Denial and distraction have served the bit barn leaders badly.
A new contract of candour is needed between those who build datacenters and those who despise them.
Without numbers that can be trusted, it's impossible to judge the environmental effect of using datacenters.
The only source of data good enough for this purpose is the datacenter operator.
Panthalassa is building wave generators that look and fittingly like the spaceship Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Then there's the tendency to wave at future nuclear power as though it excuses burning hydrocarbons today. We've had pious platitudes that AI is going to get so good it will design itself out of environmental damage.
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Denial and distraction have served the bit barn leaders badly.
Its big boxes of semi-sentient sand are seen as satanic sandcastles, environmental disasters that inflict drought while boiling oceans. Their role as dark cathedrals of the equally demonic AIs has done nothing to soften attitudes.
A new contract of candour is needed between those who build datacenters and those who despise them. Shrugging off concerns, or offering shiny misdirections with no intent of following through, no longer works.
Without numbers that can be trusted, it's impossible to judge the environmental effect of using datacenters. TThere are differing estimates, but nothing enough to tell personal choices or public policy on ethical use. We need to know this not just in broad terms, but with enough accuracy and currency to differentiate between models and hardware generations.
The only source of data good enough for this purpose is the datacenter operator. Without that cooperation, nobody's going to believe that anything other than a mad dash for gigawatts at any cost is powering build-out decisions. Given projects such as Musk's xAI Colossus clusters in the Deep South, energized by methane-burning turbines installed with scant regard for regulatory permission, the industry can expect the benefit of the doubt.
Then there's the tendency to wave at future nuclear power as though it excuses burning hydrocarbons today.
Take the possibilities of marine datacenters powered by tidal and wave generators.
Panthalassa is building wave generators that look and fittingly like the spaceship Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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