AI data centers are disruptive from the context. They’ve been built haphazardly and quickly. Evaporative coolers, gas turbines, big lots in urban areas; all this is done because they literally cannot wait 6 more months to construct things properly.
It’s billionaire FOMO.
So they end up spewing gas into neighborhoods or neighborhood not because of sheer volume, but because they just plopped the data centers down with zero mindfulness, nor any time for infrastructure to adapt.
…But.
On the whole, their water use is minuscule.
So is their energy use compared to, say, metal foundry industries.
Or emissions compared to concrete or ranching industries. Or shipping.
Not that it makes those industries unproblematic.
And I’m counting the hardware construction here, too. Fabs are intense, the datacenter supply chain is long, but the scale really isn’t that big. I mean, literally every Nvidia and AMD AI GPU comes from just one factory, in Taiwan, and the other components are pretty modest too.
How do you think that compares to, say, every steel foundry on the planet?
And the notion that “AI” will somehow require a fraction of all human economic output is propaganda from Sam Altman to trick people into giving him money.
It’s a lie.
It’s a lie for many nested reasons. We cannot possibly use that much “AI,” and even if we did, we shouldn’t, and even if we do anyway, it’s getting exponentially less intensive to run. Not more expensive.
Yes.
AI data centers are disruptive from the context. They’ve been built haphazardly and quickly. Evaporative coolers, gas turbines, big lots in urban areas; all this is done because they literally cannot wait 6 more months to construct things properly.
It’s billionaire FOMO.
So they end up spewing gas into neighborhoods or neighborhood not because of sheer volume, but because they just plopped the data centers down with zero mindfulness, nor any time for infrastructure to adapt.
…But.
On the whole, their water use is minuscule.
So is their energy use compared to, say, metal foundry industries.
Or emissions compared to concrete or ranching industries. Or shipping.
Not that it makes those industries unproblematic.
And I’m counting the hardware construction here, too. Fabs are intense, the datacenter supply chain is long, but the scale really isn’t that big. I mean, literally every Nvidia and AMD AI GPU comes from just one factory, in Taiwan, and the other components are pretty modest too.
How do you think that compares to, say, every steel foundry on the planet?
And the notion that “AI” will somehow require a fraction of all human economic output is propaganda from Sam Altman to trick people into giving him money.
It’s a lie.
It’s a lie for many nested reasons. We cannot possibly use that much “AI,” and even if we did, we shouldn’t, and even if we do anyway, it’s getting exponentially less intensive to run. Not more expensive.