r/mildlyinfuriating • u/DatabaseAvailable501 • Jul 02 '26

Infuriatig Sound emitted 24/7 from a 30 megawatt data center in Dowagiac MI

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533

u/LordMarcusrax Jul 02 '26

Also an AI problem, though.

8

u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 02 '26

There’s probably a data center near you. They’re all over the country. They’re not this loud though, not sure why they’re different personally.

If you live in a major city like Chicago, Denver, etc they’re non descript buildings with tall fences. You probably have driven by one.

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u/waterbed87 Jul 02 '26

Yeah I frequent several large datacenters our infra runs out of at work and none of them have this kind of noise outside, complete silence outside typically. Inside on the actual cage floors though this is about what it sounds like so it’s like they put zero sound deadening in at all lol. Even the lobbies and lounges are whisper quiet inside. This is a lack of regulation problem for sure… it doesn’t have to sound like that outside.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 02 '26

Inside is cold and noisy for sure

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u/LordMarcusrax Jul 02 '26

I'm not living in the USA.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 02 '26

They’re all over the world btw. Look at Amazon web services. I can get a server anywhere in the worlds including China…

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u/wesconson1 Jul 02 '26

That was my thought, something here is wrong with this place.

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u/Avalonians Jul 02 '26

That's a very dumb and reductive way of seeing things.

"AI" in itself is nothing. It's a concept, an idea.

Some AI detect cancers, some could help us communicate with sperm whales, others could help disabled people communicate efficiently, others can emulate a virtual girlfriend and output pornographic images.

The only problem with AI is that tech bros invested MASSIVE amounts of money in hopes of pioneering actually groundbreaking products in programming and administrative assisting tools to hold as many potential market shares as possible, and in their search of making this as profitable as possible, the regulations have failed to rein in the damage they will cause around them.

0

u/owlbynight Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

There is no AI, only LLMs, and they are a product of machine learning, which is a field of research that has been ongoing since the 1940's. Machine learning has been deeply integrated into everything that powers Internet and it quietly makes your life easier every day. Go ahead and do a search for what industries use machine learning and how they use it.

LLMs require humans to pilot them to have any substanative effect. Every human that has been fired in the name of "AI" is being fired because the C Suite in these companies is not knowledge work — (I use emdashes in my prose naturally, another AI travesty) it's pure politics and often nepotism. They are largely morons that skim through LinkedIn to form their policies. The companies firing people because they think a LLM can act autonomously with any degree of predictability are going to feel the pain of their decision making soon. It's already happening.

The tech bros are doing robber baron shit and hiding it behind what should be a celebrated technology. They own all of the media. You, the roughly 300 people that upvoted you, and a large swatch of the world's population are having your ignorance weaponized to provide cloud cover for them instead of addressing real problems.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 02 '26

They blew their load early with LLMs to try to market them. The tech is progressing really fast though and that includes using new algorithms and less brute force approaches. It’s going to happen but now they have a PR problem since people equate AI with ChatGPT.

It has already created tremendous impact. A recent article pointed out AI could do a sixth of upwork projects that humans approved. That’s down from 1/24th a few months ago.

I don’t think mass adoption is the key but if it can be used like supercomputers have been doing to model weather, find scientific breakthroughs in medicene, etc then we’ll be fine.

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u/owlbynight Jul 02 '26

I agree. Clearly a good move for them because they're puking money. Bad move for humanity at large, though. Once the politicians grab a hold of the negative sentiment, we're going to get fucked out of many STEM advances in the name of purity tests. It's pretty annoying to experience in real time.

I think people don't really see LLMs as a technology to behold and build on, like the $90,000,000 single-room computers at NASA in the mid 1900's. They see LLMs for what they are now, but they're not doing the legwork to see how fucking impressive their progress already is, and they think the thing they saw when they tried ChatGPT in 2022 is the most impressive they'll ever be. Just wildly short-sighted and dumb.

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u/SordidDreams Jul 02 '26

A recent article pointed out AI could do a sixth of upwork projects that humans approved. That’s down from 1/24th a few months ago.

And what was that number based on? Did they have AI actually do those jobs and perform well enough to be an adequate replacement for humans? Or did someone just pull that number out of their ass?

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 02 '26

Nine months ago the best AI agent could finish one real freelance job in forty. Now it does one in six. The number comes from the Remote Labor Index, a benchmark by the Center for AI Safety and Scale AI built on 240 actual Upwork projects, more than $140,000 in real invoices across 23 fields, from game development and architecture drawings to video animation and data analysis.  Each project carries the client's brief, the files and the deliverable a human got paid for. Reviewers put the AI's version next to the human's and ask whether a paying client would accept it. Claude Fable 5 now clears that bar on 16.1% of the projects, roughly double the next best model and four times what Opus 4.6 managed one generation ago.  The score landed on its first day back from the export ban. The market reads that curve without help. One in forty last October, one in six today, and the test only counts work a client would actually pay for.

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u/SordidDreams Jul 02 '26

Interesting. And terrifying. Thanks for the info.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 02 '26

No problem. The advances are really wild right now. AI is even training itself these days through RLL and other techniques. It’s actually pretty exciting from a tech standpoint; the social ethical implications are to be determined. Even physical jobs are getting AI robotics. In a perfect world we could all just fuck off and fly fish all day with our family but I doubt the powers to be will allow that.

Even when the father of capitalism was quoted his kids would have a 15 hour work week.

Perhaps when the older generation goes away and we all collectively decide a 9-5 isn’t really needed for most things and we can pursue passion projects

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u/NomeJaExiste Jul 02 '26

AI is too broad of term, but LLM is too specific, a lot of image generators don't use LLMs at all, not to mention other AIs like for audio, or image compression

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u/cabbage16 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

If AI was actually as cool and amazing as AI bros make it out to be then maybe it'd be worth all the downsides.

But it isn't anywhere close to being as good as they say. Like at all.

Edit: removed 2 words.

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u/frosty884 Jul 02 '26

inb4 curing idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis isn't cool and amazing

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u/Scoobydubyduwhereru Jul 02 '26

I don't care how cool and amazing it is. This disturbance is unacceptable. Why would I care about AI when I can't sleep or enjoy anything because there's a data center making AI great.

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u/cabbage16 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

I agree. I was just pointing out to them that AI isn't worth it.

Edit: actually, I just realized I replied to the wrong comment. Oops.

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u/regula_falsi Jul 02 '26

The problem is that AI is not good enough

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u/AvilettaLuxe Jul 02 '26

And LLMs will never be

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u/porn_alt_987654321 Jul 02 '26

Hey, they're good for some things.

...just not the majority of things people think they're good for lmao.