AI is both a speculative bubble and a tool to discipline labour. No wonder over $1 trillion was found. If only we had a socio-economic system optimised for a liveable planet.
I love this article, such a good summary of the current state of affairs with the AI buildout and the dearth of democratic accountability. I'd recommend looking into Ed Zitron's work for the detail on the AI bubble itself and how out over their skis they all are.
I think that it's imperative that we force our governments hands early on to deny even the possibility of public bailouts for these companies. Anyone with an ounce of economic sense can see that this is a bubble of epic proportions with the potential for a nuclear implosion of equal scale, and we must ensure that the idea of public money being used to buoy this titanic never even enters the conversation.
I give it to the end of this year. There are few profitable use cases for "AI" (is artificial, is NOT intelligent). Coding is one possibility, but everything I've seen and heard makes me think it's not very high quality coding. And then humans have to fix it. It all seems a little too much like a techofascist wet dream for my liking. The use of its drawing facilities to strip underage girls would seem to correlate with that. My feeling is that anything that Elon Musk likes is probably bad for humanity. If you add in the other Tech Bros, no. Just no.
The justification for this AI Ponzi scheme circle-jerk hinges on the notion that “intelligence” is VALUABLE. For argument’s sake let’s pretend that “AI” is intelligent (it isn’t). Is that valuable?
Go poll employees in typical corporate tech jobs and ask if their intelligence is VALUED. I can guarantee what the overwhelming answer will be. Bureaucracies value subordination and “YES”, not honesty and intelligence. That’s why these silver-spoon tech nitwits love AI. It strokes their ego like all the other sycophants they’re surrounded by. The entire premise is a joke.
I tried asking my local councillors to see if any planning applications had been made, but so far they have sent me a map of existing ones: https://www.datacentermap.com/united-kingdom/
The AI bubble bust will be the opportune time to politically stick it to the arrogant techbroligarchy. On democratic political principle. Bleed them out, make them scream!
Grace Blakeley’s essay, Data Centres and Democracy, presents a familiar story.
Humanity is once again being led astray by powerful corporations chasing profits while society bears the cost.
There is truth in that warning.
History teaches us that every major technological revolution attracts speculation, monopolistic behavior, political influence, and financial bubbles. Railroads did. Electricity did. The Internet did. AI almost certainly will as well.
But I believe the essay makes a fundamental mistake.
It quietly transforms the discussion into us versus AI.
That is the wrong battle.
AI is not a political movement. It has no ambitions of its own. It is not constructing data centers because it desires power. Human beings are making those decisions.
More importantly, the article almost entirely measures AI by today’s large language models while overlooking what may become its greatest contribution over the coming decades.
For me, the evidence is intensely personal.
I worked professionally for more than fifty years.
During the past three years, working alongside AI, I have produced more thoughtful writing, conducted more research, explored more history, organized more ideas, and completed more creative projects than I accomplished during much of my professional career.
At age eighty-seven, AI has not replaced my work.
It has extended my working life.
That alone changes the equation.
Throughout history, every transformative technology has initially appeared inefficient.
The telegraph seemed unnecessary.
Electricity was expensive.
Automobiles frightened horse owners.
The Internet produced years of speculation before becoming the nervous system of modern civilization.
Bubbles occur.
Infrastructure remains.
After the railroad bubbles burst, we still had railroads.
After the dot-com crash, we still had fiber optics.
Those supposedly “wasted” investments became the foundation of the digital economy.
If today’s investment boom leaves behind abundant computing power, inexpensive AI, and global infrastructure, history may judge those assets very differently than financial markets do.
The essay also overlooks perhaps the greatest opportunity before us.
Artificial intelligence is already accelerating medical research.
Scientists are using AI to discover new proteins, identify promising drug candidates, improve diagnostic imaging, design personalized treatments, and better understand diseases that have resisted decades of traditional research.
If AI shortens the time required to discover a treatment for Alzheimer’s, cancer, ALS, or countless rare diseases by even a few years, how should we value those lives?
That possibility deserves as much attention as electricity consumption.
And we have scarcely entered what I think of as Phase II and Phase III of AI.
Phase I has largely been conversational AI—systems that help us write, search, summarize, and reason.
Phase II will increasingly become collaborative intelligence, where AI partners with scientists, engineers, physicians, educators, and entrepreneurs to solve problems previously beyond human capacity.
Phase III may become something even more profound: AI woven invisibly into the infrastructure of civilization—helping optimize energy systems, transportation, agriculture, climate adaptation, manufacturing, medicine, education, and scientific discovery.
If that future unfolds wisely, society will not simply become more productive.
It may become healthier, safer, more prosperous, and more creative.
The real question, therefore, is not whether AI should exist.
The real question is who governs it, who benefits from it, and whether its extraordinary capabilities are distributed broadly rather than concentrated narrowly.
That debate is essential.
But let us not mistake the tool for the hand that wields it.
The future is not humans versus AI.
It is humans, assisted by AI, deciding what kind of civilization we wish to build.
That is a profoundly different conversation—and, I believe, a far more hopeful one.
We could be solving climate change but instead the rich r fue s to do this bullshit. They just want the rest of us to be their slaves so badly they can't help themselves.
I hope no one will finally believe the usual "free market" narrative, which you so perfectly debunk in your book. What's absolutely clear is that, if we leave it to capital, soon none of us will have what we need, while the number of trillionaires grows. Just thinking about this is enough to understand how unjust and pernicious this system is.
When the bubble bursts and the giant tech monopolies buy up the detritus they will turn to the gobsmacking pile of useless shit they have built in the form of data centers and try to sell us on the next excuse for their continued role as masters of the planet, Quantum Computers! they will save the world or destroy it and end work or make it edifying etc. etc....Beware AI 2.0 is coming
Two thoughts. Isn't the more usual criticism of capitalism the short-term quarterly profit taking that rapes our privatized former public services exchanging their future investment for debt? Here we are with private capital taking a relatively long-term punt on something and we're still moaning. Those poor Ayn Rand worshipers just can't get it right, can they? Also you omitted to explain where China fits in with all this. It was really funny to hear Western AI bosses bleating about China distilling the information from their models to cheaply build their own AI clones, especially after being fined for raping copyrighted work to build their own foundation models. Given China IS more usually known for central long-term planning, do you think they're going to be the Robin Hoods here? Will will look around when the dust settles in ten years time and find we're all using cheap open source Chinese AI models on cheap Chinese hardware running off cheap Chinese renewable energy?
AI is both a speculative bubble and a tool to discipline labour. No wonder over $1 trillion was found. If only we had a socio-economic system optimised for a liveable planet.
See Jason Hickel https://youtube.com/watch?v=X5WU51sVn3Y&si=04I8WuaNyCrkk6Ek
And Jeremy Lent’s book Ecocivilisation
Hopefully AI takes down capitalism with it
Oof, comrade!
Never stop daring to dream
"So block new data centres, strip them for parts, and start organising your communities and your workplaces for the fight back."
PREACH! 👏 👏 👏
I know I may have said this before, but TAX THE OLIGARCHS!!
Then expropriate them
Bring back the guillotine.
I love this article, such a good summary of the current state of affairs with the AI buildout and the dearth of democratic accountability. I'd recommend looking into Ed Zitron's work for the detail on the AI bubble itself and how out over their skis they all are.
I think that it's imperative that we force our governments hands early on to deny even the possibility of public bailouts for these companies. Anyone with an ounce of economic sense can see that this is a bubble of epic proportions with the potential for a nuclear implosion of equal scale, and we must ensure that the idea of public money being used to buoy this titanic never even enters the conversation.
I give it to the end of this year. There are few profitable use cases for "AI" (is artificial, is NOT intelligent). Coding is one possibility, but everything I've seen and heard makes me think it's not very high quality coding. And then humans have to fix it. It all seems a little too much like a techofascist wet dream for my liking. The use of its drawing facilities to strip underage girls would seem to correlate with that. My feeling is that anything that Elon Musk likes is probably bad for humanity. If you add in the other Tech Bros, no. Just no.
The justification for this AI Ponzi scheme circle-jerk hinges on the notion that “intelligence” is VALUABLE. For argument’s sake let’s pretend that “AI” is intelligent (it isn’t). Is that valuable?
Go poll employees in typical corporate tech jobs and ask if their intelligence is VALUED. I can guarantee what the overwhelming answer will be. Bureaucracies value subordination and “YES”, not honesty and intelligence. That’s why these silver-spoon tech nitwits love AI. It strokes their ego like all the other sycophants they’re surrounded by. The entire premise is a joke.
How do we find out where and when new data centres are being proposed?
And there's a petition and other campaign actions here: https://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/big-tech/climate-vs-big-tech/data-centres/stop-dirty-data-centres#petition
I tried asking my local councillors to see if any planning applications had been made, but so far they have sent me a map of existing ones: https://www.datacentermap.com/united-kingdom/
The AI bubble bust will be the opportune time to politically stick it to the arrogant techbroligarchy. On democratic political principle. Bleed them out, make them scream!
AI Is Not Our Enemy. Our Choices Are.
Grace Blakeley’s essay, Data Centres and Democracy, presents a familiar story.
Humanity is once again being led astray by powerful corporations chasing profits while society bears the cost.
There is truth in that warning.
History teaches us that every major technological revolution attracts speculation, monopolistic behavior, political influence, and financial bubbles. Railroads did. Electricity did. The Internet did. AI almost certainly will as well.
But I believe the essay makes a fundamental mistake.
It quietly transforms the discussion into us versus AI.
That is the wrong battle.
AI is not a political movement. It has no ambitions of its own. It is not constructing data centers because it desires power. Human beings are making those decisions.
More importantly, the article almost entirely measures AI by today’s large language models while overlooking what may become its greatest contribution over the coming decades.
For me, the evidence is intensely personal.
I worked professionally for more than fifty years.
During the past three years, working alongside AI, I have produced more thoughtful writing, conducted more research, explored more history, organized more ideas, and completed more creative projects than I accomplished during much of my professional career.
At age eighty-seven, AI has not replaced my work.
It has extended my working life.
That alone changes the equation.
Throughout history, every transformative technology has initially appeared inefficient.
The telegraph seemed unnecessary.
Electricity was expensive.
Automobiles frightened horse owners.
The Internet produced years of speculation before becoming the nervous system of modern civilization.
Bubbles occur.
Infrastructure remains.
After the railroad bubbles burst, we still had railroads.
After the dot-com crash, we still had fiber optics.
Those supposedly “wasted” investments became the foundation of the digital economy.
If today’s investment boom leaves behind abundant computing power, inexpensive AI, and global infrastructure, history may judge those assets very differently than financial markets do.
The essay also overlooks perhaps the greatest opportunity before us.
Artificial intelligence is already accelerating medical research.
Scientists are using AI to discover new proteins, identify promising drug candidates, improve diagnostic imaging, design personalized treatments, and better understand diseases that have resisted decades of traditional research.
If AI shortens the time required to discover a treatment for Alzheimer’s, cancer, ALS, or countless rare diseases by even a few years, how should we value those lives?
That possibility deserves as much attention as electricity consumption.
And we have scarcely entered what I think of as Phase II and Phase III of AI.
Phase I has largely been conversational AI—systems that help us write, search, summarize, and reason.
Phase II will increasingly become collaborative intelligence, where AI partners with scientists, engineers, physicians, educators, and entrepreneurs to solve problems previously beyond human capacity.
Phase III may become something even more profound: AI woven invisibly into the infrastructure of civilization—helping optimize energy systems, transportation, agriculture, climate adaptation, manufacturing, medicine, education, and scientific discovery.
If that future unfolds wisely, society will not simply become more productive.
It may become healthier, safer, more prosperous, and more creative.
The real question, therefore, is not whether AI should exist.
The real question is who governs it, who benefits from it, and whether its extraordinary capabilities are distributed broadly rather than concentrated narrowly.
That debate is essential.
But let us not mistake the tool for the hand that wields it.
The future is not humans versus AI.
It is humans, assisted by AI, deciding what kind of civilization we wish to build.
That is a profoundly different conversation—and, I believe, a far more hopeful one.
This comment is AI slop which doesn’t show an understanding of the article
It's LONG AI slop too, which is worse. People who don't listen can hold forth in a whole new machine-assisted way now.
Systems that help us reason? hallucinating slop
We could be solving climate change but instead the rich r fue s to do this bullshit. They just want the rest of us to be their slaves so badly they can't help themselves.
I hope no one will finally believe the usual "free market" narrative, which you so perfectly debunk in your book. What's absolutely clear is that, if we leave it to capital, soon none of us will have what we need, while the number of trillionaires grows. Just thinking about this is enough to understand how unjust and pernicious this system is.
When the bubble bursts and the giant tech monopolies buy up the detritus they will turn to the gobsmacking pile of useless shit they have built in the form of data centers and try to sell us on the next excuse for their continued role as masters of the planet, Quantum Computers! they will save the world or destroy it and end work or make it edifying etc. etc....Beware AI 2.0 is coming
Two thoughts. Isn't the more usual criticism of capitalism the short-term quarterly profit taking that rapes our privatized former public services exchanging their future investment for debt? Here we are with private capital taking a relatively long-term punt on something and we're still moaning. Those poor Ayn Rand worshipers just can't get it right, can they? Also you omitted to explain where China fits in with all this. It was really funny to hear Western AI bosses bleating about China distilling the information from their models to cheaply build their own AI clones, especially after being fined for raping copyrighted work to build their own foundation models. Given China IS more usually known for central long-term planning, do you think they're going to be the Robin Hoods here? Will will look around when the dust settles in ten years time and find we're all using cheap open source Chinese AI models on cheap Chinese hardware running off cheap Chinese renewable energy?
Brilliant Grace, although chilling. Good old Vulture Capitalism. It’s going to make humanity dumber, poorer, and sicker!