lot more complex than just a 1-to-1 replacement.
My sons teacher still regularly uses library books (that regularly buys published books), now he can just add a story about his cats visiting the firehouse, cats the kids have met, hyper personalized and made more relevant, a market created totally new and replacing nothing in place.
Figma is on a hiring spree, just FYI, to drive my point home. This is pure pie growth.
On the ground, I have definitely replaced peoples' income with AI spend. If you haven't, or aren't even aware of it having happened, I think we're coming from meaningfully different places.
Company with a growing market got a productivity improving technology and decided to reduce their headcount? That seems...counter productive. The natural response would be to get more customers and grow.
Short-termism is always a thing I guess, but these companies just end up hiring different people (who can use the AI better) down the line, which is in line with my conclusion.
I'm opposed to NIMBYism 99% of the time, but these data centers aren't being opposed for no reason. There's stories coming out all over the country of negative impacts on communities and backroom deals with local officials who sign NDAs during negotiations. There's a goldrush on in the US to build these out and when that happens companies run roughshod over communities.
> My question is what Americans think economic growth in the 21st century looks like?
The people I’ve spoken with don’t want data centers in anyone’s backyard, park, grassland, unincorporated township, or wasteland. Not just a NIMBY thing. The voters want big tech to make do with what they already have. Voters don’t have to imagine what economic growth looks like—that’s an exercise left for the innovators. They do get to imagine what it does not look like, and unrestrained data center buildouts are not that future.
> My question is what Americans think economic growth in the 21st century looks like?
Maybe it looks like a reduction in monopolies, increased competition, lowering of prices as automation pays dividends, and a general de-consolidation of power.
It doesn't look like 4-companies owning the whole stock market and incumbents using AI to cut every worker they can with no longterm plan, using AI to deny insurance claims, and rig the deck in the most unconscionable uncompetitive ways they can.
There are outcomes much worse than "flat" if we aren't careful, and even the AI CEOs say as much.
I think that as an industry, we'll have to make the case persuasively that the datacenters won't hurt quality of life for nearby residents, that they'll have a positive influence on the local economy, and that even more broadly that the benefit from AI is shared and not captured by small group of the ultra wealthy.
That's politics and democracy. People get to vote that, and people that want to make changes have to work to convince the people that the change is beneficial, otherwise they lose.
I am not suggesting they will. That's a discussion between the communities and the datacenter developers. And the datacenter developers will have a track record they'll be able to stand behind with prior projects, or they'll have to explain why the harms were understated and the benefits were overstated.
For the record, I don't think this is necessarily a positive development for our field or the US. But the solution was one or two years in the past and involved more truthful and principled behavior by the companies developing these projects.
This election speaks for itself in terms of how the population feels about the matter.
> But when push comes to shove, for growth, the cranes have to show up in your neighborhood and build stuff.
There is absolutely no need for cranes to show up in or near existing neighborhoods to build data centers. The US is not out of remote land that would be well suited for this purpose, but building in those places requires spending more money to build supporting infrastructure, so businesses prefer to avoid that cost.
If the growth is truly beneficial, it should be able to pay for itself, and I think that is what people want to see enforced.
Data centers take resources, land, and ways of life from rural communities to give economic growth opportunities to people in cities without paying those rural communities.
Does economic growth look like companies firing hundreds or thousands of employees in batches because they are replacing them with AI? Because that's what people are seeing in headlines. That and mass surveillance.
Do we need “economic growth”? For that matter, what does that even mean? Personally, I’m more concerned with meeting real human needs, ensuring a fair and equitable world for everyone, and protecting the environment and ecosystems for long-term sustainability. I’m not even remotely convinced we need ‘number go up’ to make this happen - if anything, the hyper focus on “economic growth” seems to run counter to equity and sustainability.
> Do we need “economic growth”? For that matter, what does that even mean? Personally, I’m more concerned with meeting real human needs, ensuring a fair and equitable world for everyone,
For example, social security relies on economic growth for funding. Meeting real human needs is a lot easier when humans are more productive.
Economic growth doesn't just mean people have more money. It means people are more productive. More productive people produce more goods than they need to survive. Those goods can be redirected to people with needs they can't supply themselves.
Economic growth is what has driven the world to be more fair and equitable over the last thousand years.
“ Do we need “economic growth”? For that matter, what does that even mean? Personally, I’m more concerned with meeting real human needs”
As I pointed out, I lived in a country that answered this question exactly like you wanted. It was like living in a country where every institution from the college to the coffee shop was the DMV. It works..just about. But it sucks.
I think you’re conflating a lot of things here - economic growth (or lack thereof), highly developed infrastructure, my idea of a society focused on “meeting real human needs”, and probably more.
Honestly, I don’t know what more to say than my original question: What do you even mean by “economic growth”? Unless you define that, we’re all going to be talking past each other. It’s not obvious (at least to me) that any mainstream definition of “economic growth” has much to do with poor institutions, particularly once those institutions are developed.
Most businesses (and institutions in general) have more customers tomorrow than they do today, thats economic growth to me. If that doesn't happen, they stagnate, stop investing, innovating and moving forward. The internal incentives get weird and lopsided, lots of infighting starts, and generally all processes slow down (see; DMV).
There is simply no way to "meet real human needs" without economic growth.
You can to a certain extent take from one and give to the other to meet some needs, but that's it, you're just cutting tinier and tinier slivers of a pie that as you specifically said has stopped growing.
Why should we believe that we will meaningfully benefit from that economic growth? We aren't benefiting much now. And if we won't benefit then why should we care about it?
Why are you upset that citizens have a right in how their communities are developed? Do you not understand that a majority of people do not care about helping capitalists get slightly richer and would rather have a life of quiet dignity?
As someone who grew up in a country with near zero growth (some would call it “sustainable growth”) and the resultant stagflation, I wouldn’t wish that feeling of growing into an economy where you can only aspire to take from others, on my worst enemies.
I agree with these voters on almost everything, from the need for more energy and water infrastructure to using this growth to pay for basic needs like healthcare. But when push comes to shove, for growth, the cranes have to show up in your neighborhood and build stuff.
It seems like we are habituating the American public to just reject that and hope it goes somewhere else (tm) while they get the gains and that’s not how this works.