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I work in DCO, thats Data Center Operations if you’re not aware. I’ve tried explaining the amount of power used to my elderly mom; it isn’t easy! But here’s my

I work in DCO, thats Data Center Operations if you’re not aware. I’ve tried explaining the amount of power used to my elderly mom; it isn’t easy! But here’s my best take: The racks I am personally responsible for consume 17.2kW. That’s consistent across the year; sure things dip a bit when applications are shut down, but in general 17.2kW is the number. Presuming a national average of 1.2kW per home, each rack of equipment I oversee could potentially power 14 houses. I am responsible for hundreds of these racks, while my larger organization has many thousands of these racks in many locations worldwide. I’ve found no other way to let the scale of this sink in. When put this way she is very clear: the price isn’t worth it to humanity. Being able to get, say, Door Dash, is pretty neat! But not at the cost of all our hoarded treasure and certainly not at the cost of the environment on the only planet we have access to. The work done by AI will only ever benefit the people at the top. Because to be frank: they won’t share. Because the very wealthy have hoarding disorder.

jeffbee 1y ago
It seems like you are having an emotional response to not understanding the general energy picture. For example, an A320 aloft uses the same energy as two thousand of your hypothetical racks (2.5 tons of kerosene per hour). Each! We are in no meaningful sense torching the biosphere to get AI.
- globnomulous 1y ago
  > It seems like you are having an emotional response to not understanding the general energy picture. This is condescending and rude. It also strikes me as obviously wrong. The 'response' isn't emotional in the slightest; it just explains the emotional and cognitive experience of acquiring understanding. It's a reasonable, well-reasoned explanation of the difficulty of intuitively grasping how much energy these data centers, and thus the companies that use them, consume -- and then of the shock many experience when it dawns on them. > For example, an A320 aloft uses the same energy as two thousand of your hypothetical racks (2.5 tons of kerosene per hour). > Each! > We are in no meaningful sense torching the biosphere to get AI. What exactly is the reasoning here? That airplanes use a lot of energy, just like data centers or compared to data centers, and therefore that AI isn't ecologically damaging -- or isn't "meaningfully" damaging, whatever that means? That's not just wrong. It's a nonsequitur. There's a simpler, easier, better way to wrap our heads around the data, one that doesn't require false dichotomies (or something like that): humans are torching the biosphere both to get AI and to travel.
  - myaccountonhn 1y ago
    Well said. Thank you.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    > What exactly is the reasoning here? That airplanes use a lot of energy, just like data centers ... No. It is not "just like data centers". That is my point. The amount of energy used by transportation is several orders of magnitude more than the energy used by information technologies. The energy used to fly back and forth to Nevada to write this whiny article was more than was needed to train some of the latest models. The whole topic is totally nonsense.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  It seems like you’ve missed my point utterly. My explanation was targeted at my elderly mom, not at Hacker News readers. Her responses were genuinely hers, and I think they are reasonable given her understanding and my explanation. I apologize this didn’t come across and I’ll have to rethink how I phrase something like this in the future. That said, your response was emotional as well: as if your words were cast down from on high, a gift from the gods! Your arrogance and rudeness should inspire some self-examination, but I am not hopeful on that front.
jahewson 1y ago
But it can’t really power “14 houses” because people in those houses are consuming external services such as those provided by your racks. Unless your racks can only serve 14 customers.
fallingknife 1y ago
But if you substitute the pre-doordash system of calling up a restaurant and ordering delivery or take out, the energy savings aren't even 1%. One gallon of gas contains 34 kWh of energy, so if one delivery takes 0.5 gallons of gas, it uses enough energy to power one of your racks for an hour. How many doordash orders can be processed by one of your racks in an hour? It's got to be in the millions.

jeffbee 1y ago

It seems like you are having an emotional response to not understanding the general energy picture. For example, an A320 aloft uses the same energy as two thousand of your hypothetical racks (2.5 tons of kerosene per hour). Each! We are in no meaningful sense torching the biosphere to get AI.

globnomulous 1y ago
> It seems like you are having an emotional response to not understanding the general energy picture. This is condescending and rude. It also strikes me as obviously wrong. The 'response' isn't emotional in the slightest; it just explains the emotional and cognitive experience of acquiring understanding. It's a reasonable, well-reasoned explanation of the difficulty of intuitively grasping how much energy these data centers, and thus the companies that use them, consume -- and then of the shock many experience when it dawns on them. > For example, an A320 aloft uses the same energy as two thousand of your hypothetical racks (2.5 tons of kerosene per hour). > Each! > We are in no meaningful sense torching the biosphere to get AI. What exactly is the reasoning here? That airplanes use a lot of energy, just like data centers or compared to data centers, and therefore that AI isn't ecologically damaging -- or isn't "meaningfully" damaging, whatever that means? That's not just wrong. It's a nonsequitur. There's a simpler, easier, better way to wrap our heads around the data, one that doesn't require false dichotomies (or something like that): humans are torching the biosphere both to get AI and to travel.
- myaccountonhn 1y ago
  Well said. Thank you.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  > What exactly is the reasoning here? That airplanes use a lot of energy, just like data centers ... No. It is not "just like data centers". That is my point. The amount of energy used by transportation is several orders of magnitude more than the energy used by information technologies. The energy used to fly back and forth to Nevada to write this whiny article was more than was needed to train some of the latest models. The whole topic is totally nonsense.
Henchman21 1y ago
It seems like you’ve missed my point utterly. My explanation was targeted at my elderly mom, not at Hacker News readers. Her responses were genuinely hers, and I think they are reasonable given her understanding and my explanation. I apologize this didn’t come across and I’ll have to rethink how I phrase something like this in the future. That said, your response was emotional as well: as if your words were cast down from on high, a gift from the gods! Your arrogance and rudeness should inspire some self-examination, but I am not hopeful on that front.

jahewson 1y ago

But it can’t really power “14 houses” because people in those houses are consuming external services such as those provided by your racks. Unless your racks can only serve 14 customers.

fallingknife 1y ago

But if you substitute the pre-doordash system of calling up a restaurant and ordering delivery or take out, the energy savings aren't even 1%. One gallon of gas contains 34 kWh of energy, so if one delivery takes 0.5 gallons of gas, it uses enough energy to power one of your racks for an hour. How many doordash orders can be processed by one of your racks in an hour? It's got to be in the millions.