The government has designated datacentres as critical national infrastructure, on the basis that their loss or compromise could result in “major detrimental impact on the availability, integrity or delivery of essential services” and “significant impact on national security, national defence, or the functioning of the state”.
Oliver Hayes, head of big tech and campaigns at the campaign group Global Action Plan, said it was not clear why datacentres had been given this status, but that water companies may be powerless to restrict their water use as a result. This could risk datacentres being prioritised over households at times of peak water demand.
“I think it is highly likely that we’re going to end up seeing datacentres that are actually running chatbots, or enabling people to do benign and very wasteful, pointless things, protected and given favourable treatment when it comes to resources,” Hayes said.
Well its clear the AI datacenters are not intended to be permanent or sustainable even for their nominal purpose. They use the cheapest and least reliable cooling and power generation and their computing components are obsolete nearly from day one. Many are being built under tents which really tells you everything you need to know above their long term viability.
Could I see the tent you’re talking about? That’s going to belong in a history textbook sooner or later.
Sure this is a Meta installation https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/meta-brings-data-centers-in-tents-to-gallatin-tennessee/ These are not your average camping tents, judging by the scale of the photos. But given the speed of the various rollouts I’m sure corners are being cut by all the big players.
Ha! What would Herbert Hoover make of that. Should call them Clankervilles.
Is the cooling system just tape water circulating once and then being trashed?
Like I would connect a computer water cooling to pipes with a tape and then let it open to go down the sink?
