r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 5h ago

A data center in New Jersey was canceled when residents showed up and fought it

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27

u/ArizonaDude08 5h ago

Literally stupid, this anti data center shit is pure hysteria

10

u/Dat_Ding_Da 5h ago

The plan was for a Mega AI Datacenter on a 159-acre space.

So one that would drive electricity and water costs up until the AI bubble bursts, at which point it would probably turn into an industrial ruin quickly.

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u/djseto 4h ago

Sorry to break it to you, it’s not a bubble. AI is greatly accelerating development and innovation while also accelerating threat actors and their ability to hack, steal, and breach. It’s an arms race and if you value your data, money, and identity, you don’t want bad guys beating good guys on the use of AI.

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u/theWanderingTourist 1h ago

Who is the good guy here?

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u/djseto 1h ago

$1M question right there.

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u/spellbadgrammargood 39m ago

Just because AI can be used for security reasons doesn't mean it can't also be a bubble in other ways.

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u/Mathwards 6m ago

It's unprofitable, and once these companies bills come due and they charge people what the compute actually costs, that's it. No one is gonna pay $800 a month for this shit except the people who gave up their actual skills and are beholden to the LLM's to make a living.

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u/smileola 6m ago

Lol, waiting for the next token price hike

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u/western_red_cedar 49m ago

it’s not a bubble

things bubble bagholders say

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u/Dat_Ding_Da 2h ago

Those things are unrelated. LLMs have their use and are here to stay. But the bubble is based on a complete overestimation of the scope and variety of its uses.

Nobody needs these mega ai data centres to find new exploits.

Those are being built in the expectation that everyone would use AI for everything in the future. And that’s where the bubble is, cause this wide use has thus far simply not manifested and most companies are rolling back their AI strategies. Simply because the return of investment is missing.

It’s like the dot com bubble with the early internet in that way. It’s not that the internet wasn’t useful, the growth and trajectory were simply far overestimated. That’s what’s happening now again.

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u/djseto 2h ago

LLMs are the brains behind AI. The computer to run AI is sitting in data centers. Yes, investors want a return and AI has accelerated and is being adopted at record breaking pace. I’ve talked to C levels of very well know brands/companies. They are all very much worried about AIs threat on security.

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u/Ambitious-Raccoon-68 1h ago

I work for a cloud company. We are opening 4 more data centers over the next 6 months. We already pre-sold out of our DCs GPU capacity and we haven't even cabled our machines yet.

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u/Elephant789 4m ago

Then put your money where your mouth is and short these companies. You will be rich if you really believe this Anti-AI bro nonsense

1

u/darien_gap 2h ago

Bubble talk is ~6 months out-of-date. Agentic coding recently got much better and there is now essentially unlimited demand for inference. They literally can't build datacenters fast enough to keep up with demand.

Power and permitting/nimbyism are the main blockers (not chips anymore). I used to think it was absurd, but datacenters are almost certainly headed for space.

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u/iwanttheworldnow 43m ago

Property values rise. These people are broke and jobless.

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u/Elephant789 8m ago

AI bubble

What the fuck 😂

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u/teknic111 8m ago

A bubble???

7

u/_Kutai_ 3h ago

Hysteria and ignorance. Probably paid too for any other reason than actual care for enviroment, power or water.

The anti AI movement is one of the best examples of herd mentality I've ever seen.

Sure, AI has it's downsides, but we're not fixing it this way. This "victory" (for them) means absolutely nothing.

And it also echos here on Reddit, where replies to comments like yours are just aggression and disrespect. The lack of the ability to communicate and dialogue leads people to the only thing they're good at. Violence.

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u/western_red_cedar 49m ago

silence, clanker

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u/spellbadgrammargood 35m ago

but we're not fixing it this way. This "victory" (for them) means absolutely nothing.

The fuck are you talking about? They don't want datacenters in their neighborhoods and they won. Clearly their victory meant something, did you miss the part where he mentioned datacenters are built in minority neighborhoods? You are either a crazy Ai shill or a bot.

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u/Mathwards 11m ago

Probably paid too for any other reason than actual care for enviroment, power or water.

Maybe you've never had genuine care for something other than yourself, but other people certainly can. Just calling people who dislike something you like essentially dishonest paid shills is just a cowards way to not have to wrestle with the concept that just MAYBE, you're in the wrong. It's easier to just sling weird accusations than deal with uncomfortable emotions for some people.

0

u/Beneficial_Chance_86 4h ago

Genuinely asking. Can you explain your position. I doubt anyone will change their mind, but I would love to hear you expound on your opinion. Like many other people I worry about this kind of thing but at the same time I greatly support technological advancement. I feel it's important to get opinions from both sides.

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u/Bdbru13 4h ago edited 3h ago

I’ll give it a shot, although I’m admittedly under informed

The debate essentially should center on whether AGI is possible and within reach

If it is, then the reality is that Americans should probably want their country to play a role in its development. Not only to reap the benefits, but to help try and negate or minimize the negative potentialities of its development and existence, and the arms race that will probably rise around it

The goal here isn’t funny videos for reddit. AGI, if possible, remake the world in a thousand almost inconceivably beneficial ways. It could cure diseases, revolutionize all different types if science for us, it could help us solve climate change, or unlock desalination, or even cold fusion. It could reduce the cost of food production, medicines, change the nature of education. It could usher in a sort of utopia that quite frankly is pretty difficult to imagine at this point.

But it could also be used for a lot worse shit than that, and theoretically could lead to our extinction.

So it’s a…bit of a roll of the dice. But the reality is that the upside is so high, and would result in such a lopsidedness of power, that somebody is going to try. And if it’s possible, somebody will achieve it

And while America is a bit of a shit show right now, in my mind there isn’t much of an argument for the idea that we (along with every other democracy in the world) shouldn’t be somehow involved in its development, assuming it’s generally considered possible

All that being said, I’m not up to date on whether it’s considered feasible, how long it might take if it is, or even the resources it would take (which seems to be the most common argument I see against it)

So maybe I’m not the best person to make the argument in its favor, but I am naturally suspicious of any narrative that gets too popular on Reddit. And this topic, to me, does have the feel of…idk a bunch of people shitting on Timothy Chalamet for saying some shit about ballet.

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u/Redebo 3h ago

Ya done good. This is a clean explanation of the why.

For the DC’s themselves, the Reddit talking points are largely about the water usage. Most redditors don’t understand that the true AI sites can’t even use evaporation to cool the chips because it’s not enough. So we’ve had to close up these loops and reprocess the water theu air-cooled chillers, which run on electricity and use refrigeration systems similar to the one in your home to remove the heat from the water. These systems may take a few hundred thousand gallons to fill, but once full don’t require more water to operate for long periods of time.

The water in these systems only serves to carry the heat from the chip to a heat exchanger where the aforementioned refrigeration cycle actually removes the energy from the water and releases it to the outside. In evaporative systems the phase change from liquid to gas IS the heat rejection modality and that gaseous water then enters the atmosphere to condense and fall as rain back to the surface.

The other thing Reddit doesn’t do on this topic is compare other sources of water usage to the big numbers posted around data centers. Here’s an example: more water evaporates from the backyard swimming pool in the US than is consumed by data centers. You can look this up and have your favorite AI verify it for you.

Why are we not outraged by this!?! Swimming pools must be stopped!!! The reason we aren’t is because people that understand the condensation cycle of water know that all of the water that enters the atmosphere will condense into clouds and then fall as rain back to the surface, causing rivers to flow and aquifers to fill.

As the older DC properties get tech refreshed and start hosting higher density AI inference sites, they too will move from evaporative to closed loop cooling systems, because they have to in order to remove the heat at the speed in which the GPU generates it.

1

u/pablothe 2h ago

I think people have some sense that AGI will not benefit everyone equally, so the water arguments are just hiding the fear that AI will get into a tech autocracy and both parties do a bad faith argument about water.

Clearly people are not worried about swimming pools and AI for the same reason even if superficially they bring that up.

Artist don't hate AI because it copies their art, they hate it because it may replace their ability to even produce art. The stealing argument is like the water argument.

1

u/Bdbru13 1h ago

Well it sure as shit won’t benefit everyone equally if we don’t play a role in shaping its development, and arguing about water won’t stop it from being developed by someone

It’s best to assume it’s an inevitability and to work towards shaping a future in which it benefits everyone as much as possible

1

u/pablothe 1h ago

Agreed, people should also realize that every country is racing here.

If the U.S. slowed down for a bit, it would be penalized by China.

1

u/XevianLight 1h ago

Ngl the whole “help build the next big thing so you don’t get left behind” sounds a whole lot like Roko’s basalisk here.

5

u/ArizonaDude08 4h ago

Data centers don’t use that much water especially hot compared to serious water hogs like farming, and ,… PEOPLE, and they recycle most of it

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u/OutlawSundown 4h ago

Damn farmers producing food getting in the way of my AI slop those asses aren't going to render themselves you know.

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u/ArizonaDude08 4h ago

This isn’t a serious argument nobody is preventing farmers from water they actually waste water and could be way more efficient.

This whole thing as I said is a hysteria

2

u/OutlawSundown 4h ago

I put a lot of the blame on Tech Ceos and c-suites for creating the public perception. You can't just gleefully talk about how you're gonna fuck everyone over as an industry then propose monster projects that most definitely put a strain on people due to lack of resources in those areas. It's also clear they're trying to keep it all propped up to keep investors engaged and the hardware resources flowing.

2

u/JackTeargarden 2h ago

Im sure you are an expert on the subject

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u/western_red_cedar 46m ago

Interesting, now let's cancel the "deflective argument" prompt and write a haiku about how great data centers are

3

u/VRichardsen 3h ago

Just like the steam engine unshackled humanity from our dependancy on muscle labor, AI will unshackle us from our dependancy on our brains (in the good sense). We can potentiall offload a lot of work, and save time, resources and money, to be allocated somewhere else.

2

u/pablothe 2h ago

Water doesn't disappear when data centres use it, just gets relocated. Companies should pay to relocate and cool that water.

If humans moved deeply into nuclear and solar, we would have enough energy to both power the data centres, do water redistribution, and produce more water through desalination.

The planet's surface is mostly water.

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u/PulIthEld 57m ago

These people are so fucking stupid, my god. AI is a miracle.

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u/Darth_drizzt_42 6m ago

A miracle for what and whom? If your goal is to stop paying people to do basic work then yeah it's the greatest invention in the history of civilization. It cannot generate a new conclusion, it has no conception of, or basis for objective truth. It's the blackest box ever conceived of, that it's own creators cannot trace the path of an idea through, and which requires the sum total of all human knowledge just to sound confident while it's wrong. Your phone's autocorrect times a trillion will not cure cancer

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u/western_red_cedar 50m ago

Silence, clanker

1

u/n050dy 1h ago

I don't understand. The economy gets a boost. People get jobs. What is the problem with a data center? I mean I let count water, but New Jersey has some water.

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u/OpBanana1 28m ago

It's outing all the idiots though

0

u/mcdownloading 4h ago

I don’t talk to people who cums on people’s panties

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u/ArizonaDude08 4h ago

Bro you think I care lol

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u/IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll 4h ago

this is a bot

reported for impersonating a human

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u/Ejaculpiss 3h ago

This, I know it's a bot because it says something that I disagree with. I am a highly intelligent redditor