alt Hacker NewsI'm a hobbyist IT enthusiast, not a professional computer guy, but from my point of view there's a big difference between a bunch of servers hosting something people want, like Netflix, and a warehouse full of GPUs running around the clock to make Lobster Jesus or whatever.
It's also a proxy for people's feelings on AI--essentially the only way people have to fight back against the new technology that makes eternal garbage and is supposedly coming for their jobs is to push for banning "data centers."
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> there's a big difference between a bunch of servers hosting something people want, like Netflix, and a warehouse full of GPUs running around the clock to make Lobster Jesus or whatever.
ChatGPT has been the most downloaded app every month for a year and a half.
There's also different building pressures. Before, companies would want to build / power / maintain the smallest amount of data center hardware they could while still serving their needs. Overprovisioning just meant worse opex number.
Now, because supply is so constrained relative to demand, there's no limit. More is always better, which leads to a crazy amount of construction (as its negative effects).
How is there a big difference between those two things? People want Netflix, people also want the output of AI whether that is lobster Jesus or something else. This seems more like substituting what people want, which clearly includes AI, for what some people think others should want. I can guarantee you there are people who don’t want Netflix and think it’s a waste of resources that encourage people to binge TV, become a couch potato, and end up being drags on the healthcare system. Should their preferences override those who do want it?
The conflating of a data center and an AI/GPU farm is disingenuous at best, and the AI people know what they are doing. None of the "traditional" data centers are being powered on site with gas turbine generators. New GPU farms are also being designed with much larger footprints with much more needs from the public utilities.
You really think Lobster Jesus is what most of this is doing?
It's doing code, analytics, training, research, operating services. The silly slop stuff is a small rounding error of usage.
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Totally agree that it's just a proxy for people's feelings on AI, but my Lobster Jesus is much more important to me than a Netflix show! All of the datacenter usage (for inference) is just serving something people want. Time has already shown that the datacenter for training is also just creating something people want.