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AI Datacenters Prompting Me to Reconsider Its Value to Me

Nyghtfall3D

Nyghtfall3D

Moderator
Staff member
The report below is just the latest, but I've read and watched about a dozen more over the last several weeks about the adverse effects AI datacenters are having on local communities - rising electric bills, light and sound pollution and their impact on peoples' health -- and I find myself seriously reconsidering AI's value to me as an artist. The more I learn, the more uncomfortable I feel knowing I'm contributing to their problems.

To anyone else who uses online AI platforms, this is not a call to boycott them. You do you. I won't judge. I quit smoking 26 years ago still don't judge people who smoke. I'm just sharing my thoughts and the empathy I feel for people being effected by tech companies whose platforms I use, including Microsoft's Gemini.

 
I don't know why they are using air cooling for that data center, at least that sounds like what is going on. When I was working with Supercomputers back in the 1990's those things were liquid cooled and used cooling towers. For something on the scale of a data center air cooling doesn't make any sense, and servers can be liquid cooled.

The light pollution is just Microsoft being obnoxious.
 
Otto Von Herunterhängen said:
I don't know why they are using air cooling for that data center, at least that sounds like what is going on. When I was working with Supercomputers back in the 1990's those things were liquid cooled and used cooling towers. For something on the scale of a data center air cooling doesn't make any sense, and servers can be liquid cooled.

The light pollution is just Microsoft being obnoxious.
Click to expand...
I thought they mostly were using liquid cooling. Heard a lot of folks talking about water shortages because of it.
 
Watching the video, I see no difference between this data center and any other business that gets built near a residential area. less about AI and more about business in general IMO. I hate when I see pristine woodland that I have driven by and admired for years get torn up and developed for a walmart, strip mall, or office buildings
While it bothers me to see any tech use natural resources, it is what it is. In the grand scheme of things AI isn't going anywhere and my usage would be like a cup of water in the ocean and since I can't do anything about all the other cups of water that make up the ocean.... Besides, who is to say that new ways to deal with AI and how it handles power/what resources it uses in the future might change and become more efficient. I am either using my resources (PC and electric) or using a websites resources.

here in Texas there are over 300 data centers with 100 more planned. I have a Google one near me and my electric bill has been lower this year than last, so it doesn't seem to be affecting my power grid much..

If anything, I am more concerned with how much pollution China is dumping into the land and oceans, they are the number one contributor of pollution.
 
The other question I would have about that data center is why, when they were building it, no consideration was given to creating noise barriers. The had to have excavated a lot of ground building that thing, why didn't they think of creating an earth berm with it. It probably would have cost them less than hauling it off to where ever they put it. Assuming this isn't the first data center they have built (and it isn't) one would wonder why they didn't head off some of the known problems.
 
I did a little more digging to find out what kinds of online apps actually use AI data centers, and learned that pretty much everything does to one degree or another, including YouTube.

I have no intention of going off grid, but I can control how much I use AI directly. That said, my Krea sub doesn't expire until September, so I'll just refrain from using Gemini going forward, and then stop using AI online altogether after September. If there still aren't any local AI models that meet my needs by then, I'll remove AI from my toolkit until the tech reaches that point.
 
Hey if Claude and what comes after it live up to the hype they may well break the Internet for E-commerce and we can go back to using it the way we did before it became commercialized. Of course we may need to go back to the way we were doing things in other sectors. Anybody got a phone book? :LOL: A rolodex? Music CDs?
 
Nyghtfall3D said:
Little late for that in my neck of the woods. Many retail and a few grocery stores have been demolished and replaced with housing over the years. An entire strip mall down the road from me was replaced with high-end apartments. :P
Click to expand...
If they smell money they will rebuild... bigger... better... stronger... more garish :p
 
MCDesigns said:
Watching the video, I see no difference between this data center and any other business that gets built near a residential area. less about AI and more about business in general IMO. I hate when I see pristine woodland that I have driven by and admired for years get torn up and developed for a walmart, strip mall, or office buildings
While it bothers me to see any tech use natural resources, it is what it is. In the grand scheme of things AI isn't going anywhere and my usage would be like a cup of water in the ocean and since I can't do anything about all the other cups of water that make up the ocean.... Besides, who is to say that new ways to deal with AI and how it handles power/what resources it uses in the future might change and become more efficient. I am either using my resources (PC and electric) or using a websites resources.

here in Texas there are over 300 data centers with 100 more planned. I have a Google one near me and my electric bill has been lower this year than last, so it doesn't seem to be affecting my power grid much..

If anything, I am more concerned with how much pollution China is dumping into the land and oceans, they are the number one contributor of pollution.
Click to expand...
Data Centers are rather tame compared to other forms of manufacturing. People tend to think the manufacturing went to China because of worker wages. That was only a small part of it. The bigger issue was that in the 1970's we told manufactures they had to stop killing us. They couldn't discharge things that would kill us into the rivers or air anymore. And if you were around in the 1960's and had to deal with things like advisories not to go outside because the air was too polluted, or for god's sake touch a river, you can appreciate that. We had rivers that caught fire. Others had a PH of 2.5. And fish kills were rampant, and you couldn't eat a damned thing you caught.

We said "fuck all that, clean up your act". The corporations said "Fuck that, we'll move the plants to somewhere we can still kill people because it's cheaper".

Which is why China is now the leading producer of pollution.

If you look at pictures of Chinese cities now, and compare them to pictures of American Cities before the Clean Air and Water act went into effect. they look eerily similar.

Did we over-regulate? Probably, almost definitely. But having no regulations were killing us.

US, 1970's

air polution US 1970.jpg

China 2025

beijing_filthy_air_1.jpg
 
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