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Comment by wuyunhuo | Hacker News Reader

AI is good, but the impact of data centers on the environment cannot be ignored. Over a longer time scale, AI is just one wave, while the environment will take much longer to recover.

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It seems pretty insincere of a complaint, when in those communities, 100x more land and water is used for farming, just because farming is a heritage, no?

* if that's a sarcastic / troll comment, congratulations, you got me but good :-)

* if it's serious, what in the world do you eat, to compare farming, with AI datacentres, on equal / comparable footing in terms of necessity and efficiencies -- or call farming a "heritage business"? :->

I purchase surplus xeons on ebay, grind them into powder, and mix them into my milkshakes. If you aren't going that route then the real question here is what you're supplementing with to get the necessary computational boost. I'm aware of the complaints that surplus gear has a lower overall nutritional value but you'll see that it's highly cost effective if you can just be bothered to do the math.

Failing to invest in datacenters now is going to mean paying more for the same consumption later. IMO it's best to let the hyperscalers take the hit from the initial depreciation. Sure the alternative gets you cheaper wheat or corn or whatever but that's coupled with an absurdly large premium if you're then blending in brand new CPUs and GPUs.

Ah yes. If you don’t buy during the surge you’ll have to pay the price later when costs have come down. Makes sense.

look, you're having a conversation on a website hosted by a datacenter, right? it's kind of a reductionist point of view. i don't think it's a very interesting question that you're asking, it's bad faith.

there's lots of ways food production is malevolent. the animal cruelty, the worker abuse, not just its environmental impacts.

i don't know. my point is that, this kind of stylistic aesthetic vibes stuff about datacenters is kind of bullshit. i'm not the only one who is saying this. are people in the places with cheap electricity near urban centers that are appealing to datacenters and seeking to ban them also going to ban bad farming operations from their communities? that's a LOT of farming operations! i can come up with some way that almost all farming operations are malevolent. no. they're not going to do that. i don't think they should.

you can have a national policy for this kind of stuff, because the consumers and producers are in different places and our way of geography self-determination is kind of stupid. if it's a market failure because of how the borders are arranged - which happens a lot with environmental stuff especially! - don't let these little bitty communities decide.

AI is useful for programmers and a few other groups of people to do their jobs faster.

For most people it is just a thing that produces crappy facebook memes, has made certain parts of life more dystopian - like job interviews, and people keep saying is going to take away your job and the jobs of your children. And energy prices keep going up.

If you can't see why AI is unpopular you're just very out of touch.

automation is pervasive in farming. it's already an AI business. it will be a generative AI business in many ways too. farming, lots of kinds of farming, especially the most profitable kinds, is unpopular too. to me, this popularity contest thing, that boils down to, "everything visible that people do for money is invalid, except for the thing i do," is not a good way to lead.

I'm hearing from you: "People shouldn't have the right to determine how their country is run - I should - because I'm a technology-man, so I'm better than them."

You have never set foot on a farm.

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