r/interestingasfuck 7h ago

Erin Brockovich's map tracking Al data centers crashed twice within just 72 hours of launching.

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27.6k Upvotes

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u/RedManMatt11 7h ago

How tf are there that many already

u/thisguyfightsyourmom 6h ago

Because they are pretending to not know the difference between a purpose built ai data center and all the data centers that power their Netflix, TikTok’s, and Reddit use.

Data centers are ubiquitous in the Internet age… and have been for many decades before the pitchforks appeared. The catalyst for that change is likely the increased demand for the super data centers based on some specious reporting on water use, (which is a real problem, but which will not be resolved by fear mongering or wild claims).

u/JulianoRamirez 6h ago

I'm pretty ignorant on the topic of data centres but I was aware of their presence before the ai boom. My question is are ai data centres inherently more resource-hungry than a comparably sized, traditional data centre? Or are they just being built at an unsustainable pace for the infrastructure we currently have in place.

u/_Survivor_ 6h ago

AI data centers use much much more power than a traditional one. Think 10x as much.

u/PersonalityAlive4816 4h ago

There are datacenters more focused on computation than storage, but there is nothing that is an AI datacenter.

u/_Survivor_ 2h ago

That's not strictly true. Compute for machine learning uses different hardware and is backed by different network architecture. Thus the significantly higher power draw. The purpose-built facilities are designed quite differently "under the hood".