I work in the data center industry—my company designs them.
Traditional IT server racks typically draw about 12 kW of power. Most of this power is converted into heat, so we must provide an equal amount of cooling. These servers must never experience a power failure or overheat, so we use massive generators, battery farms, and chilled water buffer tanks to ensure redundancy.
Now, with the rise of AI, many data centers are undergoing major overhauls. IT racks have gone from drawing 12–15 kW each to 40–100 kW. This represents a huge increase in both weight and power density. As a result, most cooling and electrical systems need to be completely redesigned. Much of the older equipment is being replaced with new infrastructure.
Even a simple Google search now uses up to 10 times more power than before, as AI has been integrated into their search function.
The environmental impact of AI is pretty devastating—I don’t think many people are aware of this.
Power consumption before and after AI searches is the same as power consumption for monetary transactions before and after Bitcoin and the likes.
Both technologies suck donkey balls and still haven’t done remotely what they’ve promised and have made everything net worse.
AI didnt replace cryptocurrency
Who said that it did?
Noone has claimed that.
He said power consumption was the same before and after AI, which implied that AI must have replaced something else, and he mentioned crypto. Guess. Ididnt understand him.
Yeah. I work for a company that builds the electrical systems for cooling Amazon’s AWS servers in data centers and we are trying to keep up with orders as best we can. They just want more more more, so much that we’re storing them in another warehouse because we don’t have the room here.
They’re projecting orders all the way into 2035 currently.
I would say we need to adopt more nuclear power but cooling is a massive concern too. For both the power plants and the data centers. Water is often used and idk how much pollution we’re increasing.
There has been talk of some data centers being built with their own small moduler reactors. I haven’t hear of any actually being built yet and Im sure there would be all sorts of bureaucracy. Would be interesting tho
Wow, thank you for the insight. I guess this would be helped somewhat with some of the lighter models being designed, and used locally.
Everyday we get closer to the book The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson where the main character has stolen from him a book he created called, “A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer” The thief turns out to be a hacker and mass produces copies of the book for orphans.
The book itself is an AI that assess the users surroundings and intelligence level before creating stories that are relevant to the user that also educates them.
I can see this being a net positive if done correctly. But I don’t think the tech is there yet.
one of my top 3 books. This doesn’t add to your comment but I find it interesting: An important part of the story is that the Primer was originally intended to train a billionaire’s granddaughter to become a powerful CEO. One equity-lord’s attempt to hoard knowledge that backfires is what catalyzes the story.
I mean say what you want, but thats legit how new tech is being developed right now. My favorite book is Cryptonomicon. It came out in 1999, But the premise was that the main characters were going to build a currency backed on cryptography. There was even a side story in the book where one of the man characters is looking for a specific investor who is obsessed with trading cards. The main character sells the investor on the idea by saying how the technology could easily be adapted for distributing digital trading cards.
The dude basically predicted Bitcoins and the rise of NFTs in 1999.
I thought it was an instruction manual on how to eat captain crunch.
Dude, top ten expositions of all time. Up there with the importance of pizza delivery.
The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson
sounds interesting. Noted
I’d say given the current tech environment that book would “educate” based more on a Brave New World caste and less on ideal knowledge to raise someone up but to keep them in a certain assigned position.
Interestingly the AI stories are voiced by real people, ractors. That would now be one of the first things cut, see James Earl Jones
Lol, Interestingly enough. The hacker who steals the book realizes that each copy he makes can’t have a ractor so he substitutes it with a computer generated voice. I distinctly recall him acknowledging that it’s not as personal as a ractor but is adequate enough for the purpose.
Sounds like an interesting book
Thank you for sharing!
Ain’t nobody got time to read. Send an AI generated summary.
I think the future’s back in specialized devices. You give me a tablet that shows only textbooks, I read textbooks. You make it also access the internet, and I will immediately and exclusively use it for porn.
The first thing I do with any new device I buy is run porn on it lol. It’s the initiation ceremony for my gadgets
I did that too, until things got weird with the new cat feeder
I wouldn’t mind if online textbooks had a button on the side that is just a looser search (like what Google was a few years ago).
It’d be handy if I could type in “gravity problem with the bunny” instead of having to either search for “bunny” and flip through all the results, or try to remember/guess the exact wording of the problem.
You probably could still call it AI too, since there’s likely some small machine learning model involved in that search.
That’s something I think AI could do really good for education. “I’ve been learning combinatorial theory - these are my notes - where would I look to understand how that relates to the Standard Model?”
I fear for the near future. Hell I fear for the present.
