Economist: banning data centers is like banning new energy sources
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-08-22
Economist Afinetheorem compares banning data centers to banning new energy sources, calling compute a critical input to industrial strength. Pushing back on AI leaders' unemployment warnings, he argues the greater risk is failing to diffuse AI: your industrial base would compete against rivals with far better technology, causing unemployment anyway. He urges the public to take this seriously.
Related event: Economist Warns Refusing AI Poses Greater Job Risk Than Adopting It(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- 2-4K GPUs can serve 100T tokens daily, sparking efficiency debate — teortaxesTex · 2026-08-22
- Western Frontier Models Have Broader RL; ZAI May Focus DeepSWE — teortaxesTex · 2026-08-22
- Irreversible memory as the criterion of consciousness — yeastsplainer · 2026-08-22
- Envisioning AI Products 50 Years Out: Memory Correction and New Categories — AgentBlackVeil · 2026-08-22
- 'The king (Chomsky) is dead': why linguists seethe at LLMs instead of celebrating — repligate · 2026-08-22
- Memo Akten on Emergent Goal-Oriented Behavior in AI vs. Life — memoakten · 2026-08-22