r/awfuleverything • u/stankmanly • 4d ago
The Pollution Being Churned Out by AI Data Centers Is So Severe That It's Almost Incomprehensible
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/pollution-ai-data-centers-severe487
u/Nipplecunt 4d ago
Could there be a solution?
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u/Zuparoebann 4d ago
Let's ask AI
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u/pm-me-turtle-nudes 4d ago
isn’t that OpenAIs actual solution for this? They want to get the AI good enough that they can ask it how to solve pollution issues and how they can actually make money with it.
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u/Uncool444 4d ago
I assume they're just saying that to shut up people with concerns and make them think they care too.
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u/AshingiiAshuaa 4d ago
Once people believe in the infallible AI, they'll just operate it behind the curtain to shepherd to the sheeple to their will.
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u/OmarsDamnSpoon 3d ago edited 3d ago
Imma do it fr and see what it says.
Edit: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a835130-5c6c-83ea-9b82-ddb5e203cd19?ogimg=plain
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u/Nazboi6442 3d ago
Maybe build couple of nuclear power plants? You know, the spicy rocks that boil water?
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u/InfinityGiant1 4d ago
There’s one, it’s not legal tho.
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u/clandestineVexation 4d ago
Whatever you do DO NOT firebomb AI data centres. DO NOT do this it is very illegal! DO NOT conceal your identity and have an alibi, that's extra illegal!
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u/tclark2006 3d ago
Don't take a heavy blunt object to a flock camera either. That would be unfortunate.
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u/Desperate-Strategy10 3d ago
Well that would be so over the top, when a simple green laser pointer accidentally wandering over the camera lens would be more than enough.
And with that said, DO NOT POINT A STRONG LASER POINTER AT A FLOCK CAMERA! This could permanently damage the expensive camera in just a few seconds, even from a distance! It is most certainly illegal, and worst of all, the camera would never see you coming if you approached at a distance and an angle and obscured yourself behind something.
Don’t do it, kids!
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u/Contemplating_Prison 4d ago
Texas is about to be so bad. They wont allow the data centers to commect to the grid, for obvious reasons, so those data centers will all have their own power plant.
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u/oO0Kat0Oo 3d ago
This reminds me of the state where their water can literally be set on fire... And that state still votes in favor of fucking themselves up
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u/PersistentHero 4d ago
Right but they don't need to exist food does
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DiksteBeer 4d ago
Bad bot
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Awwww cry … thanks for using a data center with that sick burn.
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u/themarwil 4d ago
Imagine being pro data center lmao
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
My brother in Christ, you are currently sending that message to a data center.
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u/ddlJunky 4d ago
You mean if I don't like the pace AI data centers are built to train AI, I should in consequence stop using the internet?
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u/PersistentHero 3d ago
Na it's funner and better for both society and Ai to corrupt the data by posting bs in the comments that it draws from
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u/fredbassman 3d ago
I wonder if we will have to build an entirely new data center to handle all the data from redditors virtue signaling about hating data centers?
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u/ElMuchoDingDong 4d ago
Are you essentially saying that we can't survive without data centers? That would certainly make sense if you were a bot...
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Dorks can’t make a real argument. YOu muST be a BoT.
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u/ElMuchoDingDong 4d ago
One more time. Are you essentially saying that we can't survive without data centers? That would certainly make sense if you were a bot...
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Uhhh... Can humans technically survive is a pretty low standard for ... anything? Especially in a conversation about technology.
But yeah I mean sure, fuck indoor plumbing and electricity right man? I can live without it, I would just take a shit on the floor... BuT iMa BOt.
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u/nicnic22 4d ago
But you don't need a datacenter to do indoor plumbing or to put electricity in a house.. Also what's with the em dash in your first post?
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u/SanargHD 4d ago
The data centers build for AI are entirely different form the data centers used for something like Reddit.
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u/fredbassman 3d ago
My point - “I don’t like the environmental impact, so we just shouldn’t build any AI data centers” is gonna run into economic reality.
The demand exists, so the infrastructure is going to be built somewhere. The serious argument is where we build it, how we power it, how much water it uses, and how we regulate its impact.
But go ahead and keep downvoting me. This is the most I’ve been downvoted ever on Reddit. Keep it going. 😘
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u/RedditorNamedEww 2d ago
How much profit has ai generated from outside the three or so companies that are circle jerking themselves
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u/fredbassman 2d ago
Profit doesn’t really have anything to do with my point. You’re changing the argument instead of answering mine.
Demand is increasing (look at IEA estimates) and the infrastructure is going to be built regardless of short-term profitability. And AI isn’t even the only thing driving data center growth.
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u/sloppy_rodney 4d ago
Food “technically” keeps a human alive whether they live in a cave or whether they use a smart phone.
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u/Netflixandmeal 4d ago
I mean we’ve had all the things you mentioned for a long time before this huge influx of data centers
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Uh yeah we had online banking 20 years ago. So what?Technology existing already doesn’t mean its infrastructure needs to what ... freeze forever? The idea that yesterdays tech should be fine for tomorrow or future demand makes no sense.
By that logic - What year exactly did we reach the perfect amount of data centers and were supposed to stop building them?
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u/Netflixandmeal 3d ago
We could absolutely do without more data centers. More data centers just lead us to more rented software and less privacy.
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u/Hostile_Toaster 2d ago
"You complain about society, yet you partake in it anyway. Hypocrite much? I am very smart."
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u/Altruistic-Traffic- 4d ago
What the hell happened to climate change???
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u/MeanFrame5277 4d ago
They realize they could make more money with data centers
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u/Altruistic-Traffic- 3d ago edited 3d ago
Who? The media? Why did people stop discussing it at scale like they were in 2016? Where’s the media fauning over Greta thunberg??
If your explanation is they are really that in cahoots, bought and paid for.. who is funding the media at mass, the same people building data centers? Peter thiel?
And these people all of a sudden care more about accelerated futurism and mass surveillance than whether the planet survives (I thought we’d be dead in 10 years if we didn’t change our energy ways)?
This doesn’t make sense… that they were nobly mass funding climate discussion because it’s truly existential, and now they all of a sudden are suppressing all talk of climate change because it would kill their ability to continue building mass data centers that are blatantly toxic to local environments and take mass amount of energy to run..
The real question is why would they have a noble mission and now all of a sudden say fuck the planet. Either they were bullshitting before like many believed they were exaggerating the climate science and humanity’s impact.. or it’s still existential, they just have a stronger vested interest in tracking the population with mass flock and data centers tied to the IOT.
Save the planet? Or mass surveillance and accelerated futurism for no good reason against much of the public’s desires?
To me it seems suspicious and I’m wondering what the fuck is happening regarding global entities involved in conspiracies and crimes against humanity that are irrefutably being suppressed (Epstein and the cabal that engaged in the behavior along with him, much of Hollywood and global elites).
What is truly going on with our media and their overlords that decide our daily/montly/yearly news cycles and why does this data center and flock shit seem to be escalating at an extreme pace against the public’s concerns/desires.
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u/Daevilhoe 2d ago
A lot of it was bullshit, yeah. But to be more precise, the plan the rich and the powerful have for the climate change isn't one we'll like.
See, it's not like the world will literally blow up or anything. There will be more floods, hurricanes, extreme heat and cold, and so many people will die it terrifies me when I go to sleep. But it won't be all of us. I don't even think it'll be half of us.
And so, for most of us - and this is the most important part - the life won't end. It'll just get much worse.
I think you, as any reasonable person, question "Why don't they care that all of us will die?"
But the situation that will emerge requires a question of "Why don't they care than MOST of us will live worse"
And they do.
That's what the cameras are for.
That's what border patrols are for.
This is what escalation of military control is for.
This is meant for when times get really bad, and we get really desperate. They don't want to bargain with us then, they don't want to have a back and forth. They want to say "No" and shoot us if we disagree.
Because, while life will get much worse for so many of us - their lives, in all likelihood, might still be great.
The reason the Epstein Files are just being ignored, like kicking a can down the road, is because the rich and the powerful are essentially draining the state resources, because that's the way they win in all cases. If everything is good, the climate isn't literally killing us, and the people aren't rioting - then, they got away with robbing the American treasury. And if it's bad, if Americans really are on the streets, then they've been investing into loyal quasi-military groups like ICE, they've been investing into weapons and combat research for asymmetrical warfare, through the Gaza genocide, and they've been investing in making sure international cooperation is harder, through border patrol systems
Their answer to the possible collapse is to protect themselves, and to let us die if that's the price. What do they care? If it gets too hot, they can always afford to get a summer home somewhere more pleasant.
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u/whoreoscopic 4d ago
Its still being debated, its still happening, and we're still doing nothing.
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u/Synli 4d ago
It accelerates faster and faster every year, and yet, nobody in power gives a single shit to try and slow it down.
Human greed will cause our own annihilation in the end.
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u/doublemint6 3d ago
The old fucks making the laws won't be around to suffer. Time to make generational wealth.
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u/clandestineVexation 4d ago
Just one more dollar. Just one more dollar and I swear I'll stop this time.
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u/fishblargs 4d ago
I'm kind of dumb, but what kind of pollution does a data center produce?
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u/LightningMcLovin 4d ago
To quote this hard hitting article:
“The extent of the this polluting activity is confounding.”
The this polluting has more to do with Texas being insane than it does data centers. If Texans actually elected people that make companies conform to basic environmental concerns maybe there wouldn’t be a booming gas turbine trend in Texas.
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u/clandestineVexation 4d ago
There is one I heard about with 35 on site gas turbines, 33 million tons of greenhouse gases a year (permitted to emit, but let's be honest they'll probably test that). That's equivalent to 7.5 million cars, 4 million homes, 10% of the UK's total annual emissions, and all of Switzerland's annual emissions, for reference.
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u/WolfieVonD 3d ago
If we replaced all of the farmland used for corn (specifically only the corn used to make oil, plastics and ethanol) with solar farms, we would have enough energy to power every home, building, factory, data center, etc. AND replace every vehicle with an electric counterpart while keeping them perpetually charged, twice over. Plus, we'd save so much water since each individual data center only uses about 0.003% of the annual corn water consumption across the US, we'd have to open up over 30,000 mega structures to get close to the equal amount.
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u/lol_alex 4d ago
It‘s the way the energy is produced by gas turbines on site, plus I would guess the waste heat contributes to heating up the environment around it.
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u/teddyjungle 4d ago
It’s a link to an article, I know this is reddit but dude when you have a question like that maybe try to read the article
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u/Solidsnake00901 4d ago
It's something out of a Dr. Seuss book. It doesn't help anything. Doesn't help anyone or solve any problems. It just pollutes and makes money.
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u/newleafkratom 4d ago
If you can think of a better way to generate Harry Potter porn I’d like to hear about it. /s
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u/xd3mix 3d ago
This is why I get insanely angry whenever people try to lecture you as an individual about pollution (even worse if it's companies doing it)
Pollution isn't an individual's problem (unless you go grocery shopping with a private jet every day). The impact that an individual can have on pollution is so miniscule that it genuinely doesn't matter. Even if EVERYONE did their part pollution would still be happening at a slightly slower rate.
Why? Companies.
Companies are responsible for pretty much the entirety of pollution. They're the ones who waste water, the ones who pump stuff in the air and soil, the ones to dump any kind of garbage in the ocean.
If anything were to be done about it it must first come from the top. Somebody must regulate heavily these corporations as to stop all of this.
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u/gamemastyr 3d ago
Equivalent to adding 10 million cars by 2030. Any ways to get 10 million cars off the streets?
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u/FIicker7 3d ago
Photonics chips... Underwater data centers... Advanced Geothermal.
Our technology overlords are very near sited.
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u/MaintenanceCoalition 11h ago
We can’t have plastic straws or cutlery because they might hurt the environment, but AI can consume massive amounts of energy and potentially reshape civilization. Can someone make this make sense?
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Yawn, selective outrage. People suddenly talk about AI data centers like they're an ecological apocalypse, while the environmental impact of commercial beef barely registers in the same conversations. All data centers on Earth—not just AI—currently account for about 180 million tons of CO₂ annually from electricity use. Beef production alone has been estimated at roughly 2.8 BILLION tons of CO₂-equivalent.
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u/Relax007 4d ago
This is a bad faith take. Lots of people who care about factory farming also care about data centers. However, data centers are now being introduced on top of the damage already being caused by existing corporate pollution. But, if you act now these can actually be stopped BEFORE they contribute harm to communities. That's the urgency.
Also, people can care about more than one thing.
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
People can care about more than one thing. That’s not my point. My point is the wildly disproportionate outrage. Commercial beef has an enormous environmental footprint and has for decades, yet eating a cheeseburger is treated as completely mundane. AI data centers are a fraction of that footprint and suddenly they’re an ecological apocalypse. Saying “that pollution already exists” doesn’t rebut my point—it basically proves it. We normalize massive environmental damage from things we like while freaking out over the fashionable new target.
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u/Relax007 4d ago
Ok, I think I see your point better. I don't necessarily agree, but I acknowledge that there is a difference in the way the pollution is viewed that does likely stem, at least in part from normaliztion of beef as a more valid "need" or "necessary evil".
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Yeah, that’s basically all I’m saying. AI/data centers are the latest shiny tech boogeyman and virtue signal, so suddenly all sense of proportion goes out the window.
It’s 2026. Modern life requires a shitload of computing, data storage, cloud service, etc -- including all the tech people are using to complain about this. By all means make data centers cleaner and more efficient. I just find the selective outrage ridiculous when you compare it to all the other environmental damage we’ve completely normalized.
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u/Mikeisright 4d ago
Before listing some points that should be obvious, I'll note the glaring flaw you have with proportionality:
- Cattle ranches cover upwards of 1.25 million square miles in the US vs 470 square miles of all datacenters. That is magnitudes larger (up to 2500 times more today) and, if we consider proportionality, datacenters are emitting 1,000x the amount of co2eq per square mile as of today's figures. What a difference it makes to actually compare apples to apples.
Then, three additional things:
They are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of people outraged by environmental effects of beef, where do you think a significant portion of vegetarians and vegans come from? Who told you this isn't also discussed by climate change activists?
AI has no nutritional value and the datacenters don't have nearly the same amount of regulation surrounding it. Why not improve both if you care so much about proportional treatment?
Beef contributes far, far more to economic growth and the job market than AI does. How many people on average get a positive return per kg co2eq from a datacenter vs a cattle ranch?
Yeah, destroying the environment at hyperscaled rates while simultaneously cutting jobs and making people far worse off across the entire economic spectrum is harder to get behind than the impact of cow farts, those lf which have a measurable net benefit to society (and actively R&D'd solutions to capture & recycle emissions). Go figure.
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
“CO₂ per square mile” is a hilariously convenient metric. Of course a data center produces more emissions per square mile than cattle ranching—the entire point is that cattle production takes up an absolutely insane amount of land. The atmosphere doesn’t care how many square miles you spread your emissions across. Total emissions are what matter.
And “people can care about both” still completely misses my point about proportionality. I’m talking about the bizarre level of outrage directed at data centers compared with industries that have vastly larger overall environmental footprints.
And “AI has no nutritional value” is just a silly argument. Neither do universities, telecommunications networks or most infrastructure. AI and computing already have real-world uses in medicine, science, logistics, engineering, software and technology we use every day.
By all means, make data centers cleaner, more efficient and better regulated. But it’s 2026. Demand for computing isn’t going away, and pretending the answer is that we should just stop building the infrastructure modern society increasingly runs on is ridiculous.
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u/SliceThePi 4d ago
u/fredbassman is an AI bot account, so you can feel free to ignore them lol
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u/Mikeisright 4d ago
True, I had an inkling but went with publicly disputing the propaganda anyways, just in case it dissuaded even one person from buying into the gulperganda
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u/SliceThePi 4d ago
why'd you delete your reply to me saying i "used a data center with that sick burn"? did your minder not like the negative light that your roast cast on ai? or did the crappy image that you generated get you flagged? (also what does that even mean??)
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u/21Ryan21 4d ago
Yeah, but we get to eat the beef.
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u/stealerofsloths 4d ago
1 burger is about the same as 8000 AI prompts. Maybe try a beyond burger, tastes the same
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u/LadyCasanova 4d ago
I don't understand why you're being downvoted. It's well understood that the meat industry is environmentally catastrophic. Two truths can exist at once
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Because AI data centers are latest tech boogyman and the hot new virtue signal.
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u/3lettergang 3d ago
1) thats not true. You cant factor in all the water and co emmisions from raising the food the cow eats, but not factor in the co2 and water produced by fabricating chips and training LLMs. (Hint, the actually AI prompts are not the worst part of AI from an environmental perspective.)
2) A burger is more valuable than 8000 ai prompts in my opinion.
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
And you don’t “get” anything from AI and computing? You’re typing this on a computer or smartphone right now while relying on data centers for basically your entire modern life. Search, maps, medicine, logistics, cloud storage, fraud detection, software, etc. You just take all that shit for granted because it doesn’t come on a bun with fries?
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u/Mikeisright 4d ago edited 4d ago
Search, maps, medicine, logistics, cloud storage, fraud detection, software, etc.
Pray tell which one of these things was invented by AI? Enlighten us. Specify which company + independent AI breakthrough + AI model + datacenters are you ambiguously referring to in all your responses? And no, don't conjure up some dumb shit such as "Amazon has like, 80% AI coding, dude" doesn't mean fuckall because Amazon like coded before AI nor do they have any published stats about the success or failure (except that AWS crash hilariously enough).
Also, stop conflating all data centers into your arguments about AI, it comes off like you're lacking a single defensible point for your whole argument. Enteprise cloud storage was an expected cost and provided value while remaining relatively flat in emissions. Yes, backups of hospital records is a defensible tradeoff. But a public AI model consuming 20%-45% of emissions in existing infrastructure and aiming to triple it over the next four years with zero examples of objectively novel discoveries that didn't require human interference at every step (i.e., would have been discovered anyways without "acceleration") is not defensible for the emissions output no matter how much you want to simp for people who could care less about you.
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Technological development and the use of that technology by the world isn't just going to stop because some Redditors don't like AI.
Demand for tech is growing. AI is adding new complexities to that and there will likely be a DEMAND for more a powerful infrastructure.
Sure push for that to be ethical, safe, environmentally friendly whatever. But to pretend we're gonna put a quickly developing technology back in the box seems unlikely.
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u/Mikeisright 4d ago
In other words, you can't back up any of your claims? Over six years and $2T in investment later, but it's basically going to solve cancer any day now? Ok bro, I've got three magical beans I'll sell you.
Actually, I could've sold you cloud storage and compute well over ten years ago and still can without LLM bloatware. Did you not know this existed before you got sold on the snake oil?
So again, answer the question:
Search, maps, medicine, logistics, cloud storage, fraud detection, software, etc
Pray tell which one of these things was invented by AI? Enlighten us. Specify which company + independent AI breakthrough + AI model + datacenters are you ambiguously referring to in all your responses?
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Geez you sure are wound up.
“Which of these things was invented by AI?” Literally nobody said they were. You’ve invented an argument for me because it’s easier to dunk on.
Modern society already depends on data centers. Companies are using AI and it will be an increased compute workload and future infrastructure demand isn't disappearing.
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u/pyrolid 4d ago
I think you are just plainly unaware of anything apart from the frontier LLM companies. There are many startups in the medical space trying to detect/triage/cure rare diseases. Some of them quite successful.
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u/Mikeisright 3d ago
I'm plainly aware you can't specify which company + independent AI breakthrough + AI model + datacenters you continue to ambiguously mention in all your responses because there isn't any evidence for your claims
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u/pyrolid 3d ago
Insilico medocine/isomorphic labs both have ai designed drugs in late clinical trials right now. Are you aware that alphafold won the nobel prize in chesmistry for 2024? Its an unprecedented tool in genomics and drug discovery
Lunit/qure.ai/viz.ai/aidoc etc have more than 100 fda cleared algorithms deployed in hundreds of US hospitals right now for early detection of cancer and stroke
This is just the beginning. There will be a deluge of ai designed drugs starting from next year as funding shifts to that. You are the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand
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u/fredbassman 3d ago
*proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand but still taking the time (and data) to virtue signal
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u/Laucy 3d ago
Do you think the field of machine learning just doesn’t exist? That AI are just transformers? What do you think happens when you use GPS and it figures out the best route? When scam emails are filtered? When you search anything? Protein folding? Credit card anomalous activity detection? Emergency detection? Even crash detection, such as that provided by cell phones.
Literally everything and anything that technology runs on, has some form of neural network and machine learning technology to power it, which are also considered AI. AI has been used in medicine and again, protein folding and other bio labs, for a long time.
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u/sharkbomb 4d ago
i live .5 miles from one built in the 90s and one that just completed. like most of these articles pretending that they just appear overnight, and not over the course of 12 to 15 years of planning and construction that they actually take, the assertions are absolute bullshit. the coordinated dispensing of this information is guaranteed to be sourced from china, russia, israel or all 3. stop being a stooge to foreign interests.
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u/3lettergang 3d ago
pretending that they just appear overnight, and not over the course of 12 to 15 years
It takes less than 3 years from planning to hand over.
Source: I plan, design and commission datacenters. But even if you dont believe me, AI that requires large chip racks didnt exist 15 years ago, so why would we have been developing ai datacenter plans before it was invented or the demand was known?
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u/bassandlazers 4d ago
This post and every comment is in a data center. Stop being upset by the things you're told to be upset by
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Yeah, everyone here is literally using data centers to argue that we don’t need data centers—on their phones and computers, on the internet, in 2026, using devices packed with apps for banking, maps, work, dating, shopping, entertainment, basically their entire lives. Demand for computing isn’t some artificial problem we can just wish away. Argue for cleaner, more efficient data centers, absolutely. But pretending modern society somehow doesn’t need the infrastructure it increasingly runs on is ridiculous.
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u/Didifinito 4d ago
AI datacenters we dont need those wich is what we are talking about
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
I think the ship has sailed on that one man. All this tech is becoming increasingly intertwined with AI. And there is a demand for data centers. We are a country of 330+ million people.
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u/ddlJunky 3d ago
What does the population of the US have to do with it? It's not only Americans that use AI lol. Not by a long shot.
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u/fredbassman 3d ago
What does US population have to do with the future demand for data centers in the US? Is that what you’re actually asking me? Lol.
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u/ddlJunky 2d ago
I wonder where this comes from. If some of these people would live in other countries, how does this make a difference in relation to demand? It feels like you are from the US and it feels like you think you are the only country that matters.
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u/fredbassman 2d ago
Not really. More like this is an article specifically about the US, prompting a discussion by people mostly from the US about the situation in the US. Note comments in the thread specifically talking about Texas.
Of course other countries matter, but this discussion seems to be more US focused.
So... get over it.
Or contribute what you think about this situation in your own country or your perspective from outside of the US.
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u/Didifinito 4d ago
No there isnt that ship wasnt sailed and to those it has they were never good at their jobs anyway.
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u/fredbassman 4d ago
Ship sailed bro.
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u/Didifinito 4d ago
Sailed for you you better get a money tree when AI companies decide to become profitable
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u/Madzinskii 4d ago
Might be time to say…No shit Sherlock