Investigators recovered two stolen trailers carrying $1.3 million in data center supplies, including copper wire and infrastructure equipment.
Investigators recovered two stolen trailers carrying $1.3 million in data center supplies, including copper wire and infrastructure equipment.
It’s fascinating how selective people’s moral principles become.
When it’s AI data centers being robbed, suddenly theft is funny, justified, or even worth celebrating. But if the victims were socialist politicians, transgender people, or any other group this community sympathizes with, the reaction would be outrage and demands for justice.
For the record, I have no issue with people supporting socialism or transgender rights. I only use those examples because they’re emotionally charged topics in this community, and they illustrate how quickly people’s standards change depending on who the victim is.
Either theft is wrong regardless of who the victim is, or your moral standard changes depending on whether you like the target. That’s not a principle. It’s favoritism dressed up as ethics.
The difference is that the data centers aren’t part of the community. They’re invasive, coming in to steal the water and power and spoil the area with heat and noise. The locals have no say or control over them.
Turning a blind eye towards damage done to them is a form of self defense.
AI data centers aren’t people and are owned by corporations. The trans people and socialist politicians you hate don’t waste obscene amounts of electricity and water. The trans people and socialist politicians you hate don’t store data for surveillance capitalism. Trans people and socialist politicians aren’t a plagiarism machine. Trans people and socialist politicians don’t pollute everything with soulless slop.
One is a tool of oppression. The other is the people being oppressed.
When the tables are turned, they don’t give a fuck, why should we?
deleted by creator
LLMs are built on theft of intellectual property and copyrighted products by capital managers who hoard wealth propped up on stolen wages and exploitation, look in the mirror before you yap on about selective application of morals.
So absolutely none of that has anything to do with people stealing copper from AI data center construction sites.
You can do all the moral finger-pointing you want. The moment you start selectively deciding who is and isn’t a thief is the moment the justice system starts breaking down. You don’t get to decide who can and cannot commit crimes. We already have enough of that in our American political system, considering who our president is.
To address your other point, no copyright infringement has been found to have occurred in the training of flagship AI models. If you’d like to debate that, that’s fine, but I don’t really feel like arguing about it because we’re talking about the morality of theft, which you apparently view as something that exists on a selective gradient. Good for you, sir. Go play Robin Hood in your own neighborhood.
Wealth inequality is one of the worst and most pressing issues in the world today. There is nothing I consider more damaging than the growing wealth gap, especially in America. You’re absolutely right about that. But once again, it has absolutely nothing to do with construction materials being stolen from AI data center construction sites.
Isn’t this exactly what a jury of your peers is intended for? So people - the members of the affected community - can decide who is and isn’t a thief, after ensuring they’re provided with all the facts of the case?
It broke down long ago. You care more about copper in a techbro’s plagiarism machine than you do about all the wage theft ever.
Doesn’t it though? If there weren’t such rampant wealth inequality perhaps people wouldn’t be so inclined towards a life of crime. It has at least a little bit to do with it.
All right. I’ll concede that point. If there wasn’t such a massive wealth Gap. People wouldn’t have to steal like this. In this particular case you are right and they stand corrected.
What the heck are you on about? You can absolutely have a consistent moral framework that destroys data centers while protecting individuals. Hell, call it humanist or something.
Sure, you absolutely can. That’s not in contention. I am simply admonishing how two faced Lemmy is.
Amazing that your ‘gotcha’ is just two false statements.
Theft isn’t wrong regardless of the victim - it’s nuanced, just like all crime. That’s why we have very complicated legal processes to determine guilt and appropriate punishments.
Our morals don’t change depending on whether we like the target - it’s that our judgments are based on context.
The cool thing about ethics, morals, principles, etc… They’re all made up. We invented them. They have no objectivity (as far as we know) and therefore can and have changed based on our feelings. “Ethics” is just humans agreeing to do things a certain way because it makes us feel good, or doing things the other way makes us feel bad. There is no objective truth to it that you can so easily plug in a problem and get an objective answer.
Or is the world you want to live in just completely binary? No room for nuance?
Wow. That is a lot of words for someone to say they have no clue what they are talking about.
Why is Lemmy like this?
There is no established consensus that subjective morality is correct over objective morality, or vice versa. Both are philosophical positions that have been debated for centuries. Acting as though one side has already been proven correct is not an argument.
The point remains simple: stealing property that does not belong to you is wrong. It does not matter whether the owner is a person, a corporation, a political group, or an organization you dislike. The act itself does not magically become moral because you disagree with the person who owns the property.
The same applies to murder. Killing someone does not stop being murder because the person is considered immoral. If I killed Adolf Hitler before his crimes were committed, it would still be murder unless there was a legitimate justification for doing so. The morality of an action cannot be determined solely by how much we dislike the target.
Are there circumstances where people may feel justified stealing materials from AI data center construction sites? Maybe. Context matters. What does not change is that the law recognizes it as theft, and theft has traditionally been considered immoral because it involves taking something that belongs to someone else through force, coercion, or deception.
The criminal justice system already accounts for circumstances. It recognizes different levels of severity, intent, and harm. That has never been the argument.
The issue is the blatant inconsistency I see on this platform. Some actions are condemned as immoral when they happen to people or organizations that the community supports, while those same actions are suddenly justified when the target is politically unpopular.
You do not get to have a moral framework that changes depending on who benefits from the outcome. If theft is wrong, it is wrong regardless of whether the victim is someone you like or someone you dislike.
There is a reason Lady Justice is blindfolded while holding a balance. Justice is supposed to be applied equally, not based on personal preference, ideology, or who people think deserves it.
Who the victim is, is part of what makes it wrong or not. A parent shoplifting baby formula is less wrong than a parent stealing formula from another parent. A dude stealing formula to scalp is worse than the first two. A dude stealing formula from a parent is the worst.
It’s really simple math.
There certainly are different levels of criminal severity, and you’ve outlined that perfectly. But it has absolutely nothing to do with this because they’re still stealing from someone. The people who prosecute and sentence the thieves can take those circumstances into account when determining an appropriate punishment.
Furthermore, you’ve failed to take your own example to its logical conclusion. The reason people are stealing baby formula in the first place is because it’s too expensive. In fact, everything is becoming too expensive. That’s a much broader and more serious societal issue than the act of stealing formula itself.
It’s not about criminality. It’s comparative morality.
You’re the first person to actually provide a constructive response to my comment. Thank you.
But we can definitely examine the comparative morality here. Let’s take a moment to consider who the victims actually are when large amounts of materials are stolen, regardless of where that theft occurs.
The first affected party is obviously the entity that owns the property, in this case the corporation building the data center. We can acknowledge that many people have little sympathy for a massive corporation losing money, and I understand that perspective. However, I still maintain that theft is theft regardless of who the victim is.
But what about everyone else affected by that theft? What about the construction workers who cannot work because projects are delayed? What about the construction companies that are contracted to complete the work and now have additional costs because of someone else’s actions? Why should those people bear the consequences of someone else’s crime?
And what about the thieves themselves? Are we automatically assuming they are morally justified individuals who are taking from the wealthy and redistributing it to those in need? That is not what is happening. These materials are being stolen and sold for personal profit through illegal channels. The people committing the theft are not acting out of some noble principle. They are benefiting themselves at someone else’s expense.
So who exactly are we supporting, and who are we condemning? I do not see any meaningful moral high ground in celebrating theft simply because the victim is a corporation. The entire chain of events, from the theft itself to the people harmed by the consequences, is far more complicated than “rich company loses money, therefore it is good.”
The most frustrating part is that this larger picture is often ignored. People focus only on the corporation taking a financial hit while overlooking everyone else affected by the crime. That is a very short-sighted and incomplete way to evaluate the situation.
… Yeah, and AI datacenters being built speculatively is the same resource hoarding bullshit as high formula pricing.
Also idgaf about laws and crime, I said better and worse, right and wrong. That has nothing to do with legal, because if it did we wouldn’t be having these discussions about formula or datacenters, those kind of wealth abuses would actually be illegal.
I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about at this point sorry.
Theft is wrong when you’re taking something away from someone who will miss it. Multi-billion dollar corporations will barely notice if their shit gets stolen, so I don’t care if it does.
I’m not asking you to care. What I’m saying is that you’re morally inept by not caring. Either you admonish theft across the board or you don’t. People are stealing from someone else regardless of who they are.
You don’t have to care, you’re just wrong.
Not a fan of Robin Hood, then?
I’m okay with not meeting your strict black and white standard of morality. In fact, I find it immoral. “You stole bread because you were starving?? You’re EVIL!!”
We’re not talking about people stealing bread because they’re hungry. We’re talking about people stealing millions of dollars worth of construction materials for personal gain.
Do you really think the thieves stealing those materials from AI data centers are morally justified by their actions?
I’ll even go one step further and fully admit that I don’t have a simple defense for someone stealing food because they’re starving. That situation is morally complicated and can absolutely be debated from a philosophical perspective. But justice is blind for a reason. We can acknowledge the circumstances behind a crime, show compassion toward the person committing it, and still recognize that the act itself is theft.
I’m not sure we can apply that same reasoning to organized theft of millions of dollars in construction materials.
Also, you’re the third person to tell me I’m being “black and white” about this. That criticism doesn’t really apply. I have consistently said that justice exists on a gradient and that different crimes carry different levels of severity. Recognizing that all theft is wrong does not mean I believe all theft deserves identical punishment.
Please don’t argue against a position I haven’t taken.
Theft is too vague to be given a blanket right/wrong verdict for all situations.
Failure to recognise nuance is morally inept.
We have courts and juries specifically because morality is not a hard rule.
This particular tack definitely seems to be the main flavor of responses to my comment at this point.
It is a really strange logical conclusion that many of you have arrived at.
What it sounds like you’re saying is that if the theft is morally correct, then it is somehow no longer theft and is perfectly justified. That is a very strange argument to make in the first place.
That is not how morality works. That is not how anything works.
If a starving person steals bread, they may have a morally compelling justification for their actions. We can debate whether that theft was ethically permissible under those circumstances. But they still committed theft. The act itself does not magically stop being theft because we understand or sympathize with the reason behind it.
The distinction between whether an action is understandable, justified, or morally excusable has been debated since the time of the Greeks.
You are reacting to masses but attributing caricature as if the masses were individuals. You’re being played by the game. On any story there’s X% of people who are fuming over it, but its not the same people. You’re reacting to the system but treating broad categories as persons. By default, you’re strawmanning, and there’s power to that, but until you grow out of that mindset, you are ruled by the strawmen you create for yourself, or rather, who our cultural engineers create for you.
I am 14 and this is deep.
Do not bring up how deep fourteen year olds are around me. This is not what I need to be thinking about in my new Mormon life.
I see one unethical person robbing another unethical person. It’s the same reason I don’t care when bad things happen to criminals. Transgenders don’t fall into the same category as billionaires.
If a socialist did something unethical I’d root against them too.
You’re absolutely correct. As would I. The fact that someone is a socialist or transgender has no bearing on the content of their character. I was simply using examples of emotionally charged topics on this particular platform.
But theft is theft. Luigi Mangione murdered the CEO of United healthcare. That is not up for debate. Whether Luigi Mangione did something morally correct is an entirely separate and highly contested question.
I will still condemn Luigi Mangione for resorting to violence in the same way that I will condemn people stealing from AI data centers. Theft is theft. Murder is murder.
On a personal level, I couldn’t care less who steals what from a data center. The fewer of these things we have, the better. But my personal opinion does not change the principle. If I’m going to condemn theft when it affects people or causes I support, then I should condemn it when it affects people or causes I dislike as well.
Actually, it is. That’s what the whole, y’know, trial and “innocent until proven guilty” thing is about.
The current defense strategy for Luigi is emotional distress. They are fully admitting that he shot the man.
The question at trial will be. Is he culpable for the crimes.