Hello! If you're just joining us, we'll be starting our next book (Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser) in a few weeks. You can order it from the publisher's page, or from bookshop.org.

In the meantime, let's spend a couple of weeks reading a couple of articles from around the web, and getting caught up on some recent writing about AI and data centers.

A few days ago Jason Koebler (404 Media), Samantha Cole (404 Media), Gita Jackson (Aftermath), and Dexter Thomas (Kill Switch Podcast) had a conversation about AI threatening the future of media, and I'd love to chat about it with you all this week:

other stuff

I'm going to share a bunch of stories and things that were on my notes list. If you're interested in this stuff, let's talk about these pieces too:

data centers are very unpopular among working class people

Brian Merchant also shared some analysis a few days ago on his newsletter Blood in the Machine suggesting a breakdown of how different communities are fighting back (or not fighting back) against data center proposals. I'm keen to read into this analysis and report and reflect on how it corroborates experiences here in southeast Michigan where data centers are popping up in lots of poorer cities and towns, decidedly at arm's reach from tech worker hubs like Ann Arbor (data center proposals either in the pipeline or already moving along in Saline, Howell, Van Buren Township... and of course the UM-LANL data center project we're organizing against in Ypsilanti).

I should also point out a link that I think I've shared before, but closing the loop: Morgan Sung, Maya Cueva, Chris Egusa, and Chris Hambrick at Close All Tabs has talked about how data center proposals in Georgia (and across the US) are disproportionately hitting historically Black communities.

Ted Chiang on AI consciousness

I didn't expect to link to The Atlantic, but Ted Chiang published a very good essay about the peculiar (absurd) debate about AI being conscious or not. You may have seen some snippets and screenshots floating around on the web.

fellow projects

I missed the opportunity to give them shout outs when they launched, but DAIR launched a new initiative in the Luddite Lab a few weeks ago, and Karen Hao is leading The AI Resist List.

Molly White has been covering crypto for several years and has recently expanded [citation needed] to cover AI in the newly-renamed Tech Influence Watch project.

"what AI Data Centers don't want you to see"

PBS Terra and Floodlight News collaborated to report on some of the loopholes and exemptions that data centers are using to get fast-tracked. We saw this in Saline to help OpenAI's "The Barn" data center break ground recently, and we know that the University of Michigan's critical role in the data center project with Los Alamos National Labs is the exempt status they have from permitting and zoning laws, making them something of a skeleton key to get around regulatory hurdles. Still, I'm keen to finally get into this video and see what they find:

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Ok, let's get back to the rest of the thing.

routine stuff

As a reminder, there are numerous ways to keep up with the reading group:

• newsletter: I send updates on Mondays and Thursdays. In the Monday updates, I'll point to what to read; in the Thursday updates, I'll send some reflections and an icebreaker question to think about, and a reminder of where & how to join the video chat.
• video chats: Thursdays at 8pm ET we have a video chat on jitsi¹ where we talk about this week's readings.
• group chat: if you want to chat with people on signal, we have a pretty active group chat. You can join the signal group chat here.

next book and start date

As I said at the top of the email, our next book will be Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser. You can order it from the publisher's page, or from bookshop.org.

I'm expecting to start Techno-Negative on or around June 29, so please order the book ASAP.

I have ideas for what we'll read after Techno-Negative, but if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

last thoughts

If you come across something you think we'd like to read, I'd love to hear about it; contact me.

Okay, that's it; see you Thursday to chat about some of the articles from this week.