OpenAI Wants to Change the Name of Data Centers to the Stupidest Thing You've Ever Heard in Your Life - Futurism
By Google News AI ·
It’s become increasingly clear that AI companies are losing the public in their efforts to build enormous and polluting data centers. The topic has turned into a divisive, bipartisan issue looming over the heads of politicians, who’ve largely sided with the corporate interests of Big Tech during this week’s midterm elections in the United States.
The AI industry’s desperate need for a rebrand is more palpable than ever as protests grow and elected officials face the ire of fed up residents at packed community meetings. As such, AI leaders have been pondering how to win over the public, with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian warning that “we gotta figure out a new narrative on this data center thing” in a tweet earlier this year.
As Axios reports, they’re now reaching for desperate — and borderline comical — measures to recapture the narrative. According to the publication, OpenAI is gearing up to “unleash a policy and PR blitz” as soon as the midterm elections conclude by rebranding data centers with a ludicrously euphemistic moniker: “AI compute campuses.”
“You can try to chase the moment, or seek to inform the moment via the power of ideas,” OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told Axios.
Needless to say, it’s probably as much of a nonstarter as president Donald Trump’s bizarre efforts to rename AI to “super intelligence,” or SI, in a thinly-veiled attempt to test the loyalty of AI leaders.
OpenAI is looking to pave over its fundamentally fractured relationship with the public by arguing that data centers can “transform host communities” and bring “thousands of jobs,” per Axios, in widely disputed claims that conveniently gloss over the fact that those benefits rarely stick around once construction is complete.
The downsides of the AI industry’s…
Originally published by Google News AI