The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.
The mass data center build out is only partly driven by AI. There is a big cloud capacity crunch across the big providers, has been for a while and it is getting worse.
I'm sure it's more than the cost of memory. The person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care. They do care that aspect of life is infected with this shit. From the useless "AI" chatbot that is really just a reskin of their old POS chatbot (or an "Actual Indian"), to the U. S. government talking about giving money to these companies ('cuz ol' Larry and Elon need the money), all the way to the tech bros that will...not...shut up about it. And to drive it all, we'll need to put a jet engine next to your house, sorry.
Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".
Don't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
They're venting their anger on social media apps, which are powered not by datacenters but by an invisible angel that takes your message and places it on everyone else's phone.
Arming the dumbest among us with smartphones aka portable TV studios was one of the biggest mistakes we made as a society.
The public seems to be aware that it's a hype driven grift, much more so than when it was a flood of DTC dot-coms, or plowing fiber to nowhere. There's so much money sloshing around that people correctly believe the potential for corruption of their supposedly representatives is rife.
People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
> Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..."
People aren’t mad about technology. They’re mad about being told after the fact that their town might lose water, power, quiet, or tax revenue to a project they didn't have a say in.
Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having.
Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.
That is fair. Data centers are being built in my town, and indeed the city does not seem to care what people think.
I ran the numbers based on some averages, and property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year for a city of around 23k people.
I just am not sure why the city cannot be transparent about data centers offsetting property taxes. They also do not make it clear on their website that there is no water capacity issue. People are going to be mad no matter what though. I think for some this is a proxy issue, and what really is driving them is distrust of big tech and wealth inequality.
I also suspect some of the social media backlash may be an astroturfing campaign. Accounts idle for years all of a sudden posting daily the same talking points.
> property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year
Those are staggering numbers. In my town a single family home pays about $12K/year in property taxes. To collect a billion in property taxes would be 85,000 homes!
When do enterprises ever proper pay tax? If they did we all would be better off.
They will pay the minimum tax and that will then be pocketed by the local politicians who pushed for the DC. The town gets a pittance compared to the profit produced from these DCs.
One of the incentives to build in these areas are that they can pay low tax in the first place.
What's driving the need for datacenters All over the world?
Aren't there only a handful of companies need compute and can build datacenters? This isn't aws building more regions is it?
Also recently I was surprised and not surprised to find people are making anti ai like their identity now. Like there's a reddit community dedicated to this
Investors, thats what is driving it. AI is the only thing venture capital has cared about since 2022, so the people who earn fortunes from sucking on the VC teat are following the money. It doesn't matter if the data centers are worthless in five years, they will have extracted wealth from building them.
How do you extract wealth from building a highly capital-intensive physical plant? Construction crews and building material suppliers do not work on a promise of future payments.
You get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.
In the "AI 2027" article/story, they're talking about next generation models "using 100 times the compute used to train GPT4. Here's a video covering that part of it https://youtu.be/5KVDDfAkRgc?si=TR8XDQmye6O6kkiT&t=169 (the 100x is at 4:38, this video starts where he starts talking compute of GPT3).
So my guess is that what is driving the need is that (speculated) 100x the next major models.
Investors chasing the ideal of not having to employ any people while still making money somehow. And, of course, being the company to provide all the AI; in a gold rush, don't dig for gold, start selling buckets.
I get that, I mean who are the investors? Random colo companies? Are The big cloud providers are bringing up new small regions in all of these random towns regions? Only so many companies can even get the hardware to fill it. And there are only a handful llm providers.
There's only so many companies involved as far as I can tell,but these datacenter stores seem everywhere?
There are things called LLMs that are incredibly useful but require a staggering amount of compute. Providers are building out data centers to meet the new need.
We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. National governments are largely viewing AI as a strategic capability.
That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity.
I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…
We should also keep in mind that the problem isn't datacenters, but how they are built.
Datacenters do not have to be noisy. Datacenters do not have to cheap out on cooling solutions. Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits.
Those corners being cut is not what make AI datacenters possible or competitive. That race is purely chip supply.
For reference, I work in an industrial neighborhood where there are quite a few new datacenters from big providers. The buildings are ugly for sure, but unless you're staring at it you'd have no idea it was there. I could try to pay more attention to see if I can hear it if I focus on it, but I suspect the sound of nearby rustling leaves will be too deafening to make out anything.
> Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers
The others I agree with, but Im not sure this is true. The US government has proven itself completely incapable of expanding electricity production and grid infrastructure. How exactly are you supposed to power your datacenter when you cant access any electricity?
We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters.
AI companies are doing a fine job of driving the resentment all by themselves, they don't need China's help. Whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant, these companies are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the public's view of them. They seem to think that they don't need public support.
> We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters
There hasn't been any credible reporting on this so far. It's far more likely people are just mad that they have to pay for the AI boom both literally via increased electricity rates and via increased noise, water shortage and construction related pollution caused by the data centers.
If it were true that data centers are building "American dynamism" and China wants to suppress that, surely they would be building data centers the way they build trains.
There really isn’t a need for foreign interests to artificially boost the negative sentiments towards data centers, hyperscalers are doing a pretty terrible job at getting the public onboard
Why aren't we (in the US) building all these data centers in the Southwest where huge amounts of vacant land and the best wind and solar power options are?
With fiber connectivity it doesn't matter if they are in remote locations.
Probably the lack of water. I don't know why they need to continually pump it instead of doing a closed loop and cooling it through a few miles of pipe underground which is practically free, after you install the plumbing. Sure evaporative cooling is good, but certainly there are workable alternatives.
They are winning recall votes and getting a lot of pushback at in person city council meetings. People keep saying it's astroturfed (and I do expect a lot of communication online to not be in good faith) but you can also see the real grassroots pushback. I mean the article is talking about recalling mayors, you don't get that without pretty extreme local opposition.
The honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.
[delayed]
The mass data center build out is only partly driven by AI. There is a big cloud capacity crunch across the big providers, has been for a while and it is getting worse.
I'm sure it's more than the cost of memory. The person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care. They do care that aspect of life is infected with this shit. From the useless "AI" chatbot that is really just a reskin of their old POS chatbot (or an "Actual Indian"), to the U. S. government talking about giving money to these companies ('cuz ol' Larry and Elon need the money), all the way to the tech bros that will...not...shut up about it. And to drive it all, we'll need to put a jet engine next to your house, sorry.
Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".
Don't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
They're venting their anger on social media apps, which are powered not by datacenters but by an invisible angel that takes your message and places it on everyone else's phone.
Arming the dumbest among us with smartphones aka portable TV studios was one of the biggest mistakes we made as a society.
[delayed]
Complains about pollution, but still breathes the air, eh? What is your suggestion, a strongly-worded letter to the editor of your local newspaper?
Arming the dumbest among us...
Conveniently leaving yourself out of that group, I'm sure.
Pointing out hypocrisy is a losing strategy in politics.
I implore you to continue with this strategy.
The public seems to be aware that it's a hype driven grift, much more so than when it was a flood of DTC dot-coms, or plowing fiber to nowhere. There's so much money sloshing around that people correctly believe the potential for corruption of their supposedly representatives is rife.
People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
> Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..."
You can't make this up.
I wish we were.
I'm sure it will trickle down...any decade now. Just have to be patient.
the bull case for industrial AI looks a lot like turning the whole planet into paperclips
People aren’t mad about technology. They’re mad about being told after the fact that their town might lose water, power, quiet, or tax revenue to a project they didn't have a say in.
Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having.
Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.
That is fair. Data centers are being built in my town, and indeed the city does not seem to care what people think.
I ran the numbers based on some averages, and property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year for a city of around 23k people.
I just am not sure why the city cannot be transparent about data centers offsetting property taxes. They also do not make it clear on their website that there is no water capacity issue. People are going to be mad no matter what though. I think for some this is a proxy issue, and what really is driving them is distrust of big tech and wealth inequality.
I also suspect some of the social media backlash may be an astroturfing campaign. Accounts idle for years all of a sudden posting daily the same talking points.
> property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year
Those are staggering numbers. In my town a single family home pays about $12K/year in property taxes. To collect a billion in property taxes would be 85,000 homes!
Why would they lose tax revenue? I imagine these small cities gain tax revenue, but this doesn’t really drive NIMBY politics.
When do enterprises ever proper pay tax? If they did we all would be better off.
They will pay the minimum tax and that will then be pocketed by the local politicians who pushed for the DC. The town gets a pittance compared to the profit produced from these DCs.
One of the incentives to build in these areas are that they can pay low tax in the first place.
What's driving the need for datacenters All over the world?
Aren't there only a handful of companies need compute and can build datacenters? This isn't aws building more regions is it?
Also recently I was surprised and not surprised to find people are making anti ai like their identity now. Like there's a reddit community dedicated to this
Investors, thats what is driving it. AI is the only thing venture capital has cared about since 2022, so the people who earn fortunes from sucking on the VC teat are following the money. It doesn't matter if the data centers are worthless in five years, they will have extracted wealth from building them.
How do you extract wealth from building a highly capital-intensive physical plant? Construction crews and building material suppliers do not work on a promise of future payments.
You get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.
In the "AI 2027" article/story, they're talking about next generation models "using 100 times the compute used to train GPT4. Here's a video covering that part of it https://youtu.be/5KVDDfAkRgc?si=TR8XDQmye6O6kkiT&t=169 (the 100x is at 4:38, this video starts where he starts talking compute of GPT3).
So my guess is that what is driving the need is that (speculated) 100x the next major models.
Investors chasing the ideal of not having to employ any people while still making money somehow. And, of course, being the company to provide all the AI; in a gold rush, don't dig for gold, start selling buckets.
I get that, I mean who are the investors? Random colo companies? Are The big cloud providers are bringing up new small regions in all of these random towns regions? Only so many companies can even get the hardware to fill it. And there are only a handful llm providers.
There's only so many companies involved as far as I can tell,but these datacenter stores seem everywhere?
There are things called LLMs that are incredibly useful but require a staggering amount of compute. Providers are building out data centers to meet the new need.
We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. National governments are largely viewing AI as a strategic capability.
That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity.
I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…
We should also keep in mind that the problem isn't datacenters, but how they are built.
Datacenters do not have to be noisy. Datacenters do not have to cheap out on cooling solutions. Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits.
Those corners being cut is not what make AI datacenters possible or competitive. That race is purely chip supply.
For reference, I work in an industrial neighborhood where there are quite a few new datacenters from big providers. The buildings are ugly for sure, but unless you're staring at it you'd have no idea it was there. I could try to pay more attention to see if I can hear it if I focus on it, but I suspect the sound of nearby rustling leaves will be too deafening to make out anything.
> Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers
The others I agree with, but Im not sure this is true. The US government has proven itself completely incapable of expanding electricity production and grid infrastructure. How exactly are you supposed to power your datacenter when you cant access any electricity?
We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters.
AI companies are doing a fine job of driving the resentment all by themselves, they don't need China's help. Whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant, these companies are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the public's view of them. They seem to think that they don't need public support.
> We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters
There hasn't been any credible reporting on this so far. It's far more likely people are just mad that they have to pay for the AI boom both literally via increased electricity rates and via increased noise, water shortage and construction related pollution caused by the data centers.
If it were true that data centers are building "American dynamism" and China wants to suppress that, surely they would be building data centers the way they build trains.
They're not. And that should make you go hmmm.
There really isn’t a need for foreign interests to artificially boost the negative sentiments towards data centers, hyperscalers are doing a pretty terrible job at getting the public onboard
China is not the enemy.
Two things can be true.
Why aren't we (in the US) building all these data centers in the Southwest where huge amounts of vacant land and the best wind and solar power options are?
With fiber connectivity it doesn't matter if they are in remote locations.
Probably the lack of water. I don't know why they need to continually pump it instead of doing a closed loop and cooling it through a few miles of pipe underground which is practically free, after you install the plumbing. Sure evaporative cooling is good, but certainly there are workable alternatives.
That or latent heat cooling. Make ice all night when ambient air temps drop and then use it to cool a closed-loop system during the day.
Don't they also need plentiful water?
Only open loop systems, the dumbest loop systems.
They are winning recall votes and getting a lot of pushback at in person city council meetings. People keep saying it's astroturfed (and I do expect a lot of communication online to not be in good faith) but you can also see the real grassroots pushback. I mean the article is talking about recalling mayors, you don't get that without pretty extreme local opposition.
We should all keep in mind that foreign interests may be astroturfing right here on HN.
> We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters.
I'm pretty sure the economics of it for the average citizen takes care of the resentment all by itself. No need for elaborate conspiracy theories.