Comment by qoez
6 days ago
A big reason to not do it lower down in europe is also just that it's naturally very cold in northern norway so you already save on energy that would be needed to cool it. Meta has datacenters at around the same latitude but in sweden for the same reason.
I've imagined for a long time that eventually we'll shift the bulk of our heavy computation closer to the poles, and use those data centers to power our society. You either use solar power and shift the computation from north pole to south pole seasonally depending on which place is in eternal sunshine, or, since these places are so far away from major population centers, you could just plop down a bunch of giant nuclear reactors without too much resistance.
You might even be able to sell some of that heat to a local heat network to supply other businesses and homes.
Indeed the article explicitly says they intend to do so.
It'll be a bit less cold in northern norway with this thing - accelerating ice cap melt and sea level rise.
Doomsday cult.
All of modern life does that. AI could also bring some solutions instead of just perpetuating problems. And on a cost per intelligence token basis it's obscenely cheap anyway.
Maybe it's time we rethink modern life instead of using it as an excuse to worsen things?