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Comment by alesrosa | Hacker News Reader

I don't miss the point. Most of the comments that have been posted here seemed to be written by people blinded by efficience and power. None of them took care of my points about the waste of energy and water. Any technology threating against the natural habitat and its creator is no good.

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The same argument has been used against most data center operations from the beginning. You can criticise specific bad actors and bad practices (like Musk and his blatantly illegal gas turbines) without morally condemning an entire field of technology through the lens of religious environmentalism. There is nothing about the technology that prevents data centers from running 100% renewably.

There should be no plan of building new data centers up to that time. I am not against new technology at all, only against indiscriminate use. It's like cars and motorbikes. People are illuded that they drive good tech, but they are strongly contributing to pollution. This is a topic that should join all people.

Then there's a difficult question to answer: Who should get to use AI and who shouldn't?

The data centers aren't there for no reason, they track demand (and a large helping of hype). It's the same question that arises with cars. A single person driving a car is relatively unproblematic. It's when individual usage adds up that it becomes problematic. And what did decades of car opposition do? A lot less than what happened when a better way to do it (read EVs) came up.

Good point about cars!

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