I think its likely possible to build a data center that a community would be okay with. It would mean making certain design choices:
- Closed loop water cycle - This would mean that only small fraction of water that is normally used by DCs is consumed. This technology is fully mature. The reason most companies don’t use it is, it is more expensive to run the DC this way.
- Large scale PV solar panel installation for the DC - While not a complete answer to power consumption question, it would provide a large offset during the hottest hours of the day when DC cooling is most needed mitigating the worst impacts to DC electricity consumption
- Waste heat reuse - In many parts of the world heat centrally created in a city and distrusted through pipes to other places that need heat. DCs are exceedingly good and producing heat, and it is largely wasted. If a community would know that their own heating bills would come down by using waste head from the DC, that would be an incentive.
- Sound mitigation - most of the sound comes from cooling fans. If waste heat reclamation is done properly or a water loop to a large body of water is available, then the noise could be significantly reduced or eliminated too.
All of these things are possible and if a DC builder did these things on an existing site, then used that as a showcase for what a new DC would be, I think it would be much better received. They can do all of these things. They don’t because its cheaper not to.
Just to add to your points, all of those are already a thing in colder climates. Google DC in Finland is one example. When it’s heavily below zero half of the year it’s just not possible to run open loop systems and there’s plenty of use for the excess heat. Some DCs just donate the waste heat to municipal heating. PR obviously plays role in that, but that’s easy way to get rid of the heat and datacenters don’t need to manage the heating network and fluctuations on demand, so they also benefit from someone who’ll just take the heat away from their ‘hands’. Also sound is automatically better managed since you need decent insulation on the buildings to avoid condensation and other problems which come when temperature differences are pretty huge between inside and outside of the building.
How do you donate heat? Ventilation pipes?
Heat exchangers and/or heat pumps to move energy to water and then pump that to district heating network which then takes care of heating of all kinds of buildings.
Also, do something useful instead of participating in AI slop, which is a harm to society from every direction.
But the profittsssssssssssss
If it’s used for something that benefits society sure, but AI slop farms don’t do that. Also, if it’s reasonable sized and not determined to buy up way more resources than needed to destroy the consumer electronics economy.
“I actually think it’s disingenuous for governors and elected officials who pontificate about workforce and hiring and economic development to then go and basically throw a grenade to the center of what is the new industrial revolution that literally powers almost every single business on earth,”
Except that this “revolution” is taking away more long-term jobs than it will create.
It’d be fine if there was UBI instead of “lol, starve”
Horse before the cart.
I used to think UBI was a reasonable solution, but I think that might be its problem, it’s too reasonable, it would probably be the only thing that can prevent total class warfare from breaking out. But these billionaires (and now trillionaires?) are fucking idiots and I kind of hope they are too stupid to realize they need to placate the masses to avoid it or so narcissistic they think they can actually win if it does. We’d fucking slaughter them in a class war, no problem. They are not as smart nor as well-prepared as they think that they are. I think they’re pushing all the wrong buttons and I think the way things are going they’re going to get burned. They’re flying too close to the sun, and like Icarus, they’re having a real fun time. Until at some point, suddenly, they’re not.
Yep, then you only have to worry about the environmental harm and cognitive decline of anyone who uses it, especially kids.
