I think in this case that’s not exactly right. TikTok isn’t exactly foundational to our society, you can get by without it.

Smart phone or other things this sentence is usually trotted out for not so much.

Tiktok isn't. But how many people can get by without using any service that depends on datacenters?

Many people. I bet I could. You only need cash.

pretty sure the traffic lights you use on the road rely on data centers. sames goes for the buses and trains you may or may not use. The weather report too.

Pretty sure in Europe I can just walk or bike to places. I can use my local AI to get the weather report by just looking at the sky.

A ridiculous gotcha on a site where every other article is about using AI to automate your job, solve frontier math problems, or port old video games to new platforms. So to be clear nothing is our fault here. It's all just about the billionaires "making us" use AI for all these things?

Companies do mandate AI usage from the top, no?

Who mandated people reversing and porting old games for fun in their home?

If my government just decided to give me personally $1B taxpayer money without strings attached I'd 100% accept that in ecstasy. So if I say "spending money this way is not fair" I'm a hypocrite???