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I’d like to recommend Kate Beaton’s book Ducks to get a vivid feel for what these “man camps” are like. That book is about camps attached to oil fields in Alber

I’d like to recommend Kate Beaton’s book Ducks to get a vivid feel for what these “man camps” are like. That book is about camps attached to oil fields in Alberta, but the “AI camps” described here sound very similar.

semiquaver 7mo ago
Did not expect to see that excellent book mentioned here, but I co-sign.
Lerc 7mo ago
The existence of temporary accommodation for workers in construction projects should not be the issue. It seems like this is a necessary and sensible thing. The problem is with the quality of that accommodation. It is also worth noting that there should not be an issue due to the fact that the accommodation provider also supplies accommodation for asylum seekers, because they should be providing acceptable accommodation to those people too. You can probably add prisons to that list too. Workers, immigrants, and prisoners all deserve reasonable living conditions. Why people are being housed in a place is irrelevant. The AI link in this story seems to be simply because there are construction projects involving AI, that seems rather spurious. They wont be the first or last construction projects. Those workers deserve (and probably don't get) the support they need whether they are building a data center, a Casino, or a hospital.
Aurornis 7mo ago
Or you could click the link in the article where they talk about the temporary housing for data centers, including the perks they’re including like “free steaks” and golf. Oil fields in Alberta are a very different situation than high budget AI data centers in the US.
- iainmerrick 7mo ago
  What makes it very different? It sounds quite similar to me. Each is a lucrative business that requires lots of physical infrastructure to be built out, and therefore needs a large but temporary influx of construction workers and engineers.
  - Aurornis 7mo ago
    How is it not different? These aren’t remote oil fields. The workers could commute to the data centers if they didn’t want to stay at temporary housing. The article and the one it links to say that the temporary housing is a perk that they’re offering to try to entice workers. It includes gyms, nice food, and activities like golf. The comparison above to bad oil fields in Canada is arbitrary. Not all temporary housing must be like oil field accommodations in remote Canadian oil fields.
    - iainmerrick 7mo ago
      Well, hang on, the brief TechCrunch article we're discussing here links to two different Bloomberg articles. The first is from 2018 about "housing for men working in remote oil fields", the second from 2026 about a data center in Dickens Country, Texas. I think you're getting overly fixated on "remote Canadian" here. West Texas is plenty remote. Those temporary workers in Dickens County must far outnumber the local population. If people wanted to commute, where are they going to commute from? The closest big city is Dallas, four hours away. (Edit: I tell a lie, Lubbock is closer if that counts.) It sounds like you're maybe envisaging a Googleplex, a cool campus where young college hires will want to come and hang out with like-minded peers (and work for long hours as a convenient side-effect). I definitely think it's going to be much more like an oil rig -- people will be paid well, and a decent amount of money will be thrown at entertainment and benefits, but fundamentally it's a place to house hundreds of men who have no reason to be there except that the work has to happen at that specific site. This article and the linked ones specifically talk about "man camps", not even something like "company towns" where they're maybe trying to establish an actual long-term community.
      - Aurornis 7mo ago
        > It sounds like you're maybe envisaging a Googleplex No I’m envisioning what the article is describing combined with my experience with construction projects. You’re the one injecting other stories about Canadian oil fields to the story about something completely different.
- deleted 7mo ago
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semiquaver 7mo ago

Did not expect to see that excellent book mentioned here, but I co-sign.

Lerc 7mo ago

The existence of temporary accommodation for workers in construction projects should not be the issue. It seems like this is a necessary and sensible thing. The problem is with the quality of that accommodation. It is also worth noting that there should not be an issue due to the fact that the accommodation provider also supplies accommodation for asylum seekers, because they should be providing acceptable accommodation to those people too. You can probably add prisons to that list too. Workers, immigrants, and prisoners all deserve reasonable living conditions. Why people are being housed in a place is irrelevant. The AI link in this story seems to be simply because there are construction projects involving AI, that seems rather spurious. They wont be the first or last construction projects. Those workers deserve (and probably don't get) the support they need whether they are building a data center, a Casino, or a hospital.

Aurornis 7mo ago

Or you could click the link in the article where they talk about the temporary housing for data centers, including the perks they’re including like “free steaks” and golf. Oil fields in Alberta are a very different situation than high budget AI data centers in the US.

iainmerrick 7mo ago
What makes it very different? It sounds quite similar to me. Each is a lucrative business that requires lots of physical infrastructure to be built out, and therefore needs a large but temporary influx of construction workers and engineers.
- Aurornis 7mo ago
  How is it not different? These aren’t remote oil fields. The workers could commute to the data centers if they didn’t want to stay at temporary housing. The article and the one it links to say that the temporary housing is a perk that they’re offering to try to entice workers. It includes gyms, nice food, and activities like golf. The comparison above to bad oil fields in Canada is arbitrary. Not all temporary housing must be like oil field accommodations in remote Canadian oil fields.
  - iainmerrick 7mo ago
    Well, hang on, the brief TechCrunch article we're discussing here links to two different Bloomberg articles. The first is from 2018 about "housing for men working in remote oil fields", the second from 2026 about a data center in Dickens Country, Texas. I think you're getting overly fixated on "remote Canadian" here. West Texas is plenty remote. Those temporary workers in Dickens County must far outnumber the local population. If people wanted to commute, where are they going to commute from? The closest big city is Dallas, four hours away. (Edit: I tell a lie, Lubbock is closer if that counts.) It sounds like you're maybe envisaging a Googleplex, a cool campus where young college hires will want to come and hang out with like-minded peers (and work for long hours as a convenient side-effect). I definitely think it's going to be much more like an oil rig -- people will be paid well, and a decent amount of money will be thrown at entertainment and benefits, but fundamentally it's a place to house hundreds of men who have no reason to be there except that the work has to happen at that specific site. This article and the linked ones specifically talk about "man camps", not even something like "company towns" where they're maybe trying to establish an actual long-term community.
    - Aurornis 7mo ago
      > It sounds like you're maybe envisaging a Googleplex No I’m envisioning what the article is describing combined with my experience with construction projects. You’re the one injecting other stories about Canadian oil fields to the story about something completely different.
deleted 7mo ago
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