What are your thoughts on data centers?

[QuickTwist]

This is a topic that I don't know a whole lot about. I've just heard a few things.

That is the idea that data centers are taking up huge portions of electricity and power and water and land. What are your thoughts about this?

Personally, I think the elites are going to elite and they are not really going to ask us, just like they didn't ask us about 5g.

It's the machine that keeps on turning. Is there a way to do something about this? And what is your take on it?

Feel free to link to articles and such about it.

 

[TomasM]

I don't believe the United States has a choice but to implement. The president has committed to making AI and crypto currency a reality. He's attempting to re-establish the manufacturing sector in the US but that is going to take a significant amount of time for factories to come online even if he does in fact have the commitment from foreign investors--as he suggests.

Similarly, the US has seen a large number of tech workers lose work from many of the Big Tech organizations. These people are highly intelligent and qualified but don't have a place to work so AI gives them the ability to combine many information technologies disciplines without having to fully understand each in depth - this makes innovation a realistic option in the event that IP is protected (it hasn't been because of China).

Finally, if the US doesn't win the AI race then this could be catastrophic in the long term. Of course, the amount of money these tech companies are committing is far greater than they can possibly earn back (at least that is the word on the street) and that tells me that someone is going to be squirreling away some fraudulent money or there's a plan to alter the entire economic system (reset). Given the debt loads by countries around the world, I'm expecting a reset but we don't currently know when or how that will be done without damaging the trust of the upper class across the entire Western world (not including the elites--obviously).

So, to answer your question, yes the elites and government are pushing the datacenters and that is not going to stop unless someone decides they want the US and the rest of the western world to implode.

Side note: It would be nice if John Maynard Keynes was here to answer for his great idea about printing debt back during the great depression. Of course, I'm sure he would blame governmental fiscal policy for the outcome - as if that couldn't be seen like a kid looking at an ice cream truck.

 

[Asa]

I'm anti Gen Ai, and anti data center.

 

[John K]

I suspect it will be full of surprises. For example, it's very possible that there will be some major company failures before the winners emerge, and that could well lead to a global economic crisis because of the sheer scale of capital invested. We've been there before with tech companies.

There's something insidious about the ai that's already freely accessible to everyone on a casual basis. It's much easier to get one of them to find something out for you than to do it yourself, or to summarise a long text, or to write a text for you that's a bit challenging. People will take the easy route - not all folks, but doing it yourself will become a thing for a dedicated minority (of weirdos maybe?). In fact it will stop being economic for the major companies to provide direct access to information once most folks stop looking directly for it. It'll lead to a degradation of people's ability to deal with complex intellectual issues on their own. Maybe in a generation or two ai will have to be self developing because there won't be any humans left who have the ability to service or develop it.

That's before we look at the demands of ai on the economy for power, real estate, computing components, water. They'll all have to be triplicated for each service because it won't be long before most economies become dependent on it, and there will have to be redundancy in the services to ensure their continuity in a crisis. That'll cause inflation because it will be competing for these resources with other demands.

It will very possibly become a single point of failure for the maintenance of modern societies.

But then this is the pessimistic view. Maybe it will be an El Dorado of benefits that make the future a utopia? That is a possibility, but then the opposite is very possible too. It feels like an awful gamble.

To be honest, I worry a bit more about small scale specialised ai than this big stuff. For example, how long will it be before terrorists or a crooks get their hands on a cheap drone that can stay in the air more or less indefinitely and which is programmed biometrically to seek out and kill a particular individual? These sort of things could be turned out in their thousands for next to nothing within a couple of generations. Or what about an ai mastered ransomware engine that's trained on every computer operating environment in the world?

 

[Morpheus999]

chatGPT is the creepiest motherfucker I've ever interacted with.

 

[Fruiteloop]

Data centers are built using the profits of big tech. This money would go toward paying taxes but they decided to spend it on data centers and told the government that this would stimulate the economy. So they can afford it, it is the surplus of what they earned from the consumer. Even if they do not make a profit from it this creates jobs. but they will make some profits because the data centers are being used to monitor what people buy. It's all based on statistics: more information run in simulations to get you to buy more things. So they make more money if they can predict what you will buy. And not only the public but other companies as well. If company A buys shipment of product B and this can be predicted in advance they can plan better. So everyone is using the data centers to plan better how to run the economy with maths. There may be a slow decline in building the data centers soon because we do not have infinite resources but they have the money to keep going as long as they can make better plans predicting what the economy does. It is better than paying the money as taxes. The government would spend the money in a way that wastes the money more that the data centers do.

(personally I do not see why people were against 5G networks, it is just a new standard of radio bandwidth, not all radio waves are bad)

 

[Roses In The Vineyard]

They're there for the surveillance state while being sold as AI to the population, would go so far as to say they are not even meant to turn a profit once the industry consolidates and the main customer ends up being the government along with a few mega corps.

Meanwhile

 

[ThomasJ79]

I’m opposed.

 

[QuickTwist]

After thinking about this more, my position is that this is very similar to when there was a race to the moon or the Cold War.

 

[Quarkmaster]

Last I heard, data centers were driving up electric bills for nearby residents and businesses.

You might think that they could build solar panels atop those data centers, and they might help a bit, but I've been inside those data centers, and the power demands are pretty outrageous. The biggest problem is the cooling issue. The most efficient cooling systems are only about 30%, so while each of your cabinets may only require around 700 watts of power (maybe ten or fifteen computers), the power to cool it will be 2300W, totaling 3kW for a single cabinet. A single data center may contain hundreds or thousands of these cabinets.

And there has always been a battle with computer components, between speed and efficiency. Components get smaller and smaller, which takes less power, but the smaller the component gets, the higher you can drive the frequency, but the higher you drive the frequency, the more power the device consumes. And higher frequencies mean more data manipulation, more computational abilities.

So you might have to tear down several forests nearby to complete the power supply to the data centers with solar panels. Otherwise, they have to get power from whomever supplies it within the region.

One of the power companies built a massive 200-acre solar farm along one of the bike routes that I ride, tearing down pristine wilderness, forested Florida jungle and beautiful trees, in order to build it. They didn't do this on a desert - they destroyed oxygen-producing green living things. I was riding my bike along the trail that runs next to it and I was horrified by the carnage when I first saw it. Apparently, there were no protests about this.

 

[Morpheus999]

Last I heard, data centers were driving up electric bills for nearby residents and businesses.

You might think that they could build solar panels atop those data centers, and they might help a bit, but I've been inside those data centers, and the power demands are pretty outrageous. The biggest problem is the cooling issue. The most efficient cooling systems are only about 30%, so while each of your cabinets may only require around 700 watts of power (maybe ten or fifteen computers), the power to cool it will be 2300W, totaling 3kW for a single cabinet. A single data center may contain hundreds or thousands of these cabinets.

And there has always been a battle with computer components, between speed and efficiency. Components get smaller and smaller, which takes less power, but the smaller the component gets, the higher you can drive the frequency, but the higher you drive the frequency, the more power the device consumes. And higher frequencies mean more data manipulation, more computational abilities.

So you might have to tear down several forests nearby to complete the power supply to the data centers with solar panels. Otherwise, they have to get power from whomever supplies it within the region.

One of the power companies built a massive 200-acre solar farm along one of the bike routes that I ride, tearing down pristine wilderness, forested Florida jungle and beautiful trees, in order to build it. They didn't do this on a desert - they destroyed oxygen-producing green living things. I was riding my bike along the trail that runs next to it and I was horrified by the carnage when I first saw it. Apparently, there were no protests about this.

I feel really bad, I've been using it for therapy and figuring out how to deal with toxic people by analyzing their enneagram and mbti, like every day for two years now. It also helps me not feel lonely.

I've purposely avoided reading articles on how bad AI is for the environment.

Now I know.

 

[Wyote]

I've been using it for therapy and figuring out how to deal with toxic people by analyzing their enneagram and mbti, like every day for two years now. It also helps me not feel lonely.

Who hurt you bb

 

[Morpheus999]

Who hurt you bb

What is bb? I'm older. I'm not hip to the slang.

 

[Morpheus999]

Who hurt you bb

Okay, I just looked that up. Was that a term of endearment or sarcasm?

 

[Wyote]

Okay, I just looked that up. Was that a term of endearment or sarcasm?

It was intended to make a somewhat serious question a little lighter. Comical.

 

[Morpheus999]

It was intended to make a somewhat serious question a little lighter. Comical.

The mother of course. And "friends" I let stay in my life for far too long. I finally door slammed two people I've known for almost 20 years a couple of weeks ago. One of them is say, an unhealthy 6w5 sp/so INTP, so when we were still friends I'd plug his type into AI and ask questions and try to figure him out, like why he did the things he did, why he was so selfish, etc. Unfortunately knowing that much about him helped me excuse what a shitty friend he was. Actually knowing about the enneagram in general has made me excuse his behavior over the years but AI can analyze the entire type so specifically - the enneagram, stacking and MBTI which I can't. I have to admit it's given me pretty good advice, like "stop giving so much of yourself" but I just wouldn't listen.

 

[Quarkmaster]

The mother of course. And "friends" I let stay in my life for far too long. I finally door slammed two people I've known for almost 20 years a couple of weeks ago. One of them is say, an unhealthy 6w5 sp/so INTP, so when we were still friends I'd plug his type into AI and ask questions and try to figure him out, like why he did the things he did, why he was so selfish, etc. Unfortunately knowing that much about him helped me excuse what a shitty friend he was. Actually knowing about the enneagram in general has made me excuse his behavior over the years but AI can analyze the entire type so specifically - the enneagram, stacking and MBTI which I can't. I have to admit it's given me pretty good advice, like "stop giving so much of yourself" but I just wouldn't listen.

I feel bad that one of my own type has been so crude and nasty with you. But as you may be aware, there are a lot of good and bad people in the world, and type doesn't have to be an indicator of this.

My warning about AI also extends beyond this. I've heard some stories about using AI as a "companion" or even a therapist. What I've heard (and I have no data to back this up) is that AIs tend to be very agreeable and supportive, and very often don't provide counter arguments to whatever you're going through, for example:

You: "I think I just want to kill that guy!"

AI: "I certainly understand how you're feeling, and perhaps I can assist you with this pre-planned murder. Would you like some help with this?"

You: " Seriously? How would I do this?"

AI: "Let me go through a few scenarios of previous murders where the culprit was successful and also able to escape justice..."

And so on. And these are real-life happenings. Where an AI has actually assisted people in committing a murder. Sometimes even a suicide.

These things really happen.

The simple solution to this is to find another, more mature and evolved INTP into your world. We're the ultimate analysts for INFJs. We bring rationality and common sense to your unresolved issues, especially in the definition of self.

 

[Quarkmaster]

I feel really bad, I've been using it for therapy and figuring out how to deal with toxic people by analyzing their enneagram and mbti, like every day for two years now. It also helps me not feel lonely.

It's even worse than you might suspect. As we've been pouring CO2 into the atmosphere, plants have been absorbing it, converting CO2 back into O2, and compensating for the excess Carbon production that we've been engaging in. It's truly a symbiotic relationship that we seem to be completely unaware of. Plants and greenery have been multiplying to keep up with the excess CO2, but have only been behind by about 5%. In the meantime, really stupid people have been cutting down forests and O2-producing plant life in order to make money and get rich. So, the fewer plants there are, the more CO2 that remains in the atmosphere, and the faster the atmosphere heats up and the faster climate changes.

In the meantime, I've made up two youtube videos that explain in detail Thought Field Therapy that begin with total unconditional self-acceptance. This is where all things begin.

 

[Quarkmaster]

figuring out how to deal with toxic people by analyzing their enneagram and mbti,

This doesn't make much sense. Adolf Hitler was an ENFJ, a type that I know well, and most of these people have been anything but toxic in my life. So I don't think you can identify toxicity in a person from their personality type. Toxicity comes from corruption of the individual, and somewhere along the line, a failure to correct it.

So let's look back at things identified in the DSM-5 manual. Personality types and personality disorders are two different things. You cannot determine a person's personality type from their personality disorder anymore than you can tell a person's personality disorder from their personality type. That's just plain silliness. You should have asked me about this a long time ago and I could have saved you some time.

Incidentally, I'm familiar with eannagrams - I even have a book on this - and I consider this to be a non-science, which means hokum. So you're better off looking over your horoscope and star charts for better information (also hokum).

So-called "toxic individuals" have, over their years of existence, have learned to hide their toxicity very well, so it takes a seasoned expert to spot one of these people. They can be, from the DSM-5, "none-of-the-above." The DSM-5 does not identify such a thing as "toxic people". It only identifies disorders.

A person might be the sort that "brings you down", or criticizes you constantly, or is mean to you "just because". Whatever people do to others, they do because they get away with it and it benefits them. When it no longer benefits them, they have no choice except to change their behavior. Examples of non-benefit is rejection, blocking access to others, blocking access to the benefits associated with association. When you experience rejection of one sort or another, it is because someone else has established and enforced a "boundary."

That is, "when you step over this line, I will no longer allow you in my world."

My suspicion is that you've not established boundaries, or you're not enforcing them. This of course, can lead to loneliness, since, if you allow people to run over you, you'll lose your own sense of self-acceptance. At that point, sensing you're own "unworthiness" other people sense it as well and reject you out of hand.

The big word here is BOUNDARIES. If you don't have these, and more importantly, don't enforce them, you won't have anything.

I'm the smallest guy at the gym. But I hang out and talk with guys twice my size, and they treat me with respect. If anyone disrespects me, they earn my rejection.

I think that the word, "toxic person" is a modern colloquialism for, "anyone you don't like." This might include "toxic masculinity", "toxic feminism", "toxic behavior", and so on.

 

[Akar]

The DSM-5 does not identify such a thing as "toxic people". It only identifies disorders.

gold

-Giammarco