Making AI Headlines · Page 7
Big Tech Becomes a Midterm Campaign Character
· New York time
Data centers, AI and distaste for the billionaires developing them are making big tech a villain in US midterm campaigning, The Guardian reports. One campaign advertisement depicts pristine water turning brown and facilities descending onto neighborhoods and farmland, accompanied by an ominous soundtrack. Those images are campaign messaging, not documentary evidence of the depicted events. Their significance is political: infrastructure once sold chiefly through promises of innovation is now being used to communicate disruption, local vulnerability and resentment toward powerful developers. For voters, the dispute brings the physical requirements of digital services into ordinary electoral arguments. Data centers occupy land and require energy; the industry's abstract promises now share a stage with concrete questions about nearby development. A candidate's position can no longer consist entirely of admiring the word innovation from a comfortable distance. The industry spent years describing the cloud as something weightless and convenient. Campaign advertising has given it a building permit, a dramatic musical theme and a looming presence beyond the backyard fence. Silicon Valley's branding department may have underestimated the difficulty of maintaining an ethereal image while constructing enormous facilities. The cloud has become local, and local things tend to attract yard signs rather than keynote applause.
Read this story in the full newspaper →Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.