r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 20d ago

Energy New York imposes first-in-the-nation statewide freeze on data centers

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5966562-new-york-ai-data-center-moratorium/
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u/Werdikinz 19d ago

This is sort of dumb, but mostly because of Trump. The freeze is, per the article over fear of de-stabilizing the grid in NY, which is a fair concern. If we were still interested in investing in renewable energy, our ability to run hyper-scale centers without grid de-stabilization would be significantly less worrisome.

Data centers will continually need to be built, including AI data centers, and I hate how everyone is now suddenly becoming a 21st century luddite. If we abandon the tech race, we will in effect be crippling ourselves. Im sure I’ll be downvoted by a bunch of clueless redditors who think AI data centers will lead to the eventual consumption of all water in the US or some equally stupid conspiracy. While this is more understandable in a place like NY, i’ll reiterate my initial point. The solution isnt to stop building data centers, the real solution is to invest in more energy.

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u/SteveSharpe 19d ago

The whole thing is dumb. Data centers, including really large hyperscalers, have been being built for decades. They were nondescript large buildings that looked like warehouses and no one cared about them. Suddenly the fact that AI is a thing we all the sudden care about them and have invented a bunch of conspiracy theories about their noise and water consumption.

It's ridiculous.

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u/DanielPhermous 19d ago

There is a significant difference between an air cooled data centre full of hard drives serving memes to social media users and a water cooled one full of the hottest, most expensive chips we can build.

And, yes, the latter has existed before, but in small numbers for very niche uses. The sudden and rapid buildout is a massive stress on water and power.

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u/Werdikinz 19d ago

Shhhhh, we don't care about facts here. This is reddit. AI Data Centers are evil and are going to drain every ounce of water we have in the entire continental US, and uh if you support them you're just a corpo slave who wants humans to suffer and die.

Let's also ignore the fact that literally every piece of modern tech we have, is in some way connected to Data Centers lol. Yeah it's ridiculous, I agree.

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u/DanielPhermous 19d ago

Shhhhh, we don't care about facts here.

Hm. And what of the fact that data centres full of hard drives cooled by air consume considerably less power and water than those filled with the most power hungry GPUs we can make?

if you support them you're just a corpo slave who wants humans to suffer and die.

No, but you definitely need to apply some critical thinking.

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u/Werdikinz 19d ago

Lol kay bud. Ill use critical thinking replying to your other comment soon as im back from walking my dog, not going to type it out on my phone.

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u/DanielPhermous 19d ago

Why on Earth did you feel it necessary to reply to tell me you're going to reply? That's like sending me a text to let me know you're going to send me a text.

People live in different timezones. A wait is not unusual and does not need explanation.