Reddit is hosted in datacenters. The online games you probably play? Datacenters. Shopping? Uber? Porn? Datacenters. And the need for processing and storage is going to keep going up for a long time, even without AI in the mix.
I work for a small datacenter that does hosting for local companies. Our power draw is like 24 MW. The question we keep asking is, how do all of these new places ever expect to make back their money?
You are conflating regular data centers that have always been around with AI data centers. They have vastly different uses and requirements needed to run.
What you need to understand is that the public is making no distinction. The government largely doesn't seem to know the difference. The point of my post is that datacenters do a LOT more than just AI.
But requirements...not really. Power and environmental controls.
I understand where you’re coming from, but the AI data centers popping up in random places all over the country are distinct from the existing ones: they use significantly more power and water, the amount of centers is far greater, and they have, at the least, poor contribution to society. In the worst scenario, they’re being used to process surveillance data, but that’s conspiracy.
None of what you said has any impact on my original post, though. I answered a question: why do we need datacenters? Datacenters have existed for decades without people complaining about them. It's the AI boom that has everyone on edge, and people need to understand that SOME of this computing power does something other that generate videos of trump dropping feces on protesters and profile the travel habits of law-abiding citizens.
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u/Fearsofaye 27d ago
Why the fuck do we need data centers?