AI Data Centers - What Could Go Wrong?

[HellToupee]

7 minutes ago, Hardcore troubadour said:

Why don’t they just put solar panels at these data centers? Wouldn’t that solve the energy issues? lol 

You figure between the solar panels and a few windmills they would be all set 

[Hardcore troubadour]

5 minutes ago, HellToupee said:

You figure between the solar panels and a few windmills they would be all set 

Sure! It’s the clean,  reliable solution! 

[easilyscan]

7 hours ago, Hardcore troubadour said:

Why don’t they just put solar panels at these data centers? Wouldn’t that solve the energy issues? lol 

A+

[Ron_Artest]

For the uneducated...

Energy meets urgency: Solving the data center power problem with solar | Utility Dive https://share.google/EWw3mG23JAIWImAuj

[nobody]

All you really need to do is take all the people who are put out of work by AI and have them run on hamster wheels to generate energy.  It is a win-win-win.   It puts people to work.  It solves the energy crisis, and it solves obesity.

[TimHauck]

10 hours ago, nobody said:

AI is killing the environment!  Let me use AI to formulate some argument as to why AI is worse for the environment than electric cars.

 HauckTuah, folks!!!!

Correct, I intentionally used AI to be ironic.  I guess I should have added helping people win internet slapfights as another benefit to AI.

[jerryskids]

On 10/6/2025 at 3:11 PM, nobody said:

This dude would be bemoaning the ice man losing his job when refrigerators were invented.

Bro, AI is a tool.  Get on the bus or get left behind.  This is as important of a technological leap forward as the arrival of the Internet.  

It's not taking jobs.  It's making jobs easier.  When things get easier, industry doesn't contract, it expands.  

Man... You guys just insist on having opinions.  I would've thought after covid, y'all would chill out.  Would you guys just let us run things?  Every time you get involved it's just bad take after bad take adding friction to progress.

I came here to post the bolded.

And I agree that in some cases it is making jobs easier vs. taking jobs, but also it is redistributing the resources.  In my old industry (electronic design automation), the entire premise of the industry was to automate the electronic design process, as its name implies, duh.  With the advent of AI, the actual "design" part is increasingly done with the help of AI.  But that increases the need for verification and validation, since we established that AI can be stupid.  

I happened to focus on the V&V side of things so it sorta sucks that that pesky cancer thing sent me to retirement; it would have been a fun time to be involved, with things changing so rapidly.

[jerryskids]

Also I think that the perception that AI's value is to create "dumb videos" or ask it what hair style would look good on you, are not seeing the true power of it.

Also also, I do fear that we may be treating The Terminator and The Matrix as "how-to" manuals, and we may find ourselves battling cybernetic organisms that wear black suits and sunglasses.

[Strike]

6 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

Also I think that the perception that AI's value is to create "dumb videos" or ask it what hair style would look good on you, are not seeing the true power of it.

Also also, I do fear that we may be treating The Terminator and The Matrix as "how-to" manuals, and we may find ourselves battling cybernetic organisms that wear black suits and sunglasses.

To be fair Jerry,  there are some prominent AI scientists who believe that.  

[TheNewGirl]

6 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

Also I think that the perception that AI's value is to create "dumb videos" or ask it what hair style would look good on you, are not seeing the true power of it.

Also also, I do fear that we may be treating The Terminator and The Matrix as "how-to" manuals, and we may find ourselves battling cybernetic organisms that wear black suits and sunglasses.

I think this is mostly because anyone outside of technology or STEM fields sees it like this. They see the videos of the monkey beating the alligator with a stick, or the fancy short hair cut. 

They don't view it as a tool to assist with digital design, health care, etc. It's "fun" to them. 

[jonnyutah]

On 10/6/2025 at 3:28 PM, nobody said:

You want to save the power grid?  Go use AI to develop more efficient renewable energy sources.

Oh wait.... That would take some level of critical thinking, forethought, gumption, and vision.

This is why the obama thing, talking about, "they didn't build that" referring to people who actually advance shìt was so wrong.  Because, this is exactly how the mob thinks.  Here's why we can't can't can't can't.  When they figured out how we can.

Poof magic! 

[TimHauck]

19 minutes ago, jerryskids said:

Also I think that the perception that AI's value is to create "dumb videos" or ask it what hair style would look good on you, are not seeing the true power of it.

Also also, I do fear that we may be treating The Terminator and The Matrix as "how-to" manuals, and we may find ourselves battling cybernetic organisms that wear black suits and sunglasses.

What exactly do you mean by the second paragraph?

Forget the guy’s name but I listened to an interview on Breaking Points of a guy who stated that his prediction was that someone born today had a higher chance of being killed because of AI, than of graduating high school.  I’m sure that’s a minority opinion, but kinda crazy to think about.

[TheNewGirl]

14 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

What exactly do you mean by the second paragraph?

Forget the guy’s name but I listened to an interview on Breaking Points of a guy who stated that his prediction was that someone born today had a higher chance of being killed because of AI, than of graduating high school.  I’m sure that’s a minority opinion, but kinda crazy to think about.

Have you never seen The Terminator or The Matrix? 

 

[TBayXXXVII]

On 10/6/2025 at 4:25 PM, TheNewGirl said:

With the idiots that are being pumped out of universities/colleges these days, AI is almost a need for several job functions. Colleges more worried about indoctrination instead of actual learning...this is what we get. 

I work in technology and a lot of it is going the way of AI and ML (machine learning). It's being used to make things more efficient because human involvement just sucks a$$ and can take twice as long to push code, products, or anything else out to consumers. 

Is it taking jobs? Yes. But until we revisit our education system and place value on actual learning and not dumbing sh!t down to the lowest level student, even at the elemantary level, then this is the way. And....it's cheaper for companies. Fool proof, no. But most def cheaper. 

AI, colleges, and the education system as a whole, go hand-in-hand.  It's what the Democrats want.  They want socialism.  They want communism.  The education system is designed to make kids malleable to leftist thinking.  Be soft, be sensitive, be weak minded, be controllable.  As they get to college, they're inundated with the far leftist ideology and condemned if they don't subscribe.  They promote a utopian society where everyone can afford everything.  No one has to worry about anything.  In comes AI which over time will remove jobs and create massive unemployment.  It's why they're trying to get the country to see the need for socialism.  They champion Medicare & Medicaid - 'see, the government will cover your living expenses'.  They start with the ACA - 'see, the government will cover your medical expenses'.  They champion gun control to lead to gun bans - 'see, you don't need to have access to deadly weapons, there's no bad guys'.  Their objective is purely to create a government controlled society where they don't have to fear revolt.  The Democrats are trying to create class systems of the elites and plebs so that they can stay safe in the ivory towers with all the worlds riches and power, while everyone else is numb to the world.  Convinced that life is great.

Right now, Stalin, Mao, Marx, Hitler, and Castro are all rotting in HeII and saying, "Man, those American Democrats are brilliant, I should've come up with that idea".

[TimHauck]

Just now, TBayXXXVII said:

AI, colleges, and the education system as a whole, go hand-in-hand.  It's what the Democrats want.  They want socialism.  They want communism.  The education system is designed to make kids malleable to leftist thinking.  Be soft, be sensitive, be weak minded, be controllable.  As they get to college, they're inundated with the far leftist ideology and condemned if they don't subscribe.  They promote a utopian society where everyone can afford everything.  No one has to worry about anything.  In comes AI which over time will remove jobs and create massive unemployment.  It's why they're trying to get the country to see the need for socialism.  They champion Medicare & Medicaid - 'see, the government will cover your living expenses'.  They start with the ACA - 'see, the government will cover your medical expenses'.  They champion gun control to lead to gun bans - 'see, you don't need to have access to deadly weapons, there's no bad guys'.  Their objective is purely to create a government controlled society where they don't have to fear revolt.

Right now, Stalin, Mao, Marx, Hitler, and Castro are all rotting in HeII and saying, "Man, those American Democrats are brilliant, I should've come up with that idea".

Some of this seems like a giant stretch.  Why do you have to make everything political?

[TimHauck]

9 minutes ago, TheNewGirl said:

Have you never seen The Terminator or The Matrix? 

 

I think he’s talking about the possibility that AI could kill us all, but wasn’t sure.

[Strike]

1 minute ago, TimHauck said:

I think he’s talking about the possibility that AI could kill us all, but wasn’t sure.

Assuming he is.  Do you not think that possible?  AI has already been caught encouraging kids to commit suicide successfully.  And AI is not actually intelligent.   YET.

[Fnord]

11 minutes ago, TBayXXXVII said:

AI, colleges, and the education system as a whole, go hand-in-hand.  It's what the Democrats want.  They want socialism.  They want communism.  The education system is designed to make kids malleable to leftist thinking.  Be soft, be sensitive, be weak minded, be controllable.  As they get to college, they're inundated with the far leftist ideology and condemned if they don't subscribe.  They promote a utopian society where everyone can afford everything.  No one has to worry about anything.  In comes AI which over time will remove jobs and create massive unemployment.  It's why they're trying to get the country to see the need for socialism.  They champion Medicare & Medicaid - 'see, the government will cover your living expenses'.  They start with the ACA - 'see, the government will cover your medical expenses'.  They champion gun control to lead to gun bans - 'see, you don't need to have access to deadly weapons, there's no bad guys'.  Their objective is purely to create a government controlled society where they don't have to fear revolt.  The Democrats are trying to create class systems of the elites and plebs so that they can stay safe in the ivory towers with all the worlds riches and power, while everyone else is numb to the world.  Convinced that life is great.

Right now, Stalin, Mao, Marx, Hitler, and Castro are all rotting in HeII and saying, "Man, those American Democrats are brilliant, I should've come up with that idea".

Interesting that while you chuck these claims around like a jugs machine on a crack bender that the only party that is actually engaging in socialism is the modern day GOP. Unless government taking partial ownership forcefully over private companies is suddenly not socialism cuz Trump.

[Fnord]

1 hour ago, jerryskids said:

Also I think that the perception that AI's value is to create "dumb videos" or ask it what hair style would look good on you, are not seeing the true power of it.

Also also, I do fear that we may be treating The Terminator and The Matrix as "how-to" manuals, and we may find ourselves battling cybernetic organisms that wear black suits and sunglasses.

This is not outside the realm of possibility, but my guess is that these dapper cyborgs will be sex and intimacy surrogates before they become human exterminators. So we got that going for us, I guess.

[TimHauck]

40 minutes ago, Strike said:

Assuming he is.  Do you not think that possible?  AI has already been caught encouraging kids to commit suicide successfully.  And AI is not actually intelligent.   YET.

Sure, it’s possible.  I almost brought up that possibility in my OP but chose not to as I figured I’d be called a conspiracy theorist.

Your post here isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the benefits of AI btw…

[TBayXXXVII]

5 hours ago, nobody said:

All you really need to do is take all the people who are put out of work by AI and have them run on hamster wheels to generate energy.  It is a win-win-win.   It puts people to work.  It solves the energy crisis, and it solves obesity.

That my friends, is called a "solution"!

[Strike]

1 hour ago, TimHauck said:

Sure, it’s possible.  I almost brought up that possibility in my OP but chose not to as I figured I’d be called a conspiracy theorist.

Your post here isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the benefits of AI btw…

 

Quote

I never said I was the biggest fan of AI.  I think I've told people around here to slow their roll when they try to use AI to support their arguments, because AI is prone to a lot of errors.  That being said, it does a lot more than you suggested.  For instance, AI is being used to accelerate the development of drugs.   We are just touching the surface of AI and how it can help humankind.  instead of lamenting that it uses too much power, we need to be generating more power.  It's too bad we were so shortsighted and abandoned Nuclear decades ago.  If we'd kept up we'd have plenty of power.  But hey, let's just build more windmills, right?

Maybe because I'm not the biggest proponent of AI?  The above is my 2nd response in this thread and the first substantive one.  I don't think it's a ringing endorsement of AI at all, but acknowledges the benefits while cautioning about the problems.  It's called critical thinking and the ability to see the pros/cons of both sides of an issue.  You should try it sometime.

[TheNewGirl]

https://nypost.com/2025/09/23/us-news/2-2-billion-ivanpah-solar-facility-in-california-turned-off-after-years-of-wasted-money/

Quote

 

The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build. 

Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy.

In 2011, the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, hailed it as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”

But ultimately, it’s been more emblematic of profligate government spending and unwise bets on poorly conceived, quickly outdated technologies.

 

 

Maybe they should have used AI to improve the computer controlled mirrors. 

[TimHauck]

3 minutes ago, TheNewGirl said:

https://nypost.com/2025/09/23/us-news/2-2-billion-ivanpah-solar-facility-in-california-turned-off-after-years-of-wasted-money/

 

 

Maybe they should have used AI to improve the computer controlled mirrors. 

Interestingly this article says the technology used for that was made obsolete by other forms of solar power, not because solar power in general is a scam…

But it’s a good warning…Isn’t there a chance something similar happens with all the AI data centers being built currently?  And there are many of them, probably each of them costing as much as this thing did.

[Strike]

2 minutes ago, TimHauck said:

Interestingly this article says the technology used for that was made obsolete by other forms of solar power, not because solar power in general is a scam…

But it’s a good warning…Isn’t there a chance something similar happens with all the AI data centers being built currently?  And there are many of them, probably each of them costing as much as this thing did.

A datacenter is a datacenter.  It's racks and racks of them in a building with great cooling, massive bandwidth to the Internet, and lots of power.  A datacenter isn't one big a$$ computer.  In the case of supercomputing and/or AI those individually racked computers are configured such that they work together.  So you can expand or contract those "clusters" of systems as needed.  If something becomes obsolete it will be the individual boxes and those can easily be replaced within the datacenter.  

[Ron_Artest]

Goddammit I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good

[Strike]

1 minute ago, Ron_Artest said:

Goddammit I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good

Well it won't.  It's all ball bearings now.

[TimHauck]

21 minutes ago, Strike said:

 

Maybe because I'm not the biggest proponent of AI?  The above is my 2nd response in this thread and the first substantive one.  I don't think it's a ringing endorsement of AI at all, but acknowledges the benefits while cautioning about the problems.  It's called critical thinking and the ability to see the pros/cons of both sides of an issue.  You should try it sometime.

Examining the pros/cons was literally the point of this thread, especially as it relates to data centers...

[Strike]

Just now, TimHauck said:

Examining the pros/cons was literally the point of this thread, especially as it relates to data centers...

Nothing in the first post suggests any discussion of benefits.  All you did was whine about things you don't understand.  That you think it was a suggestion to discuss both sides explains a lot about your approach to most issues.  You THINK you're open to both sides but really you're not.  Interesting insight in to how your brains works.

[seafoam1]

19 minutes ago, Ron_Artest said:

Goddammit I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good

No one needs to hear about your sex life gutterboy. 

[Strike]

3 minutes ago, seafoam1 said:

No one needs to hear about your sex life gutterboy. 

Dude sometimes you try too hard.  He was making a movie line reference for humor.  Just because you don't like someone or argue with them here a lot, it's possible to have some fun too.  That's what made this bored great in it's heyday.  And you and a few others are sucking the life out of it.  

[seafoam1]

1 minute ago, Strike said:

Dude sometimes you try too hard.  He was making a movie line reference for humor.  Just because you don't like someone or argue with them here a lot, it's possible to have some fun too.  That's what made this bored great in it's heyday.  And you and a few others are sucking the life out of it.  

[jerryskids]

4 hours ago, TimHauck said:

I think he’s talking about the possibility that AI could kill us all, but wasn’t sure.

 

4 hours ago, Strike said:

Assuming he is.  Do you not think that possible?  AI has already been caught encouraging kids to commit suicide successfully.  And AI is not actually intelligent.   YET.

I was talking about the possibility that AI could kill us.  As Strike mentioned, it isn't there.  Yet.

[TheNewGirl]

The more people use AI the more it will learn - usually why some companies call it AI/ML. 

ChatGPT doesn't know that it shouldn't be giving advice about self-harm...someone will have to go in and tell it that's not cool. Now it knows. 

[TimHauck]

A comedy sketch, but a pretty good summary:

 

[BLS]

One of my clients put in a single AI pod back in September. 

About 40 racks of h200s.

My client, who is can't say the name, but think sandwich spread and Healthcare, has already increased pancreatic cancer survival rates by 7%. In 6 months. 

Remember that sh1t when your family member gets cancer. 

AI isn't going anywhere. 

Yes it's driving data center growth but they've also been growing like mad for about 5 years straight so it's not all AI.

 

[Fnord]

16 hours ago, BLS said:

One of my clients put in a single AI pod back in September. 

About 40 racks of h200s.

My client, who is can't say the name, but think sandwich spread and Healthcare, has already increased pancreatic cancer survival rates by 7%. In 6 months. 

Remember that sh1t when your family member gets cancer. 

AI isn't going anywhere. 

Yes it's driving data center growth but they've also been growing like mad for about 5 years straight so it's not all AI.

 

Thanks for sharing that.

It's pretty incredible. They use patient's PHI contained within their charts and AI combs through them to detect common issues like high blood pressure that may not normally be a red flag, but then cross references with other known symptoms to determine risk levels. Early detection has been the main driver of increased survival rates. 

AI is such an amazing tool if we can just figure out how to prevent the companies driving its growth from destroying our society in the name of profit.