4 ms·

That's populism for ya, and it's sadly extremely effective. Meanwhile, both China and India are giving free electricity, providing dollar-for-dollar capex subs

That's populism for ya, and it's sadly extremely effective. Meanwhile, both China and India are giving free electricity, providing dollar-for-dollar capex subsidizes, and 25 year tax exemptions to build data centers [0][1]. Love how HN wants to strangle the infrastructure that underlies our entire industry and why HNers get paid. It really highlights how much of the opposition to AI comes from the "chattering classes" and other white collar types as is constantly seen in polling [2][3]. It's funny seeing people who are also part of my party but told coal miners and autoworkers to "learn to code", treated blue collar workers derisively, and ignored concerns by employees in manufacturing and skilled trades which led them to shift to the right now act the exact same way. Edit: can't reply > AI Datacenters are not how all or probably even most HNers get paid Most data centers colo multiple types of compute, not just those dedicated to inference or model training. Additonally, strangling the economics of the infrastructure layer makes entire ecosystems move abroad. You saw similar opposition to semiconductors fabs back in the early 2010s in the US, and the entire ecosystem virtually out within a decade until the CHIPS act was signed and executed on. Same with nuclear power in Germany and GreenTech in much of the America. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-offers-tech-giants-cheap-power-boost-domestic-ai-chips-ft-reports-2025-11-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-offers-tech... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-gives-20-year-tax-holiday-foreign-firms-using-local-data-centres-2026-02-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-gives-20-year-tax-... [2] - https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/25/top-earners-are-more-afraid-for-their-employment-than-lower-income-as-ai-threat-increases.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/25/top-earners-are-more-afr... [3] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/which-u-s-workers-are-more-exposed-to-ai-on-their-jobs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/which-u...

testfoobar 6mo ago
Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. So whether populist outrage is expressed through fears of job losses, higher energy prices or concerns over water usage, IMHO, wealth inequality is the cause.
- bluGill 6mo ago
  The economy is down, and the fad is blame AI so that is what everyone is doing. The last downturn there was a different fad that people blamed it on - but the real root cause was always the economy and not the fad.
  - teamonkey 6mo ago
    It’s understandable that people blame AI for economic issues when so may CEOs are publicly stating that “increased efficiencies due to AI” is the reason for laying off staff.
    - bluGill 6mo ago
      They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well. Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them. Of course in reality we cannot know if AI has really increased efficiency - we only have short term measures at best which we know from experience are often wrong. (most often because there are many ways you can make a shortcut today that will kill your long term)
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
      - darth_aardvark 6mo ago
        > " latest fad for layoffs" What are you referring to here? The latest fad before AI was crypto, or maybe "the metaverse" and I don't think anyone credited those for layoffs. Before that, the latest large round of layoffs was during what, 2008? And the blame for that was correctly laid on the very real economic collapse occurring.
        6mo ago
cphoover 6mo ago
AI Datacenters are not how all or probably even most HNers get paid... > Most data centers colo multiple types of compute, not just those dedicated to inference or model training. Additonally, strangling the economics of the infrastructure layer makes entire ecosystems move abroad. Sure but we are talking about whether the enormous investment into AI infrastructure is prudent or not. Also I reckon most people on here made a living just fine before everything moved to remote data centers, and many if not most HNers workloads could run on individual machines... But that's another conversation.
andersonpico 6mo ago
you're arguing against things that have no material effect. "oh won't you think about adversarial discourse about the most well funded industry in recent history"
tolerance 6mo ago
I suspect soon young learners of the future may tilt their heads in curiosity when finding that Obama was a "Democrat" in the same way they did in the past when finding that Lincoln was a "Republican".

testfoobar 6mo ago

Populism is effective because the proverbial rising tide is not lifting all boats. AI is currently driving yet another extreme wealth inequality inflection point. Founded just five years ago, Anthropic is going to be a trillion dollar private company maybe this year! This is a staggering outcome and will further divide the gap between the wealthy and everyone else. So whether populist outrage is expressed through fears of job losses, higher energy prices or concerns over water usage, IMHO, wealth inequality is the cause.

bluGill 6mo ago
The economy is down, and the fad is blame AI so that is what everyone is doing. The last downturn there was a different fad that people blamed it on - but the real root cause was always the economy and not the fad.
- teamonkey 6mo ago
  It’s understandable that people blame AI for economic issues when so may CEOs are publicly stating that “increased efficiencies due to AI” is the reason for laying off staff.
  - bluGill 6mo ago
    They blamed the latest fad for layoffs in the last one as well. Every company and project I know of has a long list of things they want to do that they believe would be good for customers - but they cannot afford the people needed, and the risk is too high to borrow. That is if AI was really increasing efficiency in a good economy they would be keeping everyone and getting more work done with them. Of course in reality we cannot know if AI has really increased efficiency - we only have short term measures at best which we know from experience are often wrong. (most often because there are many ways you can make a shortcut today that will kill your long term)
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - darth_aardvark 6mo ago
      > " latest fad for layoffs" What are you referring to here? The latest fad before AI was crypto, or maybe "the metaverse" and I don't think anyone credited those for layoffs. Before that, the latest large round of layoffs was during what, 2008? And the blame for that was correctly laid on the very real economic collapse occurring.
      - 6mo ago

cphoover 6mo ago

AI Datacenters are not how all or probably even most HNers get paid... > Most data centers colo multiple types of compute, not just those dedicated to inference or model training. Additonally, strangling the economics of the infrastructure layer makes entire ecosystems move abroad. Sure but we are talking about whether the enormous investment into AI infrastructure is prudent or not. Also I reckon most people on here made a living just fine before everything moved to remote data centers, and many if not most HNers workloads could run on individual machines... But that's another conversation.

andersonpico 6mo ago

you're arguing against things that have no material effect. "oh won't you think about adversarial discourse about the most well funded industry in recent history"

tolerance 6mo ago

I suspect soon young learners of the future may tilt their heads in curiosity when finding that Obama was a "Democrat" in the same way they did in the past when finding that Lincoln was a "Republican".