AI infras is starting to run into the same land using and energy also as heavy industries : when the datacenters compete for grid capacity water and industrial land at scale the local governments just stop treating them like just advanced softwares
Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
191–200 of 212 posts
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that most utilities like transport infrastructure and sewage treatment benefit local residents and the broader society directly. Datacenters are not utilities in the same way and have a much narrower social impact.
>Datacenters are not utilities in the same way and have a much narrower social impact. chatgpt has 900M weekly active users, so a significant fraction of the world population. Given that the user base probably skews towards rich countries, its proportion among the local population is probably even higher. On the other hand what do you think is the proportion of people who take trains, especially in the US? What about…
The _social_ utility of AI has yet to prove itself a net benefit. If it increases productivity great, but what about the displaced jobs, etc. Social impact isn't measured in active weekly users.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#193Unfortunately big tech will just pay it, they should be forbidden in first place.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't they pay much in taxes? hyperscalers are pretty profitable.
The hyperscalers aren't making sales directly from the data center, so there's not much to tax other than the land value, the electricity they use, and the few employee salaries. You'd need some sort of data ingress/egress tax.
Interesting. Just checked some numbers. So Coreweave has like $3bn in operating cashflow last quarter. Your point is that after we are done with all the capex/interest rate deductions/etc and look at a steady state business for a given CoreWeave datacenter, that net income won't be marked locally to a given datacenter.
Is that true though? If a Delaware corp is operating in most states, I believe they must file as a foreign corporation in that state; I'm surprised GAAP would not require them accruing some of this income to the locations that provided the work to do the income.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#195I would bet, 55% chance, that in 15 to 20 years that region will be filled with autonomous farms. Companies mostly run by AI, and labored by agricultural bots. Not an outcome that, even then, people will want. But we rarely get what we want.
I thought we wanted robots to take over the boring and back breaking jobs?
Well, of course. Of note, this region in question has a problem with a dearth of young people and specially young people wanting to take those jobs, and if it voted right-wing and populist, you don't need me to tell you what kind of solutions they don't like to their demographic issue.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#196This is surely a huge blow to all the hyperscalers looking to build datacenters in the agricultural regions of Italy.
Read the article man, Lombardy is basically in the center of Europe, compare Milan with Los Angeles and see how small it is actually > There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation. If the Milan hinterland is the most 'targeted' area, an increase in interest is also registered in the other provinces: in the rest of Lombardy t…
Agreed- my comment was tongue-in-cheek.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused, do they really have such an impact? They are of course big and expensive, but surely most datacenters are relatively innocuous in terms pollution and general disruption to the area compared to any regular heavy-industry site, right? Please let me know if I'm wrong, I'm not sure. EDIT: I do get it, it is mainly about local benefit not really about pollution or disruption, even if they are loud about that…
The noise pollution is quite significant in the immediate area, and the heat output notably raises outdoor temperatures in a surprisingly wide area. That also of course ignores air and water pollution caused by the increased demand on electricity generation (or jet turbines spun up in the parking lot). But the point is they suck up land and resources for no material or economic benefit to the local population. There'…
Picture a town of 50k people with crumbling infrastructure and suddenly a tech bro wants to build his data center megasite there.
And these tech bros don't REALLY want to build out the infrastructure. All they want is tax cuts, cheap land and free power/water.
The locals ofcourse are supposed to prostrate themselves before the Emperor for this wonderful opportunity.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t want to go back to the past, I want to go toward a future that looks good and fair for regular people. Technology doesn’t provide some divine mandate to build whatever will make the owners more money with no regard for people or the planet.
> I want to go toward a future that looks good and fair for regular people. Do we agree that moving towards a future that's somehow "more advanced" as compared to the present (i.e. isn't going back to the past) would likely require giving up some land, water, and energy? That is, that progress is always a trade-off? We don't have to agree that an AI-powered future specifically is "more advanced". For example, transit…
Sure, we agree on that. Everything has a cost. I’m a lifetime vegetarian also.
Just because “progress has a cost” doesn’t mean I have to support whatever the owner class decides is progress. They are explicitly telling us their plan for AI: to take our jobs. This isn’t speculation - the CEOs are literally saying this openly, and we should listen.
Sam Altman can’t just throw around the words “cure cancer” occasionally and expect us to not see what he’s doing. The unemployment issue? He used to say we would solve it with UBI, and recently said he no longer believes that will work, without providing an alternative. I guess we’re just on our own while he destroys our livelihoods now?
The future the hyperscalers want involves insane energy and water use. What do we gain out of this exchange? Right now it’s fun that Claude Code does our job for us, but if they pull off their plan we’re a few years away from massive concentration of power, mass unemployment, AI assisted warfare, unprecedented misinformation campaigns, etc.
I don’t think I’m crazy for questioning whether this is worth it.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I want to go toward a future that looks good and fair for regular people. Do we agree that moving towards a future that's somehow "more advanced" as compared to the present (i.e. isn't going back to the past) would likely require giving up some land, water, and energy? That is, that progress is always a trade-off? We don't have to agree that an AI-powered future specifically is "more advanced". For example, transit…
The answer is, through elections and picking officials that get to decide these things. Like they did here!
The real problem is that there is so much money in politics now that the freedom of choice through elections is often an illusion. Money decides what we do with our planet and resources more than we do.
Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I still haven't seen anybody demonstrating we have to do such thing. We do have to spent a bit of each for any new tech advancement, but the alarmist, disproportionate claim you make is really not helping. ArcelorMittal Dunkirk rolling & steel complex alone is ~450–550 hectares (more than colussus) and consume 2.23 TWh/year (colussus is ~2.6 TWh/year at 300 MW continuous load) and of course, water consumption for met…
The question is not about the cost the question is who pays that cost.
Tech companies clearly want to coast on the infrastructure built out by the government. Microsoft doesn't really want to pay 10 billion euro to upgrade the Dutch power supply.
What happens is that they will go to countries that let them pollute- a tale as old as the industrial revolution.