OpenAI's letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

If Virginia or Louisiana should profit by this then so be it. Californian land-use laws will have a net effect of -8 house seats against Texas. That is good. It should happen. If Texans will be poorer so Virginians will be richer, that is also good. May the American federal system reign forever. Allowing for states as experiments and letting them suffer their consequences is good. It is a machine for us to iterate on our present and future prosperity.

This is a collection of "OpenAI will boldly act in the abstract to provide air coverage for Texas leadership." With data centers under construction one would think they would have examples of successes or projects in progress available for reference. They'd claim credit if they had it so the silence is telling.

Big tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI to demonstrate that any of these claims aren't fluff with the projects that are already greenlit. When OpenAI presents plans to the communities prior to/alongside city counsels and drops the NDAs then there will be merit to this but our expectations should be somewhere between "super deep kola borehole" and "upper mantle".

https://texas-connects.com/ is also running lots of commercials locally. But both this open letter _and_ the commercials intentionally skate around the resource needs.

> OpenAI will pay our own way and protect residential and small-business customers [...] OpenAI will work to support new power generation in Texas

Notice how this very intentionally doesn't say they will work to support generating as much or more power than they will use? Because if they could do that, they would just generate their own power. It doesn't matter if they "pay their own way", they are now competing with households.

Same with water, all of these projects want to leech on existing systems because they don't even want to entertain developing their own systems.

However, having worked inside Texas DCs for a long time now, I think it's just the burst that's the issue, not the concepts. Sadly they'll share our resources, but I think they should pay a premium on their energy compared to residential (but it's hard to reconcile this with other commercial ventures that do not).

Anyone can access the letter PDF? I've been trying this link and it only timeout https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/oai_abbot-texas-letter_8-7-26.pdf

How much does OpenAI actually control the way the data centers are built and deployed?

I don’t know much about the impact of their data centers compared to others, but there weren’t many (if any) concrete commitments in this letter. The promises all seem like areas that even an evil corporation could pay lip service to.

The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and power needs. I believe them, they probably will do that, thats not even too expensive. They need to however recoup this investment somehow, which is the fundamental problem with a technology like AI.

The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.

Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.

But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.

> OpenAI supports transparency and accountability

Just like it supported 'Open AI'?

This reminds of the times when companies made large public statements on clean energy and going carbon free during the Obama (and partially Biden) eras. The only difference here is now is a letter to a governor, which is signaling 1) companies believe the way to solve data centers is on a state basis and 2) if they don't do it, they can perhaps blame a lack of "guidance from local officials" versus any part on their own, they have done their due dilligence. I am curious to more see what states don't get any personal mailings, I think that's a better indication than anything actually written.

pittsburgh has many old power plants that are perfect for data center converts

when i go home and hear about this i'm conflicted. it brings short term economic prosperity. what's the cost if there's no commitment to clean energy in reality

the developers on these projects will do whatever it takes to simply get the project done

I only have one question is this legally binding in US in any way if not what's the point virtue signalling? Can openai make it's books public to ensure that it has the money to fulfill it's extra commitments.

Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.

Yes, the cheque's in the post.

They’d do better with a bribe, Texas runs on corruption. I’m sure the campaign contribution checks are already written though