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How long until the AI companies start charging more to people who use AI services, but live in areas that do things like this? NIMBY causes energy prices to go up in areas that won't allow drilling, refining, nuclear or nat gas development, or power lines. When will the same happen for things like AI services?
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Bingo. Data centers are a net negative wherever they are. Giant, employ far fewer people than a grocery store after they’re built, crank up electricity costs, use tons of water, air pollution if it’s self-powered, noise pollution (it’s really worth watching Benn Jordan’s video on infrasound,) ugly… the only local entities that win are the landowner and the municipality that collects taxes on them. Though I’ve seen so…
noise pollution (it’s really worth watching Benn Jordan’s video on infrasound,) Noise from data centers is a real issue, but Benn's measurements and analysis are not great (speeding up the sample rate to demonstrate frequency effects is just wrong, among other issues).
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Don't know why people think Texas doesn't have natural beauty. It's a huge state.
I'm from Nevada, another state that people presume is all desert. (Really, it's all mountains.) The only part of Texas I've driven is between Austin and S Antonio. It was perhaps the least-beautiful wilderness I've driven through. It really did just feel like desert and billboards - like if Walmart was a highway. But I also presume Texas marketing itself as a less-regulated alternative (e.g. to California) is why it'…
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> AI are much more energy-hungry than car manufacturing This is not even remotely true[1]. Large auto plants use on the order of 200–250 megawatts of power, which is either on par with a data center or slightly more than a data center depending on the size and how cooling is handled. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/Industr...
I suspect uou've misread that document. It is a good document though. It's saying a large parts plant uses ~188,000 MWh, I think per year. A modern AI data center uses 20-100MW+ of electricity. Those two things aren't the same. 20MW of continuous electricity use (which AI data centers do) translates to 175,000 MWh of electricity per year. That's about the same as a minimum and might be 5+ times more. This document is…
I understand the high end builds to have exceeded 100 kW per rack at this point, with the largest sites exceeding 1 GW (ie 10x your upper bound). So the smallest datacenters use as much as the largest auto plants, and the largest datacenters use 100x that.
Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natural beauty to protect [per square mile], so it can and maybe should have a different set of rules. That's cool.
They sure have a right to enact policies that keep them economically & demographically irrelevant. https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...
If it meant that residents couldn't use AI, then the bill would be certainly dead. Given that, the bill is just for show, and not actually serious.
What does this have with the use of AI? You can use the services of data centers thousands of miles away.
My comment is a statement on hypocrisy, and how if people had to bear the full cost of their decisions, they would decide differently.
Maine is codifying this hypocrisy for shallow minded political points.
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The major data centers being built for AI are much more energy-hungry than car manufacturing, and they're being built at a pace that the US energy grid simply cannot accommodate in the short term... or quite possibly even the long term, considering the US's extreme aversion to expanding nuclear power. Also, you can call it Luddism if you want, but a car factory is going to bring a lot more net benefit to the average…
> AI are much more energy-hungry than car manufacturing This is not even remotely true[1]. Large auto plants use on the order of 200–250 megawatts of power, which is either on par with a data center or slightly more than a data center depending on the size and how cooling is handled. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/tools/Industr...
The document you linked says that a large auto assembly plant consumes around 188,000 MWh annually (with regional variation). By my quick math that is less than 22 megawatts baseline load (24/7/365).
There is a mention that natural gas and other fuels being used on-site, are you converting those to MWh equivalent? I'm not as familiar with that conversion, but from a quick online calculator I found it would still be under 75 megawatt for electrical and fuel-equivalent combined.
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In what universe is requiring them the only alternative to banning them? The actual alternative is obvious: not banning them.
The consequence of saying they cannot choice to not have them. Is saying your requiring them to have them whether or not the people their want them. Its also a temporary moratorium. Maybe the industry should have been more responsible and not pasted so many externalities on to the public sector if they didnt want to face regulations. I think the highest parent comment basically hasn't engaged in any of the cost benef…
Sorry, but this is nonsense. They are currently not banned in Maine, yet they do not have them. There is obviously no requirement to have them.
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That was my point. It doesn't all have to be taxes. It can also be agreed upon mitigation maintenance. Better filtration on gas turbines, etc. Green spaces to mitigate sound impact. I don't know, I am just wondering if there is a model that can be designed that makes a data center "balance" within its local environment instead of getting the opposite, tax incentives. Right now I agree, they get to socialize the costs…
youre starting a good conversation but as per typical internet fashion you are being critiqued as though your direction of thought is being presented as some sort of final solution. i completely agree that we should be looking into modelling this in terms of what is possible to mitigate its impact and what does that look like with current technology and costs, and where would we need to develop new tech, and what wou…