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The moral panic over data centres is foolish

economist.com

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Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#161

Post by tzs »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #149
tzs wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've not seen a single politician calling for statewide bans on golf courses. I've not seen a single state where anyone is trying to build a ton of new golf courses. There are around 140 being built in the whole country, and I think the most in any one state is under a dozen in Florida. There are more than an order of magnitude more data centers under construction with some states having more data centers under con…

I seem to recall that data centers require orders of magnitude less water than a golf course too if you want to compare apples to apples. Look, just say what you mean. If you think "AI is BAD" just say that, don't try to couch it in some disingenuous argument about water usage or climate change.

I did say what I meant. You overlooked the context.

The person I was replying to was trying to make inferences from the fact that data centers have become a statewide issue in some states but golf courses have not.

My point is that because golf courses are being built at a much lower rate than data centers they remain just local issues in most places. Try to build 200 golf courses at the same time in some state and I bet you'll see that get statewide attention.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#162

Post by measurablefunc »

Sharlin wrote: post #160
measurablefunc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about it? Data centers are not built in residential zones.

I don't know where you live, but at least around here you don't build anything bigger than a garden shed without the municipality's permission. Something massive and externality-y like a data center is going to go through all the municipal planning steps, a multi-year process, even if wherever you want to build it is already zoned for industrial use.

Still don't see what that has to do with what I wrote? Texas has a pipeline of these things set up to go & the Memphis one is still out of code because of the gas turbines they're using. They're going to keep building them because the banks keep financing them regardless of the regulatory burden.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#163

Post by CamperBob2 »

bayindirh wrote: post #158
CamperBob2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commuting for work with a car is mostly a US problem. 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, m…

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

OK, I see I should have used "trillions of dollars worth of hardware capable of performing not-so-precise floating point calculations at the exaflops level" as the basis for my question. The hyperscalers are making a singularity-or-nothing bet on this stuff; there are no other uses for this much hardware of this type. If there were, such hardware would already be in place.

(IMHO, the fact that AI models tolerate absurdly-low precision means that we're doing something wrong and wasteful in our entire computational approach to the field, but that's neither here nor there.)

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#164

Post by unified101 »

CPLX wrote: post #21

Memo to anyone in the tech community who doesn’t agree with this: People fucking hate you and don’t trust you and are convinced, not without reason, that you have the specific goal and intention of destroying their way of life and ability to provide for their families. They also feel like they were never consulted in any of this and that nobody is representing their interests. You can agree or disagree with that poin…

Lets say I like AI it makes my life easy and I don't mind datacenters.

You seem to have a problem with capitalism. Not AI or datacenters. Capitalism isnt working right now. Ask for that to be abolished. Don't point your finger at a genuinely useful and accessible technology.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#165

Post by piloto_ciego »

tzs wrote: post #161
piloto_ciego wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall that data centers require orders of magnitude less water than a golf course too if you want to compare apples to apples. Look, just say what you mean. If you think "AI is BAD" just say that, don't try to couch it in some disingenuous argument about water usage or climate change.

I did say what I meant. You overlooked the context. The person I was replying to was trying to make inferences from the fact that data centers have become a statewide issue in some states but golf courses have not. My point is that because golf courses are being built at a much lower rate than data centers they remain just local issues in most places. Try to build 200 golf courses at the same time in some state and I…

The fact that golf courses use an order of magnitude more resources than a data center should certainly factor into the context.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#166

Post by goodmythical »

sanbor wrote: post #145
goodmythical wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can is doing an awful lot of heaving lifting there. Given that my sink cannot contain 20 gallons of water and that I do not even fill my sink full to do my dishes by hand, I cannot possibly be using 20 gallons of water to do my dishes when I do my dishes by hand.

Agreed. I was trying to make the point dishwashers use less water than washing by hand [1]. To what extend I haven’t found much research. BTW many people have water running constantly while doing the dishes. [1]: https://www.epa.gov/watersense/start-saving#save-indoors

I understand, but the point is that they don't do so categorically.

They might, and even probably often do, but not always.

If the intent is genuinely water conservation, it is important to understand that there may be situations in which the dishwasher is not the most conservative option.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#167

Post by piloto_ciego »

bayindirh wrote: post #152
piloto_ciego wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are also in a time when most people would prefer to use that water for drinking, washing, cleaning… basically anything except data centres. And those people are stupid or to be charitable "ignorant." Full stop. I'm not trying to be an ass here, I mean it genuinely. Those people are ignorant at best. Email runs on datacenters, Google runs on datacenters, netflix needs them. Delta airlines uses data centers to rou…

> Watching the biggest pirates I've known suddenly talk about "defending artists" and strengthening copyright is amusing, but it points to a bigger problem. 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…

[dead]

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#168

Post by ChiperSoft »

jedberg wrote: post #15

I have a lot of left leaning non-tech friends. They are all very much against AI data centers. I've built AI data centers, and I keep trying to educate them, but they just won't listen. The water is mostly part of a closed system. Sure, you need a lot to build one, but once it's running it's pretty water efficient. The lack of green power is a problem, but as the article points out, you now have a large customer subs…

> But the government could easily fix these problems with regulations that apply broadly, not just to datacenters.

Even if you can get legislators to pass regulation, enforcing it is a constant battle, and odds are they'll just pay a fine and keep on violating the regulations.

It's a much easier fight to keep a DC out of your community to begin with.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#169

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #154
agentultra wrote: post #22

> just about everything in modern life, from streaming Netflix to running a dishwasher, consumes water at levels that can be portrayed as wasteful by hair-shirt environmentalists. Ad-hominems in an Economist article. This reads more like an opinion piece than reporting. There are plenty of documented problems with water usage of data centres. Some can use it efficiently but it costs more to do so and many (most?) do…

Compare data centers to golf courses. But many people like golf courses 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 m…

Perhaps people can manage to do without "AI" data centres

Generations of them already know how

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#170

Post by sleight42 »

"The moral panic over data centres is foolish", says editorial in a news journal that is foremost about making money.

The rest of us pay higher and higher electrical bills because of data centers.

Data centers create jobs during construction but few jobs after.

Strategically, though, the US is cooked if we don't keep ahead of the pack.

Hell of a tradeoff.

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