What are we doing in MoCo to stop data centers? Will Jawando seems to spearheading more awareness, but I feel like the rest of the county is sleeping on it, all while discreet business deals are being made without the public's awareness or input. I'm not advocating Jawando necessarily, but I'm curious how we are engaging with other leaders and/or finding ways to show our rejection of data centers. Jawando is attempting to propose at least temporary moratoriums on them from being built. I feel like the forces that be are going to allow generational negative health impacts and a local environmental disaster from these centers. Thanks for input!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

+1 that's why no one is trying to "sell" it to us or persuade us that it's good. It's not something we will opt into using like a dishwasher.

Right now, the costs of the whole thing are obfuscated and held up by all of the froth.
What happens when we start to have to pay for it? Are people and businesses going to want to pony up, or just say “no thanks I’ll figure it out myself”?

Microsoft has recently announced changes to the pricing structure for copilot. We will see how this shakes out in a few months.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

+1 that's why no one is trying to "sell" it to us or persuade us that it's good. It's not something we will opt into using like a dishwasher.

Right now, the costs of the whole thing are obfuscated and held up by all of the froth.
What happens when we start to have to pay for it? Are people and businesses going to want to pony up, or just say “no thanks I’ll figure it out myself”?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

+1 that's why no one is trying to "sell" it to us or persuade us that it's good. It's not something we will opt into using like a dishwasher.

People who make jokes about AI compute power going to generate stupid AI content online (videos, photos, etc) don't realize that in addition to this every fortune 500 and smaller company is trying to leverage AI to reduce human labor force and increase productivity (or so they say). This work is already underway. Every type of tech is now getting scaled for AI compatibility, to help reduce number of people needed to maintain it or serve it.

AI that writes code, AI agents that can work across multiple systems integrating information and facilitating workflow are being developed by every sizeable company in the USA. The compute power used is tremendous. It consumes vastly more power to generate simple code (which human coders can write fairly quickly), and this power and credits often cost more than a few min or even hours of a salaried person's time. Moreover, the cost is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of AI generated work is slop and has to be tested and checked by humans, which doesn't allow companies paying for AI credits to really have meaningful labor cuts. At least at this point. There are tons of videos out there on the "bubble" of AI and the projected demise of many AI companies that won't be able to scale up to stay afloat. If your company is getting stressed about their team using too many AI credits and starting to ration the use to certain cases, it means AI is too costly. Data centers are supposed to reduce this cost by throwing "muscle" into the picture. There are debates on whether throwing "processing hardware muscle" is not the way to go, and in the future AI algorithms will just evolve to be much more efficient consuming fewer resources. In that case data centers will be closing down and investors will lose.

But for now, Kevin O'Leary and the likes are just trying to capitalize on the growing demand for cheaper compute power from AI companies and from their customers. Except that people are waking up and fighting against rising COL (utilities cost) to support the infrastructure that's supposed to enrich a few investors and help AI companies stay afloat and help their own employers have an excuse to lay them off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

Thank you! Why are people so clueless about this? AI is going to be used to co trip us all. Not make our lives better lol.

It’s absolutely going to be used for mass surveillance and policing.

Yes, for this purpose you would need massive processing power. We are already collective massive amount of information at each point of interaction of humans with any type of digital system in every aspect of life. These datasets are beyond massive and would require computational power beyond belief.

Also, even without surveilance, AI as it stands today requires massive compute power even for simple tasks that humans can do. It's even becoming a joke how AI is going to be more expensive than hiring human workers. AI companies are already struggling with making up for huge expense of compute by raising the fees for compute credits to their customers. Any company that uses AI has to pay for using it and this price is going up. Data Centers are supposed to relieve this bottleneck and stop AI companies from collapsing. This is another theory out there that to me makes logical sense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

Thank you! Why are people so clueless about this? AI is going to be used to co trip us all. Not make our lives better lol.

It’s absolutely going to be used for mass surveillance and policing.

Now it's a conspiracy when they build data centers away from populated areas because you asked them to do that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

Thank you! Why are people so clueless about this? AI is going to be used to co trip us all. Not make our lives better lol.

It’s absolutely going to be used for mass surveillance and policing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why aren't the data centers installing solar on all the nearby homes?

This would be a great way to compensate area homeowners for the hike in power bills and infrastructure costs. It would also be a stable additional source of power for the nearby data center itself!

States need to authorize one-for-one net metering immediately.

The grid wouldn't support it and you wouldn't find enough people to want free solar panels. Look at any of the Real Estate threads on the matter. People believe solar panels create more problems than they solve.

People don't know their head from their ass.

I have solar on my home and one-for-one net metering. My electricity bill is $22/month. Every month, even in summer. I get a $500 check back from the utility at the end of the year because I sent more power to the grid than I took from the grid in 2025.

Widescale solar on homes in regions where data centers are concentrated should absolutely be part of the solution here. It won't solve every problem, but it would absolutely help. And it would put a ton of Americans to work installing the systems on homes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

Thank you! Why are people so clueless about this? AI is going to be used to co trip us all. Not make our lives better lol.

Anonymous wrote:Something is not adding up.
There seems to be an almost unlimited source of funding these things.
They are buying huge amounts of land, sometimes in expensive areas. Construction is not cheap.
They are consuming huge amounts of power and water.

What exactly is the product here and are people ever going to use enough of it to make it worthwhile? I know what AI does but so far nothing worth the trillions and resources being dumped into it. What is it producing (or will ever produce) that is so valuable, like so much more valuable than say the computing resources we had 8-10 years ago without these behemoths? And how will it be valuable if it replaces the people currently earning salaries that allow them to purchase goods and services? There is no model that makes sense. Why is money being wasted on it that could be used to improve people’s lives? So many people still lack access to good housing and quality food, and AI does absolutely nothing to improve that.

We’re the product.

Anonymous wrote:Why aren't the data centers installing solar on all the nearby homes?

This would be a great way to compensate area homeowners for the hike in power bills and infrastructure costs. It would also be a stable additional source of power for the nearby data center itself!

States need to authorize one-for-one net metering immediately.

The grid wouldn't support it and you wouldn't find enough people to want free solar panels. Look at any of the Real Estate threads on the matter. People believe solar panels create more problems than they solve.