• L7HM77@sh.itjust.works
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    20 hours ago

    Our customers are often what are considered socially “good”, like medical research.

    I feel like this right here is where discussion is breaking down.

    The arguments around data centers are interesting. I think, collectively and socially, we’re hitting a language barrier around it. Like “AI” is a marketing term, language to a standard nontechnical person is fuzzy around AI, LLM, and ML.

    On the surface, I’m pro data center. Astronomy, bio-med, weather prediction, the internet itself, better ML models and more compute has been a net benefit to all of society. But the current rush to build out? The holding companies building these won’t even say explicitly what the data centers are being built for, the news insinuates they’re for LLMs, but the local governments are under NDAs, and the general population aren’t allowed to know anything and have to vote with their gut.

    The opposition groups to data centers are split apart and can’t coordinate well, because they’re focusing on smaller facets of a larger problem. I think the general population has an intrinsic gut feeling that something is wrong, almost like 50 years of unpaid taxes is coming back to fuck everything over, but they don’t have the technical knowledge to put it into a concise reason why they feel the way they feel, and it just comes out as “they’re gonna drain out the entire Mississippi River.”

    • Xaphanos@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Yes. “AI” has become a catch-all for this current generation of GPU- based computing. The public doesn’t know or care about ML vs LLM vs VLM vs GenAI etc.

      We can’t speak due to very harsh NDAs.