The tech overlords pushing the AI boom are quickly wearing out what little welcome they had.
You may have noticed big-name AI labs pushing new commercials lately. Meta’s new 60-second ad spot insists that the “future is for everyone,” even as CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal net worth eclipses the GDP of Hungary. Anthropic’s new commercial for Claude assures viewers that there’s “hope in hard questions,” seemingly embracing the discomfort that comes when your software is used to bomb elementary schools in Iran.
For as magnanimous as these new PR stunts appear on the surface, a vast swathe of the public they’re meant to sway are rejecting the industry’s faux-populism messaging out of hand, as the cost of AI — born out in inflation, data center pollution, fears of job loss and mental health concerns — becomes too much to bear.
According to data compiled by Pew Research, 40 percent of US adults predict AI will have a negative impact on society writ large, compared to just 16 percent who say it’ll have a positive effect. A whole 31 percent of those surveyed think AI will have negative consequences for themselves, personally, over the next 20 years.
As disgust with AI itself grows, so too does resistance to the hardware embodying its rise.
Per a separate poll by Gallup, flagged by Business Insider, an astonishing three-quarters of US adults are now resolutely opposed to hyperscale data centers popping up near their home. City councils are increasingly forced to reconcile with landowners hostile to any AI data center appearing in their district, putting significant strain on developers hoping to gorge themselves on the fruits of the AI boom. Protests against AI companies are flaring up across the country, with Time reporting 142 protests across 42 states in one day alone.
Beyond data centers, a decentralized but highly-motivated movement is growing around the chopping, hacking, and outright sabotage of AI-integrated surveillance cameras. A parallel struggle is being waged around AI-integrated surveillance drones, with organizers in cities like Minneapolis beating back ambitious police dragnets.
So if you’re a tech executive trying to win back the masses to the AI revolution, take note: it’s gonna take a lot more than a few smarmy commercials to solve your PR problem.
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The post The AI Industry Has Acted So Badly That It’s Now Dealing With a Huge Wave of Hatred appeared first on Futurism.
Over the past year or so, a puzzling idea has taken hold among billionaires ranging from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos: that instead of trying to force data centers on communities that don’t want them down on Earth, it would be much easier just to launch them into space.
The economics and logistics of the scheme, many experts have pointed out, are absolutely absurd. And even beyond those practical concerns, if corporations actually did somehow manage to fill the planet’s orbit with the facilities, scientists are now warning that the environmental cost would be devastating.
A new petition organized by the group EarthJustice, first reported by the Guardian, is warning of “catastrophic” consequences for the planet if the billionaire-backed dream ever came to pass. The 29-page petition calls on the US Federal Communications Commission to investigate current orbital data center licensing requests as potentially in violation of “federal law,” joining the chorus of experts warning that it’s a horrible idea for just about everybody.
“The FCC is currently considering multiple requests for licensing extraordinary numbers of satellite-based data centers to be placed into low-earth orbit over the next decade,” the petition begins. “The proponents of these proposals describe their plans in grandiose, civilization-changing terms. But these same proponents have refused to embrace any inquiry into the impacts of their self claimed epochal technology on the environment, science, economy, or other values. This is not just poor planning and a missed opportunity: it violates federal law.”
The filing does double duty. On top of formally petitioning the FCC to prepare an environmental assessment, it’s also a “petition to deny,” which is a legal mechanism that requires the petitioner to back up their claims with verified facts. That requirement turns the document into a de facto review article — with 113 footnote citations, it’s easily one of the most detailed public accounts yet of what orbital data centers could actually cost the planet.
“The operation of more than a million data center satellites threatens potentially catastrophic forms and quantities of atmospheric pollution, risking damage to the climate, to the ozone layer, to human health, and to the chemistry of the stratosphere itself,” the petition reads.
In particular, the petition warns that giving free rein to tech billionaires to clutter our skies with experimental data centers would accelerate our contamination of the stratosphere, which is currently facing an unprecedented rise in heavy metals, noxious gasses, and carbon particles thanks to record satellite launches.
Satellite companies run by tech and aerospace tycoons are already facing scrutiny for their lack of transparency around this type of pollution, a situation the petition warns would make significantly worse. As the petition authors write, they are “concerned that no [company] has yet provided more than a token acknowledgment of environmental risks.”
“Moreover,” the authors continue, “no [company] has provided satisfactory detail to explain how it will mitigate the cumulative environmental harms flowing from the foreseeable operation of more than a million satellites [emphasis in original], orbiting our planet, colliding and disintegrating and plummeting back to Earth.”
More on data centers:Climate Activists Pelt Microsoft Data Center With Balloons Full of Acid
The post The Type of Orbital Data Centers That Billionaires Want to Launch Into Space Would Wreak Ecological Catastrophe, Scientists Warn appeared first on Futurism.