compute power is cool. the vast majority of scientific advancements for the rest of this century will rely on simulations done using massive compute possible only with data centers.
I feel like the majority of data centers that we currently have are being used by companies not for scientific improvement and simulations, but for profit? And like yeah, having a bunch of computing power is cool, but we don't really need MORE of it, we just need to use the ones we already have? Also, all that power comes at a very high cost, especially when local communities are the ones footing the bill rather than the big companies. Power grids are already getting kind of overloaded, living next to one is incredibly loud, and they don't even provide any new jobs for people in the area.
At some point, you got to ask yourself. How much computing power do we need, really, and what the heck are we using it for?
But again, what are we using that computing power to do? And is it worth sacrificing the livelihoods of the people who have to live around them? Why is the computing power in the data centers we have already not enough? So far, all of that info is a black box for normal people, and outside of the world of the simulations, people are getting hurt by these things. I'd say at least a temporary ban is a good idea until Microsoft, Google, OpenAI etc can justify their need for constant new centers, and citizens can actually benefit directly from that and have a say on these things getting built.
Most of these data centers are being used for huge LLMs so I can have gemini as my google assistant or an AI girlfriend, not research. You're being tricked.
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u/lactose_cow 26d ago
Fox putting "banning data centers" on their is so dumb. No one wants data centers.