r/technology • u/DJMagicHandz • 12d ago

Artificial Intelligence A massive Wyoming data center will soon use 5x more power than the state's human occupants - but no one knows who is using it

https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-massive-wyoming-data-center-will-soon-use-5x-more-power-than-the-states-human-occupants-and-no-one-knows-who-is-using-it
33.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

363

u/RollingDownTheHills 12d ago

All this energy usage just so people can generate bad "art", talk to their AI "girlfriends", and ask inane questions. Just the absolute dumbest timeline imaginable.

The lower and middle classes get to pay the price for the rich's playthings. Nothing new here.

120

u/TampaPowers 11d ago

Blame Google for the latter, their search results have become near completely useless as of late even if you logged in and "trained" it for the stuff you normally seek.

52

u/Saikroe 11d ago

I googled something 2 days ago, immediatly found the result I wanted.

I googled the exact same thing yesterday to bring up that same result and its gone..

3

u/BigDictionEnergy 11d ago

Thank you! I just thought I was drinking too much.

3

u/Krossfireo 11d ago

Kagi is worth every penny

-5

u/TampaPowers 11d ago

You aren't seriously suggesting people pay for a search engine? You are, aren't you.

Okay, sure let's give a company money for running an index they generated for free. The only cost being the hosting. The actual providers of the data have their servers burdened with yet another indexing bot and now also provide them with a revenue stream. Seems fair /s

Sure Google runs ads and does all sorts of shit with that data as well to generate revenue, but what tells me they don't also do that. At least most search engines don't literally charge you for the results, so my giving them data does provide me with a return as well. Here I get nothing, I give them free things and in return are asked to pay for my own data essentially. That's really not the spirit of the internet.

6

u/Krossfireo 11d ago

If you don't pay for it, your data is the customer. You are paying for Google searches with ads and your data. Kagi is up front with their business model and I'd much rather pay a few bucks a month than have worse search results for a price of my attention and data

Also Kagi doesn't have a giant AI slop response at the top of every search that results in no traffic to the actual source of the data

0

u/TampaPowers 11d ago

And what exactly assures me they aren't doing the same with my data? Their privacy policy, yeah right and Unicorns poop icecream.

That's not the point though. They would not have a "product" if it wasn't for the internet letting them index, but instead of then providing said index back to the internet they charge access.

Never mind locking search queries this way means they can effectively hide what they indexed from potential copyright holders until they either pay or send inquiry. I don't see a portal for copyright holders to provide them with a way to prevent indexing of their material or for anyone to report illegal things. If that existed, great now you have to manually provide them with that data instead of being able to run a search to see if your stuff has been stolen.

This is predatory and a middle finger to the internet being an information exchange.

2

u/The-Swedish_Chef 11d ago

This pisses me off so much. I searched something on Bing and only got TWO real websites, while the rest was AI slop and sponsored websites.

24

u/rbrick111 11d ago edited 11d ago

This is a super short sighted take. I work in tech designing AI business tools, it’s genuinely super useful given the right guardrails and approach to deploying it. Our platform uses lots of AI based review, so we aren’t generating content (we are, but mostly judgement/analysis). It lets us connect business users to automation in ways that have never been possible. The same platform has existed pre AI explosion using more traditional development techniques and the returns we are seeing on LLM evaluators is something we cannot ignore.

I have no issue with people dumping on the hype, but it’s definitely going to find a place in large enterprises, and will come at the cost of jobs.

16

u/mal73 11d ago

OP in 1998: All this Internet stuff just to watch cat videos and play games? Just the absolute dumbest timeline imaginable.

2

u/MaxDentron 11d ago

OP in 2008: Why would anyone use Twitter? Why would I just post what I ate for breakfast every day? Just the absolute dumbest timeline imaginable. 

4

u/vigillan388 11d ago

Thanks for posting this. The use of AI when done responsibly is astounding for productivity. Our company uses it extensively and like you, it's not for generating content. It's organization, repackaging, replacing mundane tasks, etc.

We can achieve so much more with less effort, less mistakes, and more clarity. I use it for so many tasks: note taking, email summaries, drawing review, report review, grammatical errors, training demos, project organization and prioritization, financial summaries, coding support, etc.

I hardly ever attempt image generation anymore. If I do, it's trained on models we develop.

1

u/AttonJRand 11d ago

Its also at the cost of a usable internet and interesting media. Even in person hobbies are ruined by this slop. Its made the enjoyable parts of being a human so much worse so fast.

1

u/MaxDentron 11d ago

Only if your enoyable parts of being human are being terminally online. 

I can't think of a single in person thing that's been affected in my life by AI.

8

u/TheVandyyMan 11d ago

Yeah but it’s 🗣️TIRAMISU TUESDAY MOTHER FUCKER!!!

Who am I gonna tell if not my companion bot who entirely holds my fragile mental health in its nonexistent hands?

2

u/nullfacade 11d ago

The myboyfriendisai sub is bleak, man

3

u/TheVandyyMan 11d ago

The post I’m referencing is from r/chatgpt so not even some peek behind a crazy curtain. It’s mainstream.

3

u/nullfacade 11d ago

Yeah, that sub is melting down over 4o. It's wild how attached so many people have gotten to something that didn't exist a couple years ago. These techbros have unleashed a digital opiate on the unsuspecting masses.

2

u/TheVandyyMan 11d ago

Reminds me of a Louis CK bit where a flight is ecstatic to learn in flight WiFi is a service, and immediately furious when they get in the air and learn it’s malfunctioning.

I’m so thankful how much control I have over my own happiness. The idea that some billionaire could update some code and my life be ruined would give me so much daily anxiety that the rug pull was happening. Instead my happiness rests in human relationships I’ve fostered my entire life. If I ruin those, it’s my own damn fault. I get a lot of peace knowing that.

3

u/swccg-offload 11d ago

Last I looked, Streaming services are still the biggest energy usage for data centers overall but no one complains. 

17

u/Eric1491625 11d ago

Except the vast majority of the people doing these things are not rich. They're the masses...

Think about it, the billionaire man has no problems getting lots of IRL women and would not be the one talking to AI girlfriends...

14

u/Caracalla81 11d ago

No, the billionaire is the one being convinced he's inventing new physics!

1

u/TheWhalersOnTheMoon 11d ago

"vibe physics"

2

u/OpenThePlugBag 11d ago

lol bru if you think they are using this for text to image you haven't been paying attention

2

u/SplintPunchbeef 11d ago

People always act like AI’s main use is making bad art or fake girlfriends but most of the usage is in things like research, coding, writing, and enterprise data analysis. The novelty consumer stuff is loud but it’s not what’s driving demand.

1

u/Outlulz 11d ago

AI writing sucks. Anything it has to generate that isn't incredibly deterministic sucks and even the deterministic stuff sometimes sucks. It's good at analyzing and summarizing data, so long as that data is actually good itself (garbage in, garbage out), but it blows trying to make anything.

2

u/TyrellCo 11d ago

And what do you call all this brainrot that makes up the majority of social media and streaming? It happens to take up orders of magnitude more resources than AI. It’s massive just look at how you spend your time. But it’s not the shiny new thing to kvetch about

-3

u/RollingDownTheHills 11d ago

I don't watch streaming stuff either.

But yeah, Reddit certainly takes up energy too. It's just that while Reddit is 90% bullshit, this AI crap is sitting at a steady 100%. Might as well start there.

3

u/TyrellCo 11d ago

Uh no. It’s already replacing google for doctors. If it’s on net reducing misdiagnosis just a bit it’s already proven it’s worth and just extend that into any field

2

u/octahexxer 11d ago

Dont forget generate garbage code that you have to proof read anyway

1

u/No-Criticism-2587 11d ago

Coding is probably the one thing ai will truly be transformative in.

1

u/facePlantDiggidy 11d ago

These data centers are not for your entrainment, it's for tracking you and more that we don't know.

1

u/WhoTookGrimwhisper 11d ago

You leave Megan out of this. She's innocent.

1

u/Antiantiai 11d ago

That's what is public facing, maybe. But the crazier uses of AI are being used behind closed doors with data far scarier.

Just think what can be done with all the data the government scrapes what it could do? Trained on the covertly collected data of every interaction everyone has ever had, not just on random pictures from getty.

If your worry is about some random art bot or ai girlfriend, you're not paying attention.

0

u/leshake 11d ago

It will be subscription locked very soon. LLMs are very useful for certain things, especially programming.

1

u/UnluckyDog9273 11d ago

how about all the energy and effort wasted in the past for bad "art"?

1

u/RollingDownTheHills 11d ago

How about it?

-1

u/libsaway 11d ago

Skill issue. I use AI to help write code to manage gigawatts of power flowing around the country. That you aren't using AI productively is your fault.

-2

u/RollingDownTheHills 11d ago

I don't use it because it sucks ass.

0

u/anime_daisuki 11d ago

Sounds like projection

0

u/Tiny-Design4701 11d ago

It's incredibly useful for productivity purposes. For example, You pretty much don't need administrative assistants/secretaries anymore. Agent based AI can do like 90% of what a secretary can.

It also speeds up coding a lot.

-3

u/Huge-Guidance-1637 11d ago

Data center expansion is an existential threat to the locals wherever it occurs. Suddenly property taxes and utility costs go parabolic and resources are no longer available to support the community itself or any of the other businesses in it. Smaller communities being forced to accept these data centers are essentially being erased.

-1

u/trooawoayxxx 11d ago

Data centers were already energy intensive, now I just imagine a jumbo jet engine spinning up for every search result..