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Most data centers refusing to say how much water, electricity they use

216 points · 199 comments · Thom2503

  1. unglaublich · · focus · HN ↗
    They refuse it because if they would say "1 million liters a year!" the knee-jerk reaction will be completely predictable even though that's just tiny compared to a small swimming pool or industrial or agricultural site.

    The debate is completely based on emotion and anger right now, so sharing information will only give the emotional/angry folks more mud to throw with. The majority of people has no clue about how to put things like energy use and water use in perspective, and they're also not interested in doing that. Because they have decided to green-wash their AI-fears as environmental fears... which is a big fat joke because datacenters aren't significant polluters or consumers compared to almost all other industries.

    Look, I get it, many people are afraid of the societal impacts of AI, or distrust it in another way. But let's be honest and focus on _that_ instead of naively acting as if our anti-datacenter sentiment comes from environmental concerns (the last few decades have shown we don't GAF about the environment).

    1. pbasista · · focus · HN ↗
      > They refuse it because ...

      It is completely irrelevant why they choose to refuse to provide this information.

      From what I understand, disclosing this data is not optional. It is a law. And if they have willfully chosen to operate in a country where such a law applies, they have to obey that law.

      1. Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
        > From what I understand, disclosing this data is not optional. It is a law.

        That is not corrective. There is an EU directive, but it would have to be adopted as local law to become actual law.

        The datacenters are following the laws in their jurisdiction.

        1. fwip · · focus · HN ↗
          Of course, they are choosing the jurisdiction for their data centers partly based on what laws are in place.
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