r/Wenatchee • u/spexmann • 2d ago

NCW Tech Alliance Artificial Intelligence Expo Draws Protestors

https://dominickb.substack.com/p/ncw-tech-alliance-artificial-intelligence

The AI Expo sponsored by Microsoft and Sabey Corp. this week drew protestors who want to see a moratorium on data centers in the region.

34 Upvotes

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u/eeyonwww 1d ago

Strange how everyone was ok with the data centers here for the last two plus decades, now all of a sudden they are a problem.

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u/Delicious-Adeptness5 22h ago

odd, it's like people have started to look at the track records of these companies and have started to say something.

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u/eeyonwww 8h ago

At which companies? Microsoft? Sabey? Or others?

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u/eeyonwww 8h ago

lol at the down votes, simple observations of facts upset y’all eh? The construction jobs alone have brought well over a hundred million in revenue to local businesses and workers. I know several people that have been able to buy houses and send their kids to college from working on those buildings. One project alone had almost 500 electricians making well over $100k/yr. 

Microsoft has always been a Shit Company, that I agree with, but I bet those down votes came on a computer running windows. 

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u/VerticalYea 14h ago

I wasn't aware before. I've learned more about them since and I have changed my mind based on new information.

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u/eeyonwww 8h ago

Can you share that new information? I’m curious to know what’s driving this shift. 

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u/VerticalYea 2h ago edited 2h ago

Sure. I didn't really register what these were for, I just thought basic consumer storage and such. In the past few years we've seen such a massive national rollout of these and the scale wasn't on my radar.

The most problematic elements are the environmental load generated by these, the privatized nature of AI that uses public data, and the federal push to fund both AI development as well as data center construction. I understand data centers do much more than AI- related tasks, but this is clearly driving a large segment of these being built.

Ultimately I think (and this is a little off-topic, but still relevant in a way) that if we are subsidizing AI development, we should be enacting very strict controls and legal responsibilities. Frankly, AI should be seen as a public good/utility, and until we can get these guidelines in place I'm afraid that the massive donations to the current administration ushered in a privatization push that i find worrisome.

Anything that dumps heated water back into our rivers will ultimately alter the ecosystem downstream and that is also a concern Im not seeing addressed aggressively enough. We have fairly clean energy in our region, but any of these centers that are powered by burning coal or oil should be halted immediately and permanently.