dito
If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
121–130 of 133 posts
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#122Project Stargate
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean the framing is so silly. "If bank vaults are so great, why would you not advertise their locations". It's a mystery, is what it is.
Well, banks aren't kept secret and the vaults are usually inside.
The point is that there is zero positive correlation between a vault doing its job and telling everyone where exactly it is. The bank would happily have it hidden in different secret dimension, if they could. It makes the vault safer. It's better.
"Why would you not tell us how to get to the secret dimension if it's so great?" It's just a dumb question.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Data centers use very little water, right down to none if they want. And state-of-the-art hyperscale data centers really are operated by AIs. There are many, many reasons to oppose datacenters. Not the least is they're there to drive inequality to ever-greater heights and they're 21st century version of the toxic waste dump (put 'em where people are weak and marginalized). But water use is a very simple argument, a…
Sorry but no, you don't get to lie just because your arguments don't resonate with the public. That makes you a bad person.
> Sorry but no, you don't get to lie just because your arguments don't resonate with the public. That makes you a bad person.
You misunderstand: data centers usually do use a lot of water, and I think the lie is "data centers use very little water." I believe it's possible for them to use little, but that's a choice that costs money. What I mean was instead of arguing the nuances of cooling or a particular project (which probably keeps all the details secret anyway), it makes sense to simplify and emphasize the water use angle.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, banks aren't kept secret and the vaults are usually inside.
The point is that there is zero positive correlation between a vault doing its job and telling everyone where exactly it is. The bank would happily have it hidden in different secret dimension, if they could. It makes the vault safer. It's better. "Why would you not tell us how to get to the secret dimension if it's so great?" It's just a dumb question.
> The point is that there is zero positive correlation between a vault doing its job and telling everyone where exactly it is.
Yes, but the more important correlation is between keeping something secret and it being a bad idea (at least for some people). It's like using security through obscurity - it has to be kept secret because it's flawed, whereas a bank vault doesn't need to be in a secret location because it has other means of protecting its contents.
There's so many examples of closed source "security" that is just a clusterfuck. Not that mistakes aren't made with open source, but knowing that other people will likely look at your code tends to make people put a bit more thought into it.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're conflating AI and AI Data centres. What kind of "jobs" does AI data centre creates? More jobs for factory workers who assemble video cards to be shipped and installed in a rack?
I think OP is talking about the downstream implications of productivity growth. Which is still yet hypothetical.
The downstream portion isn't proven, and more importantly, even if it was, it's not localized to where the data center is built (and its effect on the local population).
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are they bunk science? I’m not an environmental expert, but the research papers and policies I’ve read don’t seem to be egregiously wrong. I’m asking genuinely, I’m open to changing my mind here.
Regarding water usage, in general data centers do not use more water than other types of heavy manufacturing > The Georgia data center is only using ~2% of the county’s water. For comparison, a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant is using ~4% of the county’s water. A construction plant for Rivian cars is using about the same amount of water as Meta’s data center. The data center is functioning like any other normal in…
> > The Georgia data center is only using ~2% of the county’s water. For comparison, a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant is using ~4% of the county’s water. A construction plant for Rivian cars is using about the same amount of water as Meta’s data center. The data center is functioning like any other normal industry in the county.
How much employment and localized value/tax revenue is created by the pharma plant compared to the data center to offset the environmental effect?
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#128Secret like this announcement by Google? https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/infrastructure-and-clo...
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that there is zero positive correlation between a vault doing its job and telling everyone where exactly it is. The bank would happily have it hidden in different secret dimension, if they could. It makes the vault safer. It's better. "Why would you not tell us how to get to the secret dimension if it's so great?" It's just a dumb question.
> The point is that there is zero positive correlation between a vault doing its job and telling everyone where exactly it is. Yes, but the more important correlation is between keeping something secret and it being a bad idea (at least for some people). It's like using security through obscurity - it has to be kept secret because it's flawed, whereas a bank vault doesn't need to be in a secret location because it ha…
That confuses how offense/defense works in software vs real world. Publishing your vault layout will not lead to a lot of people want to use the vault and in the process submitting "patches" that you then can use and make your vault better. A built vault is not something that is easily malleable.
More people can however work on a great plan to attack it, which only has to work once, to be worth it.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technicians are constantly behind in work. Many data centers are pulling 24/7/365 shifts to keep up with demand. Larger data centers have hundreds of full time employees. Yes many servers are left in fail over states for long periods of time, but that can only be done because new capacity is actively being deployed to make up for that fail over. Modern data centers are far too big for a single person to be repairing…
100-200 FTE's per data center by one estimate. I have let's say 17 data centers being built in my town. 1700 jobs is not enough according to the people in opposition. The real number is likely higher, and my town is under 30k people.
Its not just quantity of jobs though. Are the jobs going to locals? Are the technicians coming from some small town that was chosen for the economics of building and runnign the datacenter? It seems fairly likely they would pick a small town that doesnt really have the knowledge base to serve as technicians. I mean it would be cool if they hired local.