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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.
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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?
 
Otto Von Herunterhängen said:
Of course we may need to go back to the way we were doing things in other sectors.
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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
 
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
 
Watched a three part series last week about China, was a real eye opener, one muti millionaire who ran some company, when asked when America sell it cheaper, this Chinese dude said we will sell it cheaper, they even have drones bringing you coffee in the street, it might be a Communist government but it one of the biggest capitalist countries out there, with people earning lots of money and thousands millionaire/billionaires, at some point their AI will also take the lead
 
A lot of datacenters are being cancelled. The bubble is.. Well not bursting, but fizzling out.

AI models are getting smaller and more effective, so it's now making more sense for corporations to run them on their own private servers. Small models and agents are getting good enough to run on toasters, so there's less need for people to rely on providers. And what's left is gonna get gobbled up by AWS, CloudFlare and Google, who already have shitton of datacenters, so they don't really need to build too much more. And new hardware is coming that's orders of magnitude more effective, making current tech obsolete quickly.

So there's the possibility that this is gonna clean up fairly soon. Microsoft gonna Microsoft tho, they're gonna be annoying just on principle.
 
Humanity is collapsing in on itself. Just a matter of time before everyone realises we've ruined the planet and our own future, plus society is already imploding under the digital revolution. And, in just a few years, probably some A.I. will have taken over and decided the only way to seave what's left of the ecosphere is to get rid of us, it won't wait for Trump or Trump-2 to do it.
 
Nyghtfall3D said:
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.
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Brief update...

Last month, I started experimenting with BudgetPixel.com, an alternative to Krea.ai, as suggested by @MCDesigns . The idea was get away from Krea's internal content filters. I joined BP's $55 Pro tier for a month for 60,000 credits on March 1st, and canceled my membership on March 30. A couple weeks ago, I wound up buying 10,000 credits for $10 so I could experiment with some prompts.

I've since learned that, while BP only checks for CSAM-related prompts, the vendors they use as part of their prompt pipeline can and do use content filters themselves before passing prompts on down the line where image generation actually happens, thus making it impossible to know exactly who might be blocking what when users get the dreaded "generation failed" error.

Thankfully, users don't lose credits when generations fail. Nevertheless, knowing even BP can't promise something as relatively tame as a fully clothed business woman bound in the back of a cargo van will pass muster, my experience this month has taught me that online platforms as a whole cannot be relied on for consistently generating adult content. For my needs, this makes cost and trust two significantly limiting factors for using AI online. Therefore, I'm removing AI from my toolkit today instead of waiting for my Krea membership to expire in September. Furthermore, I won't be enhancing any new 3D art, either. I've grown weary of what's been, for me, looking back, a two-year-long carrot-and-stick experience with AI.
 
Just the opposite. I opened DS for the first time in awhile 4 days ago and started to create a scene, was incredibly painful and tedious, so I scraped it and tried opening and editing some previous scenes to save time, again, was not a good experience. tried this over the course of 2 days and finally got a scene i was happy with. rendered it and wasn't happy with the results, so changed the lighting, then changed it again, still not happy with it. I started contemplating and looking at older renders and then comparing to AI images of the same subject matter. Needless to say, I haven't opened DS since.

I actually broke out my old easel and acrylics and had some fun with that. I might spend more time on that during my next vacation.
 
MCDesigns said:
I actually broke out my old easel and acrylics and had some fun with that. I might spend more time on that during my next vacation.
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If had a dollar for every time I considered learning how to draw during the last few years, so that I could break free from the compelling need to stay current with 3D rendering tech, I'd have enough for at least a week's worth of fast food at today's prices. That is no joke, either. There's an incredibly prolific community artist named Slasherxxx who's skill I greatly admire and wish I possessed even half of.
 
Nyghtfall3D said:
If had a dollar for every time I considered learning how to draw during the last few years, so that I could break free from the compelling need to stay current with 3D rendering tech, I'd have enough for at least a week's worth of fast food at today's prices. That is no joke, either. There's an incredibly prolific community artist named Slasherxxx who's skill I greatly admire and wish I possessed even half of.
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I started drawing when i was 6 and my Mom sent me to every art class she could to improve my skills. I was artist of the year in 8th and 9th grades (teachers pet, LOL). Then had a falling out with the new art teacher in 10th grade and stopped art altogether (took photography, data processing (Apple IIe) and architecture) until college where I would use it to pick up girls (can i draw you?, LOL). Discovered music and being in a band my 3rd year and didn't do much with art until I got my first computer and started modding games. I wonder to this day is that art teacher that I hated was the pivotal point in my path to adulthood. Kind of a what if moment.

My problem was I was never satisfied with the realism in my work. I could never fully recreate what was in my head on paper or canvas even though I won awards and got acclaim from non artists, I could never satisfy my own eye, probably like OCD, LOL It's one of the reasons I would crave non biased renderers, they use math to calculate the lighting and shadows, so i don't have to second guess myself on what the lighting and shadows 'should" be or look like.

To this day I will never forget my Mom enrolling me in an art class when i was 13 and having a hot female model come in and disrobe and I was expected to draw her naked, LOL I loved that class and never told my Mom, LOL
 
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