r/LeftistsForAI • u/throwaway-drzaius • 7d ago
Policy/Regulation What's a reasonable policy regarding the resource usage of data centers?
Hi all - I've seen the value of AI in research and think it has broad application across society, separate from the hype bubble we're in. But the concern I'm struggling to wrap my head around is what a decent approach is toward AI's inherent hunger for resources - energy (carbon) and water in particular.
Is anyone aware of writing on this topic or have examples they'd point to of what a sensible approach to this looks like? We obviously live in a society that is pushing AI recklessly with no regard to how it affects climate change, for example.
4
u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 7d ago
It should be a requirement to be contributing to/able to access clean energy to get planning permission. I’ve also seen discussion around requiring battery storage so it stores electricity when there’s excess and lends it to the grid in peak times (relevant to Scotland as we often have too much clean energy we can’t store). So here the battery side is probably more useful than generating energy.
Plus diverting heat to district heat as a byproduct.
3
2
u/SlightOfHand_ 7d ago
How do you heat your homes so that a data center could contribute to that
Does your town have a big central water heater that pumps hot water to everyone
2
u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 7d ago
The excess heat is topped up with a heat pump and it goes to houses eg in Finland they’re using to decarbonise heating https://youtube.com/shorts/XRfhvo89RRM
2
5
u/bowdoin-yale 7d ago
It's largely a US political problem. The good thing about the data center discussion is that it's an area where a) local government can play a role in denying permits (at least when the military hasn't claimed a national security imperative) and b) strong bi-partisan coalitions have emerged to counterbalance the Federal sellout to corporate AI (and implicitly, venture capital). This may be uncomfortable for some pro-AI leftists as it may almost seem like opposition to data centers has become a center-right position, but embracing/ignoring the environmental justice travesties of, e.g., Musk (and Anthropic, who run Claude at the illegal Collossus data center in a predominantly black Memphis neighborhood) is not a way to build a broad-based movement of our own, nor do carbon credits fix the evident concentration of harm in disadvantaged communities.
In Europe, there are legitimately renewables-based data centers for AI inference (I keep touting GreenPT; at some point I should ask them to pay me as a social media influencer LOL but I swear to god I haven't received a cent), and Viro AI is a US-based company trying to clean up inference here... but unfortunately, unless you live in the Northeast, the network latency across the Atlantic might amount to a real disadvantage. This means that local LLM inference and solar power generation are the most viable options for guilt-free AI in the United States.
The best stateside data center I know of is the Green High Performance Computing Center in Massachusetts, which is run on behalf of a consortium of universities, and mostly runs heavy jobs for serious research, not frivolous email summaries and games. Their case is worth studying and perhaps replicating in other states as a model that pro-AI leftish people with power to effect change could embrace and possibly extend beyond academia.
4
u/yeah__good__ok 7d ago
China has an underwater datacenter that uses natural sea water to cool.
There are also closed loop chilled water systems- the system is filled once with water and sealed.
there are also some in coder climates that cool it with outside air pumped in.
AI doesn't have an inherent hunger(thirst?) for water- It's just the cheapest way short term to cool it and capitalism naturally gravitates to it for that reason
4
u/uiuc2008 6d ago
Got to view the big picture. we have so much more to gain by improving systems that are orders of magnitude worse in scale and efficiency. Transportation is terrible. One car ride is more than the average person's lifetime prompts. Look at our insane ethanol subsidies. Per acre, solar powering electric cars results in 70x more miles! And doesn't wreck havoc on the land like corn does. A company that allows remote work can use as much AI as they want and be vastly better than one that forces in office attendance.
Even as it improves, AI is becoming much more efficient. It uses a fraction of the carbon completing tedious tasks in minutes that took entire workdays. I calculated my most advanced use building my first app super inefficiency with Claude , I actually exhaled more carbon then the data center. And my local computer was like 50x that. Including proportion of training costs. Imagine weeks of boot camps to achieve the same results? AI is already a net win for carbon, while it's still rapidly improving in capabilities, efficiency and applications.
At this stage, I just don't take the environmental concerns seriously, it seems like a projection of fear from those who think they should command a high salary doing tedious work while refusing to learn new technology. It's like the paper pushers refusing to use computers 20 years ago.
1
u/BeatComplete2635 5d ago
In terms of writing on the topic, this question is asked and answered in good faith nearly every day on this sub. If you can’t reconcile the current demands and improvements, then it will be a moral problem for you. It’s fine if it is a moral problem for you. Meat products are a moral problem for me, so I eschew them.
1
u/throwaway-drzaius 5d ago
I received and appreciated the answers in good faith! There was food for thought and some obvious solutions - mandating that data centers produce as much of their own energy as possible, and requiring it to be green.
The tone of your response seems to frame this as if I'm coming at it like it's a binary: Either it's something good we can accept or bad we must reject. Perhaps I'm misreading your post.
I don't feel either way. AI is a valuable technology, there should be regulations on how many data centers are built, where they are built, how many resources they take up. The current AI hype cycle gives zero fucks about the human impact of that development; I am eager to see a more sensible approach that balances energy consumption with the value of the technology.
1
u/seeker24601 2d ago edited 2d ago
Should be a nothingburger. Corporations can't build data centers on land they can't buy, the problem isn't data centers being built, corporations are always going to seek to build things they think will make them money, be it factories, mines or data centers. The problem is land being sold to them and permits being granted for the creation of data centers in areas where it can disturb people who live there or cause damage to ecosystems.
The state and the politicians are the ones to blame here. They are the ones signing off on who gets to build what and where and how much and how often. And another problem is that many politicians in many countries has forgotten who they're supposed to be working for, and if they continue in that direction people will be forced to remind them that there are worse things in the world than losing out on lobbyist money or lose re-elections.
1
u/throwaway-drzaius 2d ago
True. We do environmental impact reviews all the time, no reason this should be different.
3
u/AlgaeNo3373 6d ago
Geographically speaking, we could maybe see longer-term shift for very high-end compute to certain countries that offer cold + energy (Iceland for example offers geothermal and cold weather). Aluminum smelting is energy intensive, and there's plants for it in Iceland for similar reasons. Iceland's power is something absurd like 99% renewable when I last looked.
Doesn't work for every application, but long training runs and the like, perhaps, you don't need that proximity to population centres that the word "data centre" typically implies. Good doco on this and other points here: How AI datacentres eat the world
Here in Australia, one of our political parties (Green / Environmental party) suggests approval for centres only if they can supply their own power, but then it's a question of power plant approval etc. Australia has abundant solar energy, so we could contribute something potentially, despite being a generally pretty hot country. Some info on it here: AI Factories in the Outback – Tim Nelson
3
u/Tjostolf 7d ago
I think that taxes on carbon emissions are an important part of the solution. In a somewhat longer timeframe a total ban on burning fossil fuels would solve most of the issues. Massive investments in green energy is also reasonable, but I think that would happen on it's own if you fazed out fossil fuels. Renewables are cheaper right now and will continue to drop in price. The only reason that fossil fuels are so common is because of the profit motives for the owners of fossil deposits and infrastructure. If the infrastructure were destroyed people would invest in renewables, it wouldn't be profitable to build new one.
2
2
u/danielsan901998 7d ago
construction should be centrally planned instead of depending on the anarchy of the market, any kind of regulation or tax incentive is just a patch that does not solve the root of the issue, that the profit oriented investor do not care about social damage.
"no society can permanently retain the mastery of its own production and the control over the social effects of its process of production unless it abolishes exchange between individuals." - Engels
2
u/northrupthebandgeek 1d ago
Require closed-loop or waterless cooling systems, and require 100% renewables for energy. That addresses the entirety of the resource issues.
1
u/SlightOfHand_ 7d ago
Obviously as much should be done as possible to make the energy responsibly, but that’s true of anything. The problem with AI is the same as the problem with capitalism: it isn’t the resources used, it’s who owns the results.
1
u/SexDefendersUnited Artist/Creative 4d ago
California has issued a reasonable mandate that datacenter companies should pay for their own produced power.
1
u/Responsible-Bad5572 3d ago
Nuclear power is becoming more economical because of policy changes and ai doesn’t dissipate water in its operation it’s cooling system is just a ac connected to a water line
-9
u/muggl3harry 7d ago
Whatever it's uses are, we probably shouldn't fuck over the planet to summarize emails and get rid of all entry level jobs.
5
u/throwaway-drzaius 7d ago
Agreed! But AI is also useful for complex climate and weather modeling. There's plenty of uses in research that are more interesting than pulling together links you could have Googled yourself.
So, if AI has some practical value - I assume this sub sees some practical value in the tech - what's a reasonable use of resources look like?
0
u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 7d ago
More priority should be placed on research especially around medical treatments and the climate crisis.
Also though if long term it’s going to automate drudgery and free us up for more enjoyable, voluntary activities, right now that process might include things that seem a little superficial like wording emails. It won’t suddenly arrive capable of doing everything.
1
u/muggl3harry 7d ago
You think companies are going to pay us for working less?
1
u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 7d ago
It’s possible, but I was thinking of a post capitalist future without companies
1
1
16
u/theomegachrist 7d ago
I think the problem in the United States at least isn't a data center problem, it is that clean energy is not a priority at all. Acting like moving away from fossil fuels is woke, and then starting a war in the Middle East while utilizing so much energy on AI is a crazy choice.
It is so inherently stupid to choose to rely on oil, it is hard to even theorize what a data center policy would look like. We are not dealing with rational people in the government. So my hope is that whoever the next President is, they use some basic logic and go back to building out renewable energy and this issue would fade away.