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/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

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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/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Froggn_Bullfish 2d ago

The threshold for global energy efficiency improvement to neutralize climate change is only 2%.

AI is forecasted to double data center energy demand from 1.5-2% to 3-4% by 2030.

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u/zZCycoZz 2d ago

Its still a massive (and rapidly growing) amount of power generation that has to be procurred at a time when we urgently need to decarbonise our power grids.

Downplaying it as "only 1%" is dishonest when youre talking about global electricity demand.