alt Hacker NewsYeah, but when we account for that scale, and look at resource usage, datacenters aren't topping the charts, or even really getting in the top 5, for anything.
You have people who eat meat at every meal losing their mind over water usage and people who set their AC to 68 panicking over energy usage.
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People have their priorities, and putting the data centers into their mix isn't what they asked for. To say "resource abusers think this is a resource abuse" isn't really a counter argument.
and if we’re gonna start worrying about how much a building raises the nearby temperatures, let’s also start looking at whether or not buildings are using dark or light colored roofing
When you account for post build runtime use it never looks like a big deal
Account for the runtime of the extra mining, production of materials... the scale blows up exponentially when externalities of all those extra screws and zip ties are appropriately accounted. An issue with Americans in particular as capitalism propaganda completely ignores externalities like kids in textile sweatshops not given a choice of college or the mines
3c global increase by 2050 is locked in. Meaning another 10-15 degrees local warming.
If Exxon could predict the min-max of the exact trend in the 1970s.
Physical reality doesn't give a shit about our rhetorical ability to blame a corporation or rich person; everyone consuming this shit is part of the math of the problem.
To be completely honest, normal people being able to set their AC to a sane temp does sound very valuable, and probably totally worth slowing down the slop machines a little bit.
It's incredibly disingenuous to wonder why people would be concerned about projects that:
* Take a bunch of their tax money with no benefit to them
* lower their property value
* Make electricity and water more expensive (both of which make other things they use more expensive also)
* can cause other environmental impacts that raise inconvenience and expenses both directly and indirectly
so some AI douchebags can have a shiny datacenter to enable their bosses' stated desire to replace them with the very same AI might be opposed to the current AI drive datacenter boom.
Whatever actual benefits AI has, or tech in general, the way it is being approached right now is a disgusting and blatant attempt to steal as much as possible from everyone. People don't like that, and the like even less how the people doing it pretend they don't understand the dislike while building bunkers to protect themselves from the anger.
Eating meat fills my belly. Setting my AC to 68 keeps me cool. A data center costs my community money, damages the environment directly and indirectly, and further enriches a few already rich people.
Can you spot the difference?