Below is the original speech I wrote to give outside of a Raleigh, NC City Council meeting where they were voting on a six month data center moratorium. The people have been calling for 32 months. Unfortunately, city council thought otherwise.
Speech:
I have been in tech for all of my waking life. The way my mom would tell it, I was behind cash registers seeing what the cashier was up to at 2. By 10, I was fixing computers donated to my church. In high school, I was being excused from class to fix the teachers’ computers because our county’s IT department maybe had two people between 10 schools. I’ve even fought Microsoft’s tech support just before finals not too long after having a tonsillectomy.
Needless to say, I’ve been working with and in tech for decades at this point. I’ve seen the trends. I’ve seen the amazing breakthroughs that have been created with the small tech we can now hold in our hands. When we can take blood sugar measurements from a patch instead of a finger prick, we have arrived at a great time for technological innovation.
But, I stand before you all right now to tell you this AI datacenter nonsense ain’t it!
What we are seeing here playing out in real time is capitalist greed at a massive scale. All these tech CEOs have been passing the same $20 around while building this giant bubble, hoping nobody would notice. They funnel all of your money in through government contracts, utility subsidies, marketing, and plain old deception.
Instead of funding our schools here at home, they give these companies no-bid contracts to feed us faulty information that then sees a girls’ school bombed in Iran, killing at least 123 children. Bloomberg calls it “the deadliest American military targeting error of the 21st century.” And we’re pumping billions to fund “targeting errors” caused by AI?
But let’s bring it back home! They build these data centers knowing htat the utility costs will be subsidized by the work we produce. Think about it: we go to work to earn a check, probably being forced to prop up this tech (I know I am), only to come home and pay more money to use my AC because a data center gets cheaper energy. All the while, burning fossil fuels that are making it more necessary to use the AC. Make it make sense!
Now, I can talk about the marketing lies they tell about the apps, but I want to talk about the lies they spread about job creation. If their data centers could generate the jobs you claim, why do you need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to say that? As someone who’s worked in data centers before, its because the rooms are empty, barren, and devoid of life!
I can keep going on about how capitalist, profit-driven AI is ruining our lives, our communities, our cost of living and our way of life, but I’m not about that life! I’m about solutions. And passing a moratorium is the best solution outside of an all-out ban! Now, I know I’m not alone in this. Right now, there are thousands of people across this country that are organizing to pass measures to keep data centers out of their communities. In many places, the people are winning! And let me tell you, the AI CEOs are scared. They know they can’t beat the masses of people, so they’ll throw money at the problem. They would rather sell you a doomsday scenario than admit they were wrong!
So, we have them on the ropes! It’s time for our city councilors to see the same picture. We demand they pass this 32 month moratorium! How can we let people who don’t understand the technology and the dangers it presents to real working class people dictate our lives?! We know what we need and it is about time they start listening to us and stop lining their pockets while we bear the consequences!