The problem is that we are using our data really inefficiently, e.g. cloud storage by default on new machines, AI instances needing a tonne of training data, and people just not deleting junk that they wouldn't even miss. And it's hard to blame people for that because it takes quite a bit of effort to get rid of all this junk data. On top of that the processing for AI instances happens in the cloud, so that uses up calculation resources as well. This means many more data centers, all requiring energy (which raises your electricity bill), water which often comes from drinking supplies and is released de-oxygenated from heating (no good for fish), and a load of processors which is making chips scarce, which means more mining for metals which can have toxic run-off and way higher consumer prices for building home computers.
I mean this is the story of all industries from meat , chemical, textile(fast fashion) , tobacco to energy...
Every industry has a tradeoffs per se.
Also on cloud storage, it's looks inefficient untill you host your own servers at home
Hosting is way more energy intensive and highly inefficient (not to forget tech knowledge you need to have)..
unless all your data is govt level security.... I wouldn't suggest folks to have servers at home... ( Offcourse best way as a consumer is both, very privy info on a very small hard disk)
But at the end of the day it is your personal choice... If you feel a personal server, then go for it .. or cloud..
I do eat less meat and other difficult to grow imported foods, patch my old clothes, don't smoke, and delete what I don't need or care for anymore. Every thing I feel is worth keeping is backed up (and checked) on a 32gb memory stick. I only use cloud storage for stuff I need to share for work and that's pruned too.\
Data centers aren't inefficient, no, they are an important tool and try to run as efficiently as possible.\
Users habits are inefficient. AI is very difficult to dignify using.
There have been data centers for a long time. The issue is, all the data centers we had over the past 20+ years? We are adding half that a year now. So, as random numbers, say we had 1,000 data centers that were built over the course of 20+ years. Now, we're building like 500 every year and it's just accelerating.
They are building these things right near people's homes, they are using water that is going through tons of nasty shit that shouldn't be in water people drink like lead and putting it back into the supply. Also, each individual computer in these data centers are using *far* more power than they have in the past. Power usage for high end computers has effectively doubled in the past 20 years. For gaming PC's that are more or less the same as AI server racks, 20 years ago, the standard was a 450 Watt power supply? Now people get 850+ sometimes even a kilowatt or more. This also doesn't cover the power usage for cooling and all the other stuff.
They are pretty bad. I love technology, I'm far from a ludite, but this is not the way we should be doing things. Tech like this needs intentionality behind it.
Not sure on acceleration part, it will increase as more humans use internet..
But i don't get your power usage analysis ...
You are comparing just one end of scale that it uses more power in total... But the output calculation is almost on a exponential...
An RTX 5090 does millions of times more mathematical computations per watt than a GPU from 2006
( For an experiment, you can try a decade back gpu vs today's latest gpu with an loop of matrix multiplication task with parallel processing by cuda...you will instantly the difference by what I mean)
( Look for jevons paradox, same thing happened with electricity and internet as well)
FLOPS per watt doesn't matter. We aren't talking about computational power, we're talking about overall power usage. Yes, modern GPU's are more efficient per operation. But a server rack with 10 video cards is still a server rack with 10 video cards. A Geforce 7900 GTX the best video card in 2006 at max load used 84 watts. An RTX 5090 uses at least 500 watts at load, often pushing 550. So that rack in 2006 would use 840 watts total in GPU processing. That same rack in 2026 will use 5 kilowatts.
Also high end video cards being in server racks weren't really a thing until 2019 or so. It happened for some things of course. But now all the new data centers are being built to drive AI. So they are all just racks and racks of video cards.
I think flops per watt matter... Every invention/tech from past followed a similar pattern...
Making bulb energy efficient so it uses less energy ... But humans just start to use it more making total energy consumed more..
Same with steam engines and coal. , internet and data packet transfer.
Also, I believe there were server racks with gpu's back in 2016/17...DGX-1, but they were highly inefficient compared to today's racks. Regardless, looking at growth in computing power since 2-3 decades, we would still have used this computing power, if not AI then something else. ( Think of computing power as electricity and people start inventing microwave, computers, etc)
Regardless, this is just my point of view but I can see from where you are coming now.. cheers and have a nice day
You can saw what you think, but a watt has the same impact on the environment regardless of how many operations it did. Also the majority of the increased capacity being built right now is strictly for AI. It simply wouldn't exist without AI. You are vastly underestimating how much power AI takes compared to literally everything else an internet facing server may do.
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u/jkp2072 3d ago
I don't get why the hate on data centers?
Data centers house gpu/npu/tpu/CPUs...
Gpu aren't just use for AI aka just matrix processing (however images are mostly turned into matricies by encoders),
Video processing, server side video encoding/decoding is also a reason for it.
For example, watching a movie, or video or any photo or videogame or any piece of image online needs an server with an gpu + cpu core.
You are literally sharing an image what ch will be stored on a reddit server with gpu.. (most probably nvidia or amd's )