"Social Media needs Datacenters too" seriously tires me
In almost every Discussion with AI Bros, once you mention the absurd environmental impact AI Datacenters have (power generation, pollution, water waste/poisoning, space, noise, etc.), the immediate reply is, without fail, something like
"Reddit needs a datacenter too, and you use that!" and everything along those lines.
These comments immediately show you that the person who says that is either purposfully trying to spread bullshit just to somehow be in the right, or they are absolutely no idea about Ressource Usage.
I am taking most of these people have no concept of how much Hardware different jobs take, and just think "Datacenter = Datacenter", no matter the size or hardware inside.
An AI Datacenter is pretty much nothing but GPUs/Pure AI Accelerators. Massive Ressource Heavy Matrix Calculators, that produce an insane amount of heat, need the most amount of power and infrastructure.
It applies to a normal gaming PC as well, your GPU is the biggest power draw (in a normal configuration. If you have a super low power GPU but some insane CPU, maybe the CPU Draws more, but the absolute vast majority of PCs will have the GPU as the biggest power drawer and heat producer, without fail)
And then on the other side, you have..pretty much everything else. Reddit, Discord, Minecraft Servers, Steam Servers, Gaming Server, everything else that is not AI. These systems run in datacenters as well, and that is where the "truth" of AI Bros statement ends. These systems need a FRACTION of what an LLM Needs.
Reddit for example, is just a webpage. Delivering a webpage to a PC are a few predefined HTML lines, plus a few other elements that get loaded on demand. A simple, very well optimized file transfer each time. These things can run on minimal hardware. People host their own social media, game servers and similar things on Raspberry Pis and many other VERY low power hardware.
And while the ENTIRETY of something like reddit needs more hardware than a single Gaming PC, it is absolutely laughable compared to AI.
Everyone with the slightest knowledge about technology knows this. AI Bros constantly coming up with "but X needs datacanters too!" are clearly completely out of their knowledge field.
Not to mention the fact that things like Reddit, Gaming Servers etc. are purposfully built to be efficient. The less power they need, the better.
AI Companies threw any level of optimization out of the window. Just throw more hardware onto it. The more power draw, the better.
And even if AI Companies attempt to do some level of optimization, the ressource requirements for everything is STILL insane, and not justified whatsoever for the result.
Lastly, to clarify: "AI" in this post fully limits to Generative AI. Video generators, image generators, LLMs. There are AI Projects that do things in the medical field, or are recommendation algorithms, that all are built to be efficient. That do an actual purpose, and dont require 50 Datacenters. These kind of AI Models can be trained on a single Gaming GPU, and is by no means part of this Generative AI Bullshit that requires insane ressources.
