Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

thebrockovichreport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 133 posts

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#31

Post by everdrive »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #16

What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F). AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but i…

>but in return you are getting fewer jobs,

Certainly not in any meaningful way.

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#33

Post by klodolph »

zeafoamrun wrote: post #5

To stop assholes from bombing them

When I’ve visited the big data centers, they had gates and security relatively far out from the buildings. How would you get close enough? It’s not like the World Trade Center in 1993 where you can just drive up next to the building. (It’s also not like the World Trade Center in 2026 where there is an anti-terrorism perimeter of steel-reinforced concrete bollards, but somewhere in the middle.)

Of course there are also data centers in the middle of cities but these are smaller.

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#34

Post by duped »

I'm as big of a skeptic on these AI companies and question deeply the long term value of data center buildout as a land use policy in the communities where they're being built. But:

> So let me ask the question directly: if AI data centers are such a tremendous benefit to communities, why are so many of them being built without meaningful community input?

Because of this (emphasis mine):

> They’re watching their utility bills climb, finding sick animals they can’t explain, and worrying about the long-term impacts on their health and property values

How are you supposed to have reasonable discussion about land use, economic impacts, zoning, etc when you're getting flooded with input from crockpots?

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#35

Post by iijaachok »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #16

What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F). AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but i…

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?

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#36

Post by palmotea »

jeffbee wrote: post #6
tw04 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s not just ideological. The facts are, even with great strides in efficiency, datacenters use a TON of water and electricity. And without fail that results in increased prices for the local communities who see almost no benefit from these datacenters. Ironically the very same people profiting most off of them are the ones saying they’re going to leave the country if they’re forced to pay anything resembling a…

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.

> 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, and sometimes you have to pound on those to get through to the general public that's not immediately affected.

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #16

What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F). AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but i…

[deleted]

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#39

Post by legitster »

People's bewilderment about this stuff speaks more to how removed they are from their local civics.

Nearly everything in your town is built like this. The amount of people who come out of the woodwork to oppose coffee shops, housing development, new hospitals, bus stops, etc would astound you. Try attending a local city council meeting. Part of the reason civic infrastructure takes so long and costs so much is because of the enormous burdens of transparency.

Or the sheer number of things that can go wrong during zoning, development, etc. The best time to announce a new business is when construction is nearly done. And the cities themselves want the development to be secret because they don't want to be underbid by the town next door (did anybody actually like the transparency of Amazon's HQ2 process?)

Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

#40

Post by jstummbillig »

btian wrote: post #24

When I grew up in Singapore, the locations of all data centers are secret by default to prevent terrorist attacks.

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.

Post reply on HN