The AI boom requires massive data centers that consume enormous amounts of water and energy.
Tech CEOs have plans for hundreds more hyperscale facilities in the coming years, but activists around the world are fighting back to protect their communities and force us to ask who really benefits from the future Silicon Valley is building.
@parismarx The only possible way this would work is if they paired them with things that needed that excess heat, so they wouldn't use other sources of energy for the heat. Like the distributed ones being used to heat swimming pools in the UK. But honestly, it's a lot of investment to give grifters a way to cheat people and students to cheat on their assignments and the web to be filled with even more inaccurate information
@ariaflame One thing they could do(or be forced to do) is pipe heat to a nearby town or city. Then that heat could be dumped into giant heat loops. That would then be used to heat low income homes and homeless shelters. If there's excess left over, use it to heat municipal buildings. If still more is left, use it to heat residential buildings.
@WHYAREWEALLCAPS@parismarx The swimming pool one they're distributing the centres so they're near the things that need heated. But those all sound like excellent places to use the excess heat.
@parismarx What was is about trusting billionaires?
Yesterday’s friends often become tomorrow’s enemies. Next up is Sam Altman, who is already proposing that powering up his vision machine artificial intelligence is SO IMPORTANT, that humanity should take up geoengineering to guarantee his machine learning data centers are guaranteed evermore increasing power.
@parismarx I dunno, data centres might be alright, it's the useless stuff people use them for (crypto, ai) that makes them bad.
how about we get someone to regulate this stuff in a way that makes sense instead?
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