The moral panic over data centres is foolish

Millenial here, hello. Yes, we were the biggest pirates, because we had no means to buy the music we liked, period. CDs were kidney-money (if the album we liked available at all), digital distribution was non-existent and cassettes were sounding worse than first generation shellac records in some cases.

I personally bought most of the music I used to pirate. I buy the eBooks I like, and keep a backup copy for myself. Heck I even hounded a CD from a disbanded group for a couple of years and ordered it online because the music was good and they deserved another sale.

Because for us, piracy was about the service at first. We went to concerts, bought merch, etc. to support them.

Also this brings me to the second point: You miss the point entirely about datacenters & AI datacenters. Second, you miss the point between AI, the tech and the building of AI the tech.

First, datacenters are nothing new, and nobody is opposed to "normal" datacenters. The difference between a standard datacenter and AI datacenter is almost night and day (power density, compute load, hardware portfolio, etc.). I always talk about AI datacenters, because I work at a datacenter. I know how these things can be made more environmentally friendly, but no, everybody has to move fast and break things. In this case, we're mostly breaking down our planet, accelerating water stress and global warming related side effects while destroying livelihoods of communities as a whole.

Second is AI as a tech vs. how it's built as a tech. Heck, I'm not even opposed to copyrighted works used as training data, many of us want consent. Control over whether their works are used for training or not. Not compensation, not money, but consent. Not to be seen as slave of these AI providers to feed them.

For artists, compensation is their right. Have you ever composed music, or performed even? Do you know how much effort goes into doing this (hint: We used to rehearse for 10 hours/week for 14 weeks to give a 90 minute concert)? Watch this [0] if you want some insight how a single song is assembled over ideas, takes, tries with blood, sweat and tears. Same for writing. Did you read Hyperion Cantos, Lord of the Rings, Neuromancer, Zones of Thought, etc.? I mean, even the fact checking in Ready Player One could easily take a year. These books created worlds, changed minds and the authors of these books and others deserve some fair compensation for this.

You may find graphic design, art and photography mundane, but when you're not taking selfies and shooting stories or taking videos of a concert which you won't be able to enjoy because of the video-grabbing session for likes, these can be very powerful mediums for storytelling or getting your message across.

Not everyone is against AI as the tech. I am not. I have developed agent-based systems with emergent intelligence before people knew the term autonomous agent.

Yes, we need better laws to protect property rights in the space of ideas, but not to solely protect the jobs, but TO PROTECT THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMANS AND THEIR FREEDOM TO CREATE AND OWN THE THINGS THEY HAVE CREATED.

"You'll own nothing and be happy" is a drug to make masses comply, and unfortunately, you're apparently one of the flag carriers of that crowd.

This post is written with a real brain, approximately 10 fingers, at 1x by a physical human you can talk with.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLqhOEzpWyo

Compare data centers to refrigerators. But almost everyone likes refrigerators

Compare data centers to dishwashers. But many people like dishwashers

Compare data centers to almond trees. But many people like almonds

It goes on and on

If people really liked "AI" the way they like golf, refrigerators, dishwashers, almonds, etc., then data centers might be an easier sell

I don't think this opposition to data centers is "environmentalism", it has too much broad support. I think this is simply lack of enthusiasm for "AI". Silicon Valley and Redmond can effectively force people to use certain software but cannot make people like it

This third era of "AI" is probably going to end like the last two; reality will ensure this

Arguments for or against notwithstanding

And here we are, talking about the US. Great, that's settled.

OTOH, considering the proliferation of the EVs, greenhouse gas emissions from cars are going down

In the US, most electricity comes from carbon-based sources. EVs help, certainly, but it would still be best from an ecological standpoint if people didn't have to use them every day to get to work.

OTOH, many datacenters are installing their own greenhouse emitting power gensets.

Exactly, which is why we should work for grid renewal and expansion at the same time we build these things out. If the hyperscalers insist on building their own power plants, those power plants should be required to be (a) carbon-neutral; and (b) grid-tied.

These GPUs won't be scrapped soon, because besides AI, they are useful for accelerating not-so-precise floating point calculations en-masse.

Really. What are some other applications for not-so-precise floating point calculations at the exaflops level?

Proliferation of law skirting AI datacenters is a worldwide problem. Many companies are extending this to Europe as well, so AI datacenters is not a U.S. problem only.

From what I see in Electricity Maps[0], it's not clear cut. Some of the states have well over 50% of their generation is from carbon-free sources. As a general trend, west is greener than eastern US. So, no, EVs will have an impact there. However, you need electric semis a lot as a country since rail is not used a lot in the US as well.

> Really. What are some other applications for not-so-precise floating point calculations at the exaflops level?

In short, HPC. As a more detailed, by short list:

    - Weather and climate modeling.
    - Drug discovery.
    - Computational Fluid Dynamics.
    - Material science, behavioral and process analysis.
    - All kinds of large scale simulation which can be modeled with matrices.
    - Any kind of problem requiring linear algebra.

I manage HPC clusters, and sometimes develop code on them, so yeah.

[0]: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fif...