4 ms·

> “This bill will help position Montana as a world-class destination for AI and Data Center investment.” https://frontierinstitute.org/frontier-institute-state

> “This bill will help position Montana as a world-class destination for AI and Data Center investment.” https://frontierinstitute.org/frontier-institute-statement-in-support-of-the-right-to-compute-act/ https://frontierinstitute.org/frontier-institute-statement-i... Ah.

gwerbin 8mo ago
> Strict limits on governmental regulation wherein any restrictions must be demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to a compelling public safety or health interest. > Mandatory safety protocols for AI-controlled critical infrastructure, including a shutdown mechanism and compulsory annual risk management reviews. Read: industry can do whatever we want, but the government also has to put up barriers to entry that favor large incumbents. This has nothing to do with rights or even computing, it's just regulatory capture.
- ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
  You know if we're gonna pass laws to make it illegal for the government to interfere with the Torment Nexus, the least they could do is not gaslight us with the fucking name of the law. Just tell us the billionaires get to fuck the planet in the eye and the rest of us have to deal with it, at least it's honest that way.
  - bigfishrunning 8mo ago
    They can't be that blatant, that's how you lose your next term
    - saghm 8mo ago
      The second term for the "drain the swamp" president implies otherwise (it did take another cycle, but that arguably had more to do with covid than corruption).
      - basilgohar 8mo ago
        [flagged]
        pixl97 8mo ago
        I mean that seemed to happen anyway...
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
        saghm 8mo ago
        I find it hard to imagine any evidence-based viewpoint in 2024 that would have led to a conclusion that Trump would be better for Gaza. The two party system doesn't give any room for choices on some issues, but that's hardly an argument that the two choices are equivalent overall.
        johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        Evidence? No. But 2024 wasn't an election (IMO) lost on failing to appeal to the centrists and R's. It was one lost by failing to energize the D's. I still assert that a lot of D's simply stayed home as opposed to "changed to R", and that's the most effective form of vote suppression: telling them that "both sides are the same, nothing matters so why bother?"
        saghm 8mo ago
        I've seen this claimed, but I'm not convinced narratives that emerge before another presidential election cycle hold up to scrutiny in the long run. The common narrative post 2012 was that Republicans needed to move to the left on immigration to stay viable, but that didn't happen and Trump won in 2016. The narrative post 2016 was that the Democrats needed to move right on social issues, and that didn't happen (at least not to the extent that people claimed they needed to) but Biden won in 2020. My perception post 2020 is that a lot of people felt that Biden won only because of people being unhappy with Trump's handling of covid, and but Biden wasn't able to last through the next cycle to another election to be able to potentially get more data on that theory. You're not wrong that Gaza probably affected things, but the larger issue is that there was no primary at all. Nobody challenged Biden's viability until too late, and at that point the party coalesced around a single candidate almost immediately. I'd argue that even if people were happy with her on that one issue, there would still likely be plenty of others that they were not happy with, especially when she was essentially starting from behind due to the baggage left behind from the baggage of being the VP of the president who couldn't even retain the confidence of the party through the election (not to mention how much she was sidelines for the first 3.5 years of the administration).
  - jfengel 8mo ago
    Practically every law, and lobbying organization, is named for exactly the opposite of what it does. If I see the Puppies and Orphans Protection Act of 2028, I assume its purpose is to use puppies to strangle orphans. Proponents will point to the limitation on how many puppies you can use per orphan. Similarly, if I see the People For X organization, I assume they are against X. The Committee for Green Spaces and Clean Air is guaranteed to be an oil company. Once you develop that reflex, everything calms down. Though admittedly, I passed a sign for Fidos for Freedom. I'm not quite sure what Fidos Against Freedom does. I think they give dogs to disabled people, and they bark at you if you try to leave the house.
    - ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
      All I can think of is Dr. Augustine from Avatar. "They're just pissing on us without even the courtesy of calling it rain."
    - OGEnthusiast 8mo ago
      [dead]
    - idle_zealot 8mo ago
      There is something that this tactic misses: when people try to do good things, the name of their organization or policy is usually pretty honest. In an environment like ours, though, that still means that your strategy of assuming the opposite meaning has something like a 95% expected success rate.
      - bombcar 8mo ago
        The "good" news is that if the group is trying to do good things, they usually fail or remain quite small, so you never see them. So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
- tzs 8mo ago
  Including a shutdown mechanism and doing an annual risk management review favors large incumbents?
  - autoexec 8mo ago
    The shutdown mechanism would have existed anyway and a "risk management review" sounds exactly like the sort of toothless policy that's supposed to make people feel better without actually putting any limits or enforcement on the industry
    - Onavo 8mo ago
      Not to mention 100K in consultancy fees for compliance.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      Why would the industry need any limits or enforcement?
      - ctmnt 8mo ago
        I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but it’s funny either way.
    - ethbr1 8mo ago
      Contrary take: it's easier to move "should" regulation to "must" regulation than it is to create the latter from nothing. E.g. HIPAA security rule updates
  - derektank 8mo ago
    Annual risk management reviews definitely favor large incumbents. Large incumbents have the ability to hire and maintain compliance teams. That burden is definitely a barrier to entry to new competitors (though not an insurmountable one).
    - lokar 8mo ago
- terminalshort 8mo ago
  There are no small businesses building data centers.
  - primax 8mo ago
    Well, there probably are some in there. Data centre designers, comms experts, architects, electricians, etc. Lot of smaller organisations benefiting from the work.
  - gwerbin 8mo ago
    It's not just "small business". If the barriers to entry are high enough, you can keep out pretty much any company that isn't already part of your oligopoly, pretty much indefinitely. That could be anything from a well funded subsidiary of another technology company to a foreign competitor.
- noahbp 8mo ago
  It’s a good thing that businesses can make investment plans with legible rules to follow. Too many communities are blocking data centers for no good reason, and this preempts NIMBYs and unreasonable local opposition. “What about my water?”- not an issue in this area. “What about my electric bill?”- we’re signing long term contracts with local power companies or building out our own capacity; we eat the marginal costs and don’t increase your bill. “What about noise?”- we’re far enough away from the nearest person that they cannot hear us; fans are x decibels at y distance; not a problem. “I saw on Facebook that data centers poison the water and spy on me”- seek help, you cannot block us from building out and giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason.
  - dickersnoodle 8mo ago
    "We don't want you here" sounds like a perfectly good reason to me.
  - idiotsecant 8mo ago
    There is an incredibly good reason not to have datacenters in montana - a whole lot of the additional load will be from colstrip - one of the dirtiest coal mines left in the United States.
  - flats 8mo ago
    I don’t think it counts as NIMBYism if you don’t want it in yours or anybody’s backyard, ever. I would describe that as principled opposition. Also, what happens when we don’t need such enormous data centers anymore? How many communities in the U.S. are saddled with enormous dead malls while the developers walk away with zero liability?
  - soulofmischief 8mo ago
    This research presentation from Benn Jordan will hopefully change your mind on the noise issue and its consequences. I highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo
  - seu 8mo ago
    > giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason. You've never heard of tax avoidance, have you? https://itep.org/trump-meta-tesla-alphabet-amazon-obbba-taxes/ https://itep.org/trump-meta-tesla-alphabet-amazon-obbba-taxe...
- boppo1 8mo ago
  Damn I saw the headline and though it was a bill about general computing
  - pigeons 8mo ago
    Yes I was wondering if the right applied to people who aren't age-verified.
  - idiotsecant 8mo ago
    No, that kind of computing contributed a great deal less to election campaigns, so obviously not.
Mistletoe 8mo ago
So it should be renamed Right to Datacenter Act. And here I thought they were giving people power over their private computers and being surveilled on them… Reminds me of some bill in my state about Right to Farm and when you looked deeper it was about rights for huge corporate hog farms to dump waste in the rivers. The slimiest corps always do this 1984 level double talk when they name their bills. It’s a dead giveaway. Citizens United, oh wow cool this is about protecting citizens!
quotemstr 8mo ago
And is that supposed to be a bad thing?
- saghm 8mo ago
  At the very least, it's a bit weird to be calling it a Right to Compute if the actual goal is to enable investments. It's hard not to be concerned about whether it's even about establishing a right at all, or if that's entirely posturing to try to build support for something that isn't really about rights at all. At that point, it's hard to trust anything else they're saying about the motives, since they've established that they're willing to fudge things to make it harder to argue against. The point isn't whether it's bad or good, but that it establishes a pattern of inconsistency.
- wsve 8mo ago
  It's legislation to prevent the regulation of AI and data centers. Yes, that's a bad thing
- saintfire 8mo ago
  If it was a good thing they wouldn't mislead everyone by naming and positioning it as a bill protecting citizens just to trojan horse it in.
notaharvardmba 8mo ago
They just want to fire up Colstrip again, 4 huge coal power generation plants that literally print money. If you’re burning shit for AI it’s fine now I guess.
Cyphase 8mo ago
I read "position" as "poison" a few times before I got it.

gwerbin 8mo ago

> Strict limits on governmental regulation wherein any restrictions must be demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to a compelling public safety or health interest. > Mandatory safety protocols for AI-controlled critical infrastructure, including a shutdown mechanism and compulsory annual risk management reviews. Read: industry can do whatever we want, but the government also has to put up barriers to entry that favor large incumbents. This has nothing to do with rights or even computing, it's just regulatory capture.

ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
You know if we're gonna pass laws to make it illegal for the government to interfere with the Torment Nexus, the least they could do is not gaslight us with the fucking name of the law. Just tell us the billionaires get to fuck the planet in the eye and the rest of us have to deal with it, at least it's honest that way.
- bigfishrunning 8mo ago
  They can't be that blatant, that's how you lose your next term
  - saghm 8mo ago
    The second term for the "drain the swamp" president implies otherwise (it did take another cycle, but that arguably had more to do with covid than corruption).
    - basilgohar 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - pixl97 8mo ago
        I mean that seemed to happen anyway...
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - saghm 8mo ago
        I find it hard to imagine any evidence-based viewpoint in 2024 that would have led to a conclusion that Trump would be better for Gaza. The two party system doesn't give any room for choices on some issues, but that's hardly an argument that the two choices are equivalent overall.
        johnnyanmac 8mo ago
        Evidence? No. But 2024 wasn't an election (IMO) lost on failing to appeal to the centrists and R's. It was one lost by failing to energize the D's. I still assert that a lot of D's simply stayed home as opposed to "changed to R", and that's the most effective form of vote suppression: telling them that "both sides are the same, nothing matters so why bother?"
        saghm 8mo ago
        I've seen this claimed, but I'm not convinced narratives that emerge before another presidential election cycle hold up to scrutiny in the long run. The common narrative post 2012 was that Republicans needed to move to the left on immigration to stay viable, but that didn't happen and Trump won in 2016. The narrative post 2016 was that the Democrats needed to move right on social issues, and that didn't happen (at least not to the extent that people claimed they needed to) but Biden won in 2020. My perception post 2020 is that a lot of people felt that Biden won only because of people being unhappy with Trump's handling of covid, and but Biden wasn't able to last through the next cycle to another election to be able to potentially get more data on that theory. You're not wrong that Gaza probably affected things, but the larger issue is that there was no primary at all. Nobody challenged Biden's viability until too late, and at that point the party coalesced around a single candidate almost immediately. I'd argue that even if people were happy with her on that one issue, there would still likely be plenty of others that they were not happy with, especially when she was essentially starting from behind due to the baggage left behind from the baggage of being the VP of the president who couldn't even retain the confidence of the party through the election (not to mention how much she was sidelines for the first 3.5 years of the administration).
- jfengel 8mo ago
  Practically every law, and lobbying organization, is named for exactly the opposite of what it does. If I see the Puppies and Orphans Protection Act of 2028, I assume its purpose is to use puppies to strangle orphans. Proponents will point to the limitation on how many puppies you can use per orphan. Similarly, if I see the People For X organization, I assume they are against X. The Committee for Green Spaces and Clean Air is guaranteed to be an oil company. Once you develop that reflex, everything calms down. Though admittedly, I passed a sign for Fidos for Freedom. I'm not quite sure what Fidos Against Freedom does. I think they give dogs to disabled people, and they bark at you if you try to leave the house.
  - ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
    All I can think of is Dr. Augustine from Avatar. "They're just pissing on us without even the courtesy of calling it rain."
  - OGEnthusiast 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - idle_zealot 8mo ago
    There is something that this tactic misses: when people try to do good things, the name of their organization or policy is usually pretty honest. In an environment like ours, though, that still means that your strategy of assuming the opposite meaning has something like a 95% expected success rate.
    - bombcar 8mo ago
      The "good" news is that if the group is trying to do good things, they usually fail or remain quite small, so you never see them. So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
tzs 8mo ago
Including a shutdown mechanism and doing an annual risk management review favors large incumbents?
- autoexec 8mo ago
  The shutdown mechanism would have existed anyway and a "risk management review" sounds exactly like the sort of toothless policy that's supposed to make people feel better without actually putting any limits or enforcement on the industry
  - Onavo 8mo ago
    Not to mention 100K in consultancy fees for compliance.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    Why would the industry need any limits or enforcement?
    - ctmnt 8mo ago
      I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but it’s funny either way.
  - ethbr1 8mo ago
    Contrary take: it's easier to move "should" regulation to "must" regulation than it is to create the latter from nothing. E.g. HIPAA security rule updates
- derektank 8mo ago
  Annual risk management reviews definitely favor large incumbents. Large incumbents have the ability to hire and maintain compliance teams. That burden is definitely a barrier to entry to new competitors (though not an insurmountable one).
  - lokar 8mo ago
terminalshort 8mo ago
There are no small businesses building data centers.
- primax 8mo ago
  Well, there probably are some in there. Data centre designers, comms experts, architects, electricians, etc. Lot of smaller organisations benefiting from the work.
- gwerbin 8mo ago
  It's not just "small business". If the barriers to entry are high enough, you can keep out pretty much any company that isn't already part of your oligopoly, pretty much indefinitely. That could be anything from a well funded subsidiary of another technology company to a foreign competitor.
noahbp 8mo ago
It’s a good thing that businesses can make investment plans with legible rules to follow. Too many communities are blocking data centers for no good reason, and this preempts NIMBYs and unreasonable local opposition. “What about my water?”- not an issue in this area. “What about my electric bill?”- we’re signing long term contracts with local power companies or building out our own capacity; we eat the marginal costs and don’t increase your bill. “What about noise?”- we’re far enough away from the nearest person that they cannot hear us; fans are x decibels at y distance; not a problem. “I saw on Facebook that data centers poison the water and spy on me”- seek help, you cannot block us from building out and giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason.
- dickersnoodle 8mo ago
  "We don't want you here" sounds like a perfectly good reason to me.
- idiotsecant 8mo ago
  There is an incredibly good reason not to have datacenters in montana - a whole lot of the additional load will be from colstrip - one of the dirtiest coal mines left in the United States.
- flats 8mo ago
  I don’t think it counts as NIMBYism if you don’t want it in yours or anybody’s backyard, ever. I would describe that as principled opposition. Also, what happens when we don’t need such enormous data centers anymore? How many communities in the U.S. are saddled with enormous dead malls while the developers walk away with zero liability?
- soulofmischief 8mo ago
  This research presentation from Benn Jordan will hopefully change your mind on the noise issue and its consequences. I highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo
- seu 8mo ago
  > giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason. You've never heard of tax avoidance, have you? https://itep.org/trump-meta-tesla-alphabet-amazon-obbba-taxes/ https://itep.org/trump-meta-tesla-alphabet-amazon-obbba-taxe...
boppo1 8mo ago
Damn I saw the headline and though it was a bill about general computing
- pigeons 8mo ago
  Yes I was wondering if the right applied to people who aren't age-verified.
- idiotsecant 8mo ago
  No, that kind of computing contributed a great deal less to election campaigns, so obviously not.

Mistletoe 8mo ago

So it should be renamed Right to Datacenter Act. And here I thought they were giving people power over their private computers and being surveilled on them… Reminds me of some bill in my state about Right to Farm and when you looked deeper it was about rights for huge corporate hog farms to dump waste in the rivers. The slimiest corps always do this 1984 level double talk when they name their bills. It’s a dead giveaway. Citizens United, oh wow cool this is about protecting citizens!

quotemstr 8mo ago

And is that supposed to be a bad thing?

saghm 8mo ago
At the very least, it's a bit weird to be calling it a Right to Compute if the actual goal is to enable investments. It's hard not to be concerned about whether it's even about establishing a right at all, or if that's entirely posturing to try to build support for something that isn't really about rights at all. At that point, it's hard to trust anything else they're saying about the motives, since they've established that they're willing to fudge things to make it harder to argue against. The point isn't whether it's bad or good, but that it establishes a pattern of inconsistency.
wsve 8mo ago
It's legislation to prevent the regulation of AI and data centers. Yes, that's a bad thing
saintfire 8mo ago
If it was a good thing they wouldn't mislead everyone by naming and positioning it as a bill protecting citizens just to trojan horse it in.

notaharvardmba 8mo ago

They just want to fire up Colstrip again, 4 huge coal power generation plants that literally print money. If you’re burning shit for AI it’s fine now I guess.

Cyphase 8mo ago

I read "position" as "poison" a few times before I got it.