The social media platform X said it uncovered a Chinese influence operation to turn Americans against AI development and construction of data centers.
X’s Safety team found a bot farm comprised of about 200,000 suspected “Chinese inauthentic accounts,” many of which attempted to control discussions about AI, data centers and their energy-policy-related costs.
Advocates for U.S. AI and data centers warn that hitting the brakes now would give China a big advantage in the AI race. But U.S. voters increasingly oppose data centers, and politicians in both parties are looking for ways to appease them.
X found that 200 accounts from the bot farm network were posting allegations that data centers hike household electricity prices and put massive strain on the power grid.
“Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,” X’s Global Government Affairs team said.
Other posts included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public’s expense.
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Data centers, once seen as an economic development boon for communities, have become politically toxic in the U.S. Voters say they are fed up with high utility bills while energy-hungry data centers get generous tax breaks. Democrats, especially the socialists and far-left, push for bans on new data centers, and many Republicans are abandoning support for data centers amid this year’s midterm election campaigns.
President Trump remains a top supporter of AI development and building data centers. At a roundtable discussion on tech policy last month, Mr. Trump warned that “other nations are trying to get us to slow down.”
He said that competing countries are “spending money on propaganda, on press, PR, trying to convince everybody that this isn’t a positive thing. And if we don’t do this, we’re going to be left behind.”
OpenAI’s threat intelligence team recently prohibited several ChatGPT accounts that created English- and Chinese-language content to move Americans away from building data centers needed for AI development and deployment.
OpenAI said that a Chinese technology company working for Chinese provincial governments is behind the online propaganda campaign against U.S data centers and AI companies.
X said it will keep policing its platform to root out bot farms and other bad actors.
“We remain committed to maintaining an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest. We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy,” X said.
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