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There Are Signs of Serious Trouble in the Data Center Industry: "People aren’t just dropping their shorts for data centers anymore." (futurism.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

So a post making claims against all visible evidence with no proof for any of it is "honest discussion"?

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  • [+] -7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    You ask "why believe me?" I ask " why take you seriously?" And we get nowhere.

    The popular opinion is framed in view of the worst offenders. That gets clicks. My daily experience shows me that:

    • one urinal in my building uses more water in a day than the datacenter does in a year.
    • our generators run at less than 65 dB at full tilt at a distance of 30 feet. They are only run during utility outages - and monthly tests for 10 minutes.
    • we build in corporate parks and remote sites with surplus power.
    • the power substation we paid for and built delivers 20 MW back to the community. We added capacity to the local area on our dime.

    However, others are not like us. Musk runs gas turbines for primary power. MS uses open- loop cooling. They get the headlines. We don't. Our business is based on responsible behavior. But we get painted with the same brush.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Ok, even assuming all that is true (just saying it doesnt make it so) none of it has anything to do with the inherent unprofitability of AI. Anthropic alone is reporting an $80 billion loss for the year. Last I heard the industry as a whole needs to make a few trillion dollars just to break even. Regardless of how efficient or not your particular data center may be, it's not going to fill that gap.

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  • [+] -9 points 3 days ago

    Agreed. Oai, Anthro, etc don't necessarily have paths forward. But a LOT of folks want their hands on the results. Perhaps real open sw will rise to put them under and no one will need to pay for the models. But they will have to pay for the hardware to run it. And that's pricey. And we get paid up front.

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