NIMBYism as an AI governance tool?
I’m aware that the YIMBY movement has received funding from Open Philanthropy in the past.
But I wonder if there is any existing work on the prospects of using NIMBYism to restrict the number of data centres that are built, as a tool to govern AI development?
Seems rather silly. Economic demand for data centers is very high. Even if you managed to garner some large political movement that supported stricter land use regulations for the construction of data centers (but were unable to garner a similarly sized political movement for pausing AI or something similar), AI companies would just pay more. NIMBYism can’t price rich people out of homes, only poor people. When rents rise across the board people are pushed out from the bottom first. Trying to use zoning law and local development opposition to keep AI companies out of data centers is like trying to use them to make Elon Musk homeless.
Also, just about any large building can be used as a data center, so it would be hard to restrict. Even then, if data centers in silicon valley became so scarce that google couldn’t even afford them, they could just go elsewhere to build them. Location is very important for housing. I don’t think that’s as much the case with data centers.
Hi! I think drawing on successes from analogous movements is a really good idea (even though it doesn’t seem like that is exactly what you’re pointing at).
So a similar question that could be useful would ~ be: what can we learn from the NIMBY movement to slow down AI development?
(getting powerful boomers on board as advocates might be one idea)