Mastodawn

✅ Evert Albers May 14

This AI data center will be bigger than 2,000 Walmarts and dump '23 atom bombs worth of energy' into the environment every day — and locals are terrified

The scale sounds almost unreal. The proposed campus reportedly spans around 40,000 acres in Box Elder County, Utah, an area larger than many major cities.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ai-data-center-bigger-2-124356503.html

This AI data center will be bigger than 2,000 Walmarts and dump '23 atom bombs worth of energy' into the environment every day — and locals are terrified

This project could physically alter the landscape for humans and wildlife

Yahoo News

@gerrymcgovern Yikes! Even if this project works as intended, it won't "help the United States win the global AI race". It might help some billionaire get ahead, though.

the elder sea May 13

@publicwondering @gerrymcgovern

That sentence caught me too. The "global ai race" isn't real because ai isn't real, you idiots. You can't evolve horses into motors (thanks Cory).

@eldersea @publicwondering @gerrymcgovern With such a environmentally caustic endeavor in any sane system, government would be running a consolidated effort making these entities work together, not open multiple (30 in the US?) energy sucking, water consuming, and environment harming, competing for corporate profits. But this is the new age of tycoons and capitalism run amuck. 💥#TheCapitalistEndGame

Dan Bocain May 13

@gerrymcgovern And people were concerned about Bitcoin power usage.

Now we're mainstreaming something so much worse. Bad for people, bad for animals, bad for the planet. Good for CEOs.

I don't care what medical benefits may come from AI. It's simply not worth it.

UkeleleEric May 13

@BoomlandJenkins @gerrymcgovern LLMs, as most people mean by AI can NEVER prove worthwhile. It's a massive chimera. Whatever field it's in. But ML (machine learning), especially in the form (NON-LLM) that it has been around for some while, is viable. Even POSSIBLY, with a lot more work, we might get worthwhile LLM usage in the health sphere. But how about getting each person on the earth access to clean water and sanitation first, WHICH WE KNOW HOW TO DO.

morfil (any)🌈May 13

@BoomlandJenkins @gerrymcgovern good for ceo's for as long as they can keep accountability at bay?

@gerrymcgovern
This is just one (planned) datacenter of many already existing and even more planned.
To me: All those would only make sense in a dystopian scenario like matrix, skynet or whatever similar... then nonfictional.
None of such scenarios would be good for humans anywhere, not to mention the environment.

So who is promoting such projects for what purpose really anyway?

Violet Madder May 13

@grootinside @gerrymcgovern

Technofascists, for world domination. They're not even trying to be sneaky about it.

@violetmadder I’ll argue that piles of gold turn many of us into sociopaths. Or maybe this is a natural transformation based on our species abundant selfishness. Our measure of success is often based on self, blind to others or not caring about the big picture of our existence.

Fan of Shared Truth & Empathy May 16

@violetmadder @grootinside @gerrymcgovern We are all batteries for their Matrix

@grootinside @gerrymcgovern Answer: This is the run away, unsupervised by responsible adults, corrupted crap game run by competing profit and power Corpo entities run on the back of the Nation (as I see it in the US), the table controlled by the fat cat GOP dealers in support of the Trump House, who sincerely feels democracy stands in the way of his scams, power, sick and psycho whims.
#TheCapitalistEndGame

Björn-Lars Kuhn ☠️

@gerrymcgovern 🤢

Petra van Cronenburg May 13

@gerrymcgovern I could cry when I see the accelerating #climateCrisis and more and more #drinkwater shortages while the US are on a race to destroy the world.

In Germany, they just stopped the plans of an US company building a big data center, because of the planned gas energy "support". May such protests grow globally!

#datacenters #energycrisis #carbonfootprint

Jo - pièce de résistance May 13

@NatureMC @gerrymcgovern
They are demons trying to destroy the world. Maxwell’s Demon that the brilliant physicist James Clerk Maxwell posited, only there are a whole bunch of them & they are all colluding for power, & competing for dominance all against us and the whole planet, and as I explain in my recent posts, violating intentionally SpaceTime.

Gerry McGovern May 13

@NatureMC it's a type of criminal death cult. The USA is a full-on mafia state. And the rest of the world leadership? Accomplices, participants.

Remember back in 2012 when everyone with half a braincell was screaming about the Utah "Total Information Awareness" data center? And the other 90% of the population was getting reassured by their corporate masters, "Those conspiracy theorists sure are crazy, aren't they?"

Good times.

64 Islands Aroha Cooperative May 14

@cy @gerrymcgovern first thing i thought of, too. wouldn't be surprised if this is that, upgraded

As atom bombs vary in explodieness, I assume that means the smallest, weakest atom bomb ever exploded. Which is still terrible. The 50-something terajoule "Little Boy" was what devastated Hiroshima. So 23 Hiroshimas, is what they're talking about. At a "16 gigawatt thermal load" that means 57.6 terajoules per hour. Multiply that by 24, divide by 23, comes pretty close to 23 60-terajoule bombs every day.

For scale, it would take that data center 3,600 hours to give off as much heat as the largest nuclear bomb ever exploded, Tsar Bomba. Which is about 5 months. TSAR BOMBA EVERY 5 MONTHS IS STILL PRETTY BAD

Assimilateborg May 13

@cy how many hurricanes?
1 hurricane = 600TW. So it's 0.00003 hurricanes.

Hurricanes don't produce heat. They just move it around. Also I've never seen any statistics on the terawatts of power in hurricane level winds, um, ever. But even if I did, there are 5 categories of hurricane, so I assume you mean a category 5.

So yes, if your numbers aren't completely bogus, then it's one category 5 hurricane every 4 years or so.

I should add that hurricanes can be hundreds of km in diameter. (Katrina was 620km, Irma was 645km) over an area of pi * (d / 2) ^2 (Katrina was 302,000 km^2, Irma was 327,000 km^2). At 40,000 acres (162 km^2) this proposed data center is big, but not that big. So it's a much more concentrated release of energy.

Assimilateborg May 13

@cy hurricanes use the heat from the ocean to dissipate it. And they do that with 600000GW of power. I simply googled that number and ran with the first one I found. 😂
https://energi.media/news/noaa-how-much-energy-does-a-hurricane-release/
Imagine the datacenter would be the size of a hurricane, it would produce 0.05 (a.k.a. 0.0005%) of the power a hurricane needs. So not enough to power such a storm.
What about tornadoes.
Can the datacenter create own weather patterns generating tornadoes and so solve the whole problem?

NOAA: How much energy does a hurricane release?

Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday and has since battered the Carolinas, dumping record breaking amounts of rain. The death toll has risen to 23, including 17 in North Carolina. AFP photo.

Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future

Haha wouldn't that be a sight.

"OH NOOO WE CALCULATED TOO MUCH DATAS" (tornados everywhere)

Assimilateborg May 13

@cy a tornado is 1.5GWh (5.53 TJ)?
I'm not good in knowing the difference in Wh and W. But that's a number.
That's the kinetic energy the tornado puts onto the ground. Not what's needed to create one. So we can't generate 10 Tornadoes permanently with the datacenter. That's sad.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4489157/

Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA

Watts are joules per second, so to convert joules to watts you have to know how many seconds it took to release those joules. They pick an hour's worth of seconds, and call it a watt-hour.

So like 5.4 terajoules = 5.4 terawatt-seconds.
5.4 terawatt-seconds / 3600 (seconds in an hour), is 0.0015 terawatt-hours, or 1.5 gigawatt-hours.

mother not wife May 13

@cy @assimilateborg none of this is how weather works

irl you can input X energy and get no results or a hurricane. its all about the energy already in the system and more importantly the types of energy

parking lots at that size are going to effect local weather. frankly given the energy and heat we should be able to view it similar to the weather in a heavily bombed modern war zone.

@gerrymcgovern If this will ever get built, i wonder how this turns out if for example the electricity fails and all the emergency generators (must be hundreds of them) spin up all at once. This is neither eco friendly (most certainly gas powered) nor a silent operation, considering that people live around that area.
This will so drastically devalue your property and your quality of life if you currently live near this area.
When they start construction, you better move far away while you can.

Assimilateborg May 13

@Brokar @gerrymcgovern they run the data center directly off the emergency generators. No electricity hookup needed.

Oh that's so much better, thank goodness. 😱

Assimilateborg May 13

@gerrymcgovern hmm, dropping atom bombs would be a solution when the data center is finished.

Cassandrich May 13

@assimilateborg @gerrymcgovern Yeah, one to demolish the data center one time seems like a much better outcome than 23 every day...

Neil E. Hodges May 13

@gerrymcgovern @assimilateborg It'd probably be more effective to drop them on the mansions of the rich people who keep doing shit like this. You know, get to the root of the problem.

Nu Modular May 13

@tk @gerrymcgovern @assimilateborg Unfortunately, some luxury bunkers are built with tech that's being kept from the masses, for this very reason.

@gerrymcgovern
So approx $400 billion at today's prices for initial construction over, say, 18 years.
Assuming it is brought online in 1GB chunks, double that to cover the cost of replacing the used GPUs over that period (they run hot). Add running costs such as power.

Context: no 1GB AI datacentre has yet been completed, and the cost of building the datacentres already "committed" will need to generate $1 trillion of new business to break even.

And locally run models are improving fast.

Neil Moffatt May 13

@gerrymcgovern Who is greenlighting these monsters?

Or more appropriately, who is being paid to permit them?

Andy Wootton May 13

@gerrymcgovern I don't want AI because this was obvious. What is less obvious, is why anyone else does. AI should be a few research projects at this point. Will the AI Winter be this year or next? Do we have another year?

Gerry McGovern May 13

@woo it can't come soon enough. AI feels like a death dance in the final days of a Growth Death Cult.

There's a book too for those that still read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lik_jgVEKts

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE - Official Featurette - Now Playing

YouTube

stonedonkey 🕹️🎮👾May 13

@gerrymcgovern it's not so much the stupidity... actually it's exactly the stupidity .

Noisecolor May 13

@gerrymcgovern
How can it be 9gw electricity, but 16gw thermal load?
9gw would require like 6 medium size nuclear power plants, not a gas power plant.
Crazy numbers.

Ai is the holy grail, but at this cost and no idea if it's even going anywhere. It's like the train has started, everybody is burning fuel to go as far as possible, but is the train even pointed at the right direction?

SouprMatt May 13

@gerrymcgovern A state governed by white Republicans with deregulation as a religion. Not surprised. When their electric bills quadruple, they will blame Obama.

@gerrymcgovern Nothing says #TheCapitalistEndGame better than this.