Dan Foster explains at National Review Online why the recent surge in opposition to data centers across the United States could prove detrimental to national interests. While data centers clearly have a downside, Foster reminds us about their positive impact.
Many on the left are in a panic over the building of data centers across the country, citing a variety of resource and environmental concerns as their reason for wanting to shut down construction. … Dan Foster says that while there could “be some big whiffs and mistakes and things that we’re gonna regret and talk about regretting in the future,” in terms of building these centers, “we must win the AI race.”
“Every technology of liberation is also a technology of control, and every technology of moral progress is also a technology of moral degradation,” Dan says. “Technology, I strongly believe, is neutral. Human nature is going to see to it that it does amazing things and that it does awful things. And AI is not going to be any different. ”
Dan compares this to the Cold War, “where you read the history of whatever the CIA was doing in Iran or Italy and you say, well, they made some bad calls, but then you understand the context and letters that Eisenhower is writing . . . to people, the context of this absolute existential panic against a truly evil empire that was waxing greatly and quickly.”
With this history in mind, “you understand a lot of the calls they made, or at least you’re . . . more sympathetic to them,” says Dan. “What’s clear to me is we must win the AI race with China. We must, whether it’s good or bad.”
“It’s a geopolitical and a world-defining, epoch-defining technology potentially. And so we cannot afford to lose.”
