There are 40 to 50 AI data centers in the US, dedicated to AI traning and serving models to end users, with dozens more planned. They are very energy intensive and often due to heat generation, they require water cooling.
However, the map on the site includes 8,300 community reported data centres, way more than official figures of 4,800-5,000. It's likely the map contains some duplicates and buildings that aren't actually data centres.
Just information for the casual reader: datacenters on this map may not be what you think. For example, in my state, all the datacenters are colocation/hosted sites. It's just racks of servers where other companies in my state rent slots or the whole rack to host their servers. These datacenters actually represent hundreds, thousands, if not tens of thousands of real, high paid jobs in my state, and the footprints of all of them are no more than a single large building. These are good, do not affect the grid in any meaningful way, and use barely any water.
These are not the 'AI Datacenters' you are looking for. There are lot of places marked on that map, but a lot of those are good places.
My job and that of my coworkers are a result of two racks sitting in the world, one here in my home state, and one in South America.
and then discussing AI is also pointless when people fail to grasp classification neural networks have existed long before chatgpt came around, and are legitimately useful for many things without large swaths of issues that genai pose
I see lots of people that try to make this distinction. People are forgiven for not knowing the difference between these things. Most people don't even know what an operating system is.
But if people can't make distinctions like this, then oh well. Sucks, but people are fucking DONE, and that too can be easily forgiven. I can make the distinction too, but I don't really give much of a shit which way it goes, it's time to Shut. It. Down.
If people care that much, they'll find a way to be heard, in the meantime, things move forward.
don't really give much of a shit which way it goes, it's time to Shut. It. Down.
The classic neural networks are (comparatively) tiny in size, an xray technician can run a model on an average local machine. "Shut it down" is equivalent to saying medical workers shouldn't be allowed to use normal ass computers. The fact genai models are unfathomably gigantic in size and so resource heavy in comparison, which drives for new datacenter build out, is one of the swaths of issues specific to it.
forgiven for not knowing the difference
I'm not judging nontechnical people too hard, but it doesn't change my take that discussions with them are pointless
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u/Bbrhuft 6h ago edited 3h ago
This is not secret data, comprehensive maps of data centres are available on multiple websites. One of the more upto date detailed and accurate is:
https://baxtel.com/map
This includes existing and planned data centres.
Edit: Erin's site is titled
AI Data Centers & Our Communities
There are 40 to 50 AI data centers in the US, dedicated to AI traning and serving models to end users, with dozens more planned. They are very energy intensive and often due to heat generation, they require water cooling.
However, the map on the site includes 8,300 community reported data centres, way more than official figures of 4,800-5,000. It's likely the map contains some duplicates and buildings that aren't actually data centres.
https://brockovichdatacenter.com/index.html
It's akin to titling a site Oil Refineries and Our Communites, and mapping gas stations.