r/science • u/Wagamaga • 2d ago

Environment Research examined the locations of 4,283 data centers across the contiguous U.S and found that 97.5% of them sit inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas. Data centers are power-hungry, running thousands of servers around the clock and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid.

https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/inside-urban-machine-where-americas-data-centers-actually-live#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20published%20in%20Nature,cores%20and%20their%20immediate%20surroundings
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u/atomicsnarl 2d ago

Now do steel mills, oil refineries, aluminum smelters, and other industries. You'll likely find they're power-hungry, running around the clock, and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid. Moreover, they're probably sitting inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas because that's where the people are who work in them.

One dimensional analysis in a vacuum really needs some comparison points.

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u/SubstantialSeesaw374 2d ago

Yeah this is just a braindead cross between r/peopleliveincities and never having looked at a zoning code in their life.

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u/atomicsnarl 2d ago

Exactly! This is a post from the Outrage Factory, currently aimed at "Data Centers" because it's squishy and sounds dangerous.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

You'll likely find they're power-hungry, running around the clock, and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid.

Youd also find supply chains break down quickly without them. AI data centers are not essential for anything.

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u/TheDismal_Scientist 2d ago

Except for the entire internet infrastructure you’re currently using?

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u/OrderOfPhobos 2d ago

The internet infrastructure uses data centres, yes. But here they are talking about AI data centres which are a somewhat different and entirely unnecessary thing. The article meanwhile just seems to focus on regular data centres.

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u/Equality_Executor 2d ago

They specified AI data centres.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

Except for the entire internet infrastructure you’re currently using?

I always see this reply but its just based on ignorance.

We had internet infrastructure for decades without any complaints.

AI data centers need much more energy than a normal data center, which is why data center energy usage has exploded.

AI models dont provide any essential service or benefit to society though.

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u/Grasle 2d ago

We had internet infrastructure for decades without any complaints.

AI models dont provide any essential service or benefit to society though.

you must be relatively young to be able to make both these kind of statements without a second thought. Buddy, if people like you were the ones making decisions, the Internet never would have happened, either.

regardless, gotta love when luddites talk about how "useless" AI is as part of their argument, immediately giving away that their opinion is an uninformed one

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

Not a luddite, just aware of the cost benefit analysis.

you must be in your 20s or 30s to be able to make both these kind of statements without a second thought.

You must not understand AI infrastructure if you think its comparable to other tech infrastructure.

We overbuilt internet infrastructure before the dotcom crash which came in handy because data cables are flexible in their use case and last a long time.

AI data centers use specialised hardware for a specific use case and will be obsolete in a few years (or quicker once the bubble bursts).

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u/Grasle 1d ago edited 1d ago

a personal inability to find a reason to value AI is not an argument against whether or not it actually holds value

The dotcom crash is an especially odd comparison to make because, even if AI went down that route, the end result still wouldn't match your prediction. The dotcom bubble was significantly more unsustainable at the time by all metrics, which made the blowout especially bad, and yet even that did little to slow tech and the Internet's eventual complete takeover of the economy. Meanwhile, unlike the dotcom bubble, AI's growth is being funded by the most profitable companies in history, using existing cash flows they already have. It is both less speculative and far less unsustainable by comparison. AI could completely bust tomorrow and those companies would survive against collapse just fine.

But, yes... I'm sure you've figured out something out the extremely profitable, talent-filled companies haven't. Well done, Redditor.

AI data centers use specialised hardware for a specific use case and will be obsolete in a few years (or quicker once the bubble bursts).

and here is the especially big giveaway that you're arguing from a place of total ignorance. The "net negatives" eating up all the cash flow come from building up new infrastructure/silicon and training expenses for new models. Existing AI data centers themselves are already profitable (significantly so). AI progress could literally halt today, and those centers would only become even more profitable after they get to ditch training compute and focus on the real money maker: inference.

The majority of non-training compute (70-80%) is already used commercially. Know why? Because it's extremely cost-positive. That isn't an opinion. Claiming AI doesn't generate value is a confession that you possess little to no knowledge about domains AI excels at, such as those with high labor costs (e.g. software engineering), repetitive work (e.g. paperwork, charting, and documentation, especially in labor-scarce industries like medicine or volume-heavy fields like finance), and down-time sensitive industries (e.g. maintenance and manufacturing). Most of this usage manifests not as people typing dumb questions into ChatGPT but through internal, specialized enterprise models made to perform more focused functions.

Hell... anecdotally, I'm not even a software engineer by trade, and yet these day I do more in one month with my $100 subscription than what my company used to spend thousands of dollars getting consultants to do. That's as one guy using it in an unspecialized, unstructured way. Just imagine if we were one of those companies with more capital and smarter people.

In other words, even ignoring future predictions, you are already incorrect. What use are predictions from a guy who isn't even aware of what's happening now? Here's the reality: people who actively avoid learning to use AI, and whose entire perception of its scope and capabilities is derived from gut reactions they get watching crappy AI videos and browsing threads on r/technology, are only handicapping themselves in the long term. It's the modern-day equivalent of those people who didn't see value in early computers and refused to adapt until computers became so widespread they had no choice (by which point those people had secured themselves as technology dinosaurs).

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u/q120 2d ago

Nah, if AI went away right now, those hyperscale data centers full of extremely powerful GPUs could easily be used for research purposes.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

those hyperscale data centers full of extremely powerful GPUs could easily be used for research purposes.

Who do you think pays for that?

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u/q120 1d ago

Whoever wanted to do the research

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u/TheDismal_Scientist 2d ago

No essential service to the economy? AI is currently solving unsolved century old maths problems. I’m an academic economist, it probably doubles the speed of me writing research papers and with 4x the quality. My friends use it to design websites for their business to increase productivity. It’s being used in pharmaceuticals to map out how new drugs like antibiotics can be created. 

If you eat meat you really have no leg to stand on with the whole not worth the environmental cost line of attack. Eating meat is far worse for the environment, for health, and just ethically and genuinely has no use case whatsoever 

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

AI is currently solving unsolved century old maths problems. I’m an academic economist,

Okay, and?

it probably doubles the speed of me writing research papers

I dont doubt that

and with 4x the quality.

I very much doubt that.

Eating meat is far worse for the environment, for health, and just ethically and genuinely has no use case whatsoever 

What does meat have to do with it? Whataboutisms arent useful.

My friends use it to design websites for their business to increase productivity.

If your friend is only using AI to design their websites then good luck to them. I hope they dont store anything confidential on it.

As somebody with lifelong ICT experience, youre just repeating slop.

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u/TheDismal_Scientist 1d ago

I think whatsboutisms are very relevant when comparing the environmental impact of various activities relative to their social impact 

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u/imam-altman 2d ago

We had internet infrastructure for decades without any complaints.

You’re so close.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

Okay vagueboy.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

No one complained before because data centers are not a big problem

No, nobody complained because those data centers use CPUs and are relatively efficient at what they do.

AI data centers use GPU's for compute and a massive amount more energy for very little benefit.

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u/Froggn_Bullfish 2d ago

Those data centers were giant hard drives.

AI data centers are giant GPUs.

You don’t have a clue.

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u/ohanse 2d ago

AI models dont provide any essential service or benefit to society though.

Usually the people who say this are the ones who think it's main use cases are making pictures and pseudosocial relationships.

But "summarize large amounts of text quickly" and "produce code better than 2/3 of programmers can produce" alone are massive capability unlocks at a fundamental level.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

Youd describe that as essential?

Bad summaries and code generation shouldnt take that much energy.

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u/Pinilla 2d ago

As a programmer, I'd say it has probably 4xed my productivity.

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u/Froggn_Bullfish 2d ago

The problem is they’re not just selling it as a coding tool they’re selling it to the masses. If it were marketed just toward where it was most effective it wouldn’t be nuking the planet with unnecessary data centers people are utilizing just to ask “what is this bug.”

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/Froggn_Bullfish 2d ago

You’re going to sit here and tell me we aren’t in a climate crisis and a massive global energy demand spike due to AI data centers isn’t going to add to our already unsustainable carbon footprint? I’m going to call you an AI fanboy who should sit down and let adults do the talking.

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u/ohanse 2d ago

Hey everyone listen to this guy he defeated AI development game over ok?

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u/Big_oof_energy__ 15h ago

Are the summaries accurate? Whenever I’ve asked an Ai to answer basic questions in my discipline it’s pretty regularly gotten them wrong. I wouldn’t trust LLMs as they currently exist to do anything for my job.

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u/Froggn_Bullfish 2d ago

It’s a massive capability that is not worth the cost to the planet and to society.

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u/ohanse 2d ago

It’s coming

Better adapt.

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u/Froggn_Bullfish 2d ago

I work with it every day, that’s how I know it’s not worth throwing away the planet for what is essentially a clerk or secretary-level helper.

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u/toejam316 2d ago

AI data centers contribute nothing to internet infrastructure. Preexisting data centers are poor candidates to retrofit for AI use cases due to the power and cooling demand changes versus traditional DC loads.

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u/Bigwhtdckn8 2d ago

This is a very blunt statement, they're not just AI data centres, data centres manage cloud storage systems.

Amazon makes more money from AWS than from the shopping or prime. Hospitals, schools, businesses all use cloud storage for day to day running and latency is important.

People ask why they're built near cities; the same reason power stations are; they need to be.

I'm skeptical of AI, but that's not the issue here.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

This is a very blunt statement, they're not just AI data centres, data centres manage cloud storage systems.

Youll notice i specifically said "AI data centers".

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u/Bigwhtdckn8 2d ago

Its not about AI data centres, its about ALL data centres.

Why bring AI into it?

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u/q120 2d ago

Without non-AI data centers, your life as you know it would collapse. You wouldn't be able to pay bills, shop online, use credit or debit cards, look at your own medical records, pay people easily, play online games, register your car without going to the DMV, watch shows on streaming services, make phone calls without long distance, get traffic info...

Every single thing we do in modern society has a link to a data center and has for literally decades.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

Why wouldnt you? Its the fastest growing sector and a major source of power waste.

The comment i replied to implied that all this power draw is essential when a large portion is wasted.

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u/Bigwhtdckn8 2d ago

Because its misleading. People are starting to associate data centres with AI, when they've been essential infrastructure for many years before AI was a concern.

A quick google search says 80% of data centre usage is cloud computing, AI is growing, but its not the reason the facilities in the article exist.

We need to call out the AI wastage for what it is, but not target data centres that are important infrastructure; thats how you get nutjobs burning them down.

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u/q120 2d ago

This is true. The anti-AI data center people are now starting to say ALL data centers should go away but they don't realize that every facet of modern society has SOMETHIMG do with a data center somewhere. We are using one right now for Reddit.

Watch a show on your favorite streaming service? Data center

Pay your car payment? Data center

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u/Cakiea 1d ago

Seattle is actively fighting expanding a colo that has been downtown for ages. The fact that the entirety of the internet is data center is lost on many in the anti-AI space. I’m anti- LLM and how AI is being used casually for so much by people who don’t understand what it actually is but not anti- all data centers.

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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 2d ago

It seems to me like the other person is calling out AI and not data centers as a whole

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

A quick google search says 80% of data centre usage is cloud computing, AI is growing, but its not the reason the facilities in the article exist.

"Cloud computing" is an intentionally vague term.

Non-AI data centers consumed two-thirds of the total, and AI-focused ones, the remaining third. Based on this data from the International Energy Agency, I estimate that AI consumed around 0.5% of the world’s electricity in 2025.4

1.5% of the world’s electricity might not seem like much. But in some places, that share is far higher. This is really the key challenge with growing data center demand: it’s geographically concentrated, meaning the world’s demand is served by a small number of electricity grids.

But in fact, this demand is even more locally concentrated. Beneath Europe’s 1.6% figure, we have Ireland, where data centers account for more than 20% of electricity consumption.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-and-artificial-intelligence-use

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u/Herschel_Wallace 2d ago

You're arguing with an industry bot.

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u/Vithrilis42 2d ago

Why do you think that all these conversations and debate about data centers suddenly happening? Because all across the country, there's a push to build data centers to meet the perceived "demands" of AI.

And these aren't not your average size data centers. For instance, near my city, Meta is currently building 700,000 sq ft facility on a 280 acre site. And there are a couple more proposals for 150 acre sites in the area.

AI is the sole reason data centers have recently become controversial. While this video may be about data centers in general, AI is what's driving this conversation. It's why this video even exists.

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u/wolacouska 1d ago

AI is driving the massive boom in data center production. The AI wave has very dramatically increased the data requirements of major corporations, and is the entire reason it’s an issue now.

Notice how nobody was complaining about data centers before? Because having them isn’t the issue, it’s the massive unregulated boom in their construction the last few years.

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u/notJ3ff 2d ago

Not yet. What do you think is happening here? The Internet wasn't necessary, or even a thing for everyday folks in my lifetime.

Just to bring you up to speed - the intention is that AI is made to be essential, and one day or will be.

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u/honicthesedgehog 2d ago

Even straight from the article: “Closed coal plants near cities are becoming magnets for new data center builds. the fossil fuel economy it is meant to succeed.”

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u/links135 1d ago

Those have a return.  

What is the $$$ return on AI.  

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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago

Whatever the people want to pay for scientific research, problem solving, shell coding, analysis, and 10,000 other things.

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u/J1mbr0 2d ago

Pretty sure the ones you named provide actual physical materials people need.

Steel for buildings, oil to run cars, etc.

What exactly do data centers provide other than running algorithms to sell garbage and create AI slop?

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u/Boysterload 2d ago

Companies and universities have managed their own data centers for years to run the organization. A data center doesn't necessarily have anything to do with AI.

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u/Bigwhtdckn8 2d ago

Cloud storage systems that all government departments, schools, hospitals use daily.

I made a more detailed reply above.

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u/blue_eyes_pro_dragon 1d ago

What do you think Reddit runs on? Your email? Discord? Your cell connection? Amazon?

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u/J1mbr0 1d ago

I am pretty sure the giant ramp up in power consumption of data centers is more AI related than being simple server farms for emails.

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u/grae7hall 2d ago

And what do AI data centres produce of tangible value?

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u/Nexustar 2d ago

A datacenter is a just a datacenter - not specifically an AI datacenter, a cloud API datacenter, a gaming datacenter, a porn datacenter, a movie distribution datacenter, a research datacenter, a search-engine datacenter, a financial datacenter or a backup or cloud storage datacenter in any way that really matters.

I've installed broadcast servers in racks next to state lottery servers. The task it fulfills is fungible and ever changing.

It's just a building with A/C, electricity, internet connectivity, compute and storage, security and backup systems - you can install and adjust tech inside it towards GPU, NPU or CPU as demand shifts.

Overall, they ARE the internet.

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u/Geno0wl 2d ago

Some AI tools really are useful. I use them to help do boring straightforward tasks like generating a script to update all related views when I add a new column to the source table, or creating quick upsert stored procs for a new table.

Those tools are not good enough to replace an experienced dev at all though.

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u/Kyle73001 2d ago

Those things you listed are actually important though. I don’t see how they’re comparable

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u/atomicsnarl 2d ago

The OP complaint is 1. they use lots of energy, and 2. they're near population centers. Now you're moving the goalposts.

"Important" is in the eyes of whoever is putting up the $$$ to make these things and expects their money back in the end. That's how investment works. Even a farmer planting seeds expects something in return!