Data Centers Are Poised to Engulf a Pennsylvania Town<\/a>,\u201d landed like an atom bomb. Archbald residents naturally read it as detailed documentation of betrayal. It should also serve as a wakeup call for how easily outsiders exploit the inexperience of temporary officials empowered to make decisions that will impact generations to come.<\/p>\nWednesday\u2019s reshuffle wasn\u2019t quite a coup, but the result was regime change by any measure. A \u201cnew\u201d council presided over Thursday\u2019s hearing on the proposed Green Mountain Data Center \u201cCampus,\u201d which would consist of seven two-story data centers, each with a 138,000-square-foot footprint and 65 feet tall.<\/p>\n
Moran and Andreoli didn\u2019t show up to face the music. Their absence at roll call drew a chorus of boos that would surely have been louder if they attended. To his credit, Guman was there, and posed some pertinent questions. The Green Mountain team\u2019s testimony was more credible than the fantastical claptrap offered by representatives of the proposed Wildcat Ridge Data Center \u201cCampus\u201d at a hearing the previous week.<\/p>\n
The Green Mountain team seemed organized, honest(ish) and prepared for criticism. It didn\u2019t matter. They were there to sell something no one in the crowd of 300-plus wants. The opposition rightly sees invasive data center development as an existential threat. All the gifted firetrucks and \u201cinduced\u201d jobs in the world won\u2019t change that.<\/p>\n
Of the countless shouts from the crowd, the one I wrote down in capital letters said it all:<\/p>\n
\u201cTHESE ARE OUR LIVES!!\u201d<\/p>\n
Invasive data center developers are up against an organized, educated and earnest opposition willing to do the work. Mostly.<\/p>\n
It pains me to poke the opposition, but I play the cards I\u2019m dealt. A flyer recently posted on the Stop Archbald Data Centers Facebook page solicited viewers to copy and paste an email urging state and county officials to support a temporary moratorium on data center development. It included \u201cmugshots\u201d of the politicos that might as well have been captured in a circus mirror.<\/p>\n
In the lineup on the flyer, I would swear state Sen. Marty Flynn, D-22, was Dean Norris, the actor who played Hank Schrader in \u201cBreaking Bad.\u201d The image of Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby would fit in an online ad for \u201cTai Chi Walking for Ripped Grandpas.\u201d Commissioner Bill Gaughan looks like a teenage Will Ferrell. The flyer is a glossy, goofy mess.<\/p>\n
Why? Because the flyer is \u201cAI slop.\u201d COMMUNITY NOTE: Using generative AI to solicit opposition to AI data centers is like littering to protest landfills. It\u2019s an unforced error that invites developers and bootlickers to accuse the opposition of hypocrisy and unseriousness because it embodies both.<\/p>\n
I discussed the AI flyer with Kelsey Pazanski Wargo and Justin Healey of Stop Archbald Data Centers at Thursday\u2019s hearing. Both agreed it was a bad look and promised the group will do whatever it can to stop \u201cAI slop\u201d on the page.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not as easy as it seems. The Facebook group has more than 6,000 members, some from other states and communities across the country. The platform allows a maximum of 10 rules for group participation, all of which have been used, Justin said.<\/p>\n
He said he planned to post an appeal for a moratorium on sullying the page and the group with \u201cAI slop.\u201d That\u2019s great, but such an appeal shouldn\u2019t be necessary. Ultimately, it\u2019s up to individuals to police themselves.<\/p>\n
The use of \u201cAI slop\u201d in anti-data-center advocacy is not limited to Stop Archbald Data Centers. \u201cDigital creators\u201d do it routinely with no apparent sense of irony or self-reflection. It\u2019s also lazy. The AI industry writ large is a sucker bet on humanity\u2019s addiction to ease. The industry\u2019s dealers are banking on our willingness to surrender our creativity to automation. Why do the work when an AI gremlin can do it for you at lightning speed?<\/p>\n
Because the work is what gives the product worth. All AI offers is a soulless, shaky imitation of work. The product is a Marty Flynn you can\u2019t tell from Hank Schrader.<\/p>\n
If you can\u2019t or won\u2019t grasp the self-owning futility of that, you\u2019re stacking the deck against yourself.<\/p>\n
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is a terrible poker player. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the deck is stacked against you, it\u2019s smart to demand a reshuffle. Local, organized opposition to invasive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1590,2116,1591,182,3052,139,1559,1560,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-145170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-chris-kelly","tag-data-centers","tag-facebook","tag-local-news","tag-midvalley","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}