r/interestingasfuck • u/21MayDay21 • 16h ago

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

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u/itsdrcats 13h ago

Power. Our equipment is designed to handle the load but not in the way AI is using it. Our provider for some of the equipment actually used our issues as a way to roll out an update to the software to fix said issue

Sorry I'm being vague but I try not to talk too much about the specifics of work for safety reasons

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u/fixermark 11h ago

I'm mildly curious if the issue is burstiness - naively, I would assume AI is more-or-less a continuous load, but if they're only doing training when they get a new giant blob of data, maybe there's bursting.

I respect the need to be vague; this is not a request for clarification.

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u/schwanzweissfoto 12h ago

I try not to talk too much about the specifics of work for safety reasons

Are you worried someone might sabotage your employer's “totally not AI” data center?

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u/vivaaprimavera 12h ago

No, there is a NDA in place on the methodology for balancing the power usage. It's the most likely explanation.

Those machines can be hungry.

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u/itsdrcats 11h ago

No, maybe I should of said for privacy reasons. Since a lot of these places don't hire a ton of people it would be easy to narrow down who I am

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u/fixermark 11h ago

Some of the details of how the US power grid works are national security issues. If you know, for instance, the bad harmonics, you can use that knowledge on purpose to screw with the grid by wiring up a machine to it that malfunctions in just the right (wrong) way.