Comment by gaze
16 hours ago
I think that's the datacenter with the gas turbine generators that operate without permits because they're "portable." Data centers have tremendous externalities but colossus is a particularly nasty offender, and not just due its size.
Edit: They did it with Colossus and now they're doing the exact same thing with Colossus2. https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
The newer location is about 3 miles southwest of the Memphis Airport (MEM), one of the world’s largest cargo airports and the center of FedEx operations (500 take-off and landings per day most concentrated in a 6 h FedEx window with lots of engines running on ramps and that produces about 2000 tons of NOx per year).
I live about 18 miles downwind of the new Colossus sites, the airport, and lots of truck logistics sites, and a large refinery.
I definitely will be getting 2x exposure to ozone and particulates from both Colossi when they are running full bore. Plus an extra dose of ultrafine particulate with my morning fresh air.
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice to be in Nashville instead with HCA, Oracle, many insurance and financial institutions, and the joy of country music.
As an avid Opus user I am in an ethical Nimby bind. We do need almost any investments we can get in Shelby County TN. I’ll take Anthropic in preference to Grok NOx. And it will be my NOx.
The biggest issue with the interim onsite generation is the lack of meaningful stack height on the generating units.
Airplanes by virtue of their mode of operation stay out of the unhappy regime most of the time. Also, engines at/near idle produde orders of magnitude less emissions. Those aeroderivative generators are running at full capacity 24/7.
Dumping exhaust at ground level continuously is probably much worse than the airport. Even if it's a FedEx world hub.
Cattle can't choose how to be slaughtered, though.
> I’ll take Anthropic in preference to Grok NOx
It's the same datacenter? Ran by the same people?
I think that was the joke.
Hey Siri - can you please order this guy a spare set of lungs ?
Or upgrade their Tesla to that bio hazard filtration level
Your math is way wrong. The airport is and will be far, far worse. You didn't even mention all of the lead
there is no lead in jet fuel.
i would expect close to no 100LL burning planes use MEM.
What was the specific mathematical or factual error? It is not theoretical for me.
So for a guy that literally has a company that produces batteries and solar panels, choose to use gas turbines. So much for saving the planet.
He is building the skill tree in such a way that he is prioritising speed rather than environment.
Solar and batteries are a bad choice for a constant 24/7 load.
That's the exact reason we will never go fully solar (or wind) unless an insanely impressive battery breakthrough makes storage effectively free while using only common, renewable components rather than rare earths.
Solar, wind, etc are excellent parts of an energy system, but its nearly impossible to cover base load at scale with generation that may only run for 0-5 hours a day.
edit: typo
You may want to update your priors [1][2][3]
1. https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-solar-panels-and-...
2. https://www.fastcompany.com/91500104/google-minnesota-data-c...
3. https://www.rootsanalysis.com/sodium-ion-battery-market
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> So for a guy that literally has a company that produces batteries and solar panels, choose to use gas turbines
“Sorry, we have to shut down your database because it’s been overcast for the last two days”
Now, they could have a mix, of course, but just running on solar and batteries at that power is not realistic.
I dug into this topic in some detail on my blog and it's both enraging and depressing.
https://poiesic.com/posts/pattern-recognition
This is a really great watch from Benn Jordan on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo
Some wild things happening with those, and infrasound. Colossus is shown 4 mins in
This was debunked: https://blog.andymasley.com/p/contra-benn-jordan-data-center...
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I dont know, Id say the enraging thing is that the government is so incompetent and unable to expand electricity supply that datacenters are forced into using loopholes to get power the only way they can.
> Id say the enraging thing is that the government is so incompetent and unable to expand electricity supply
So let's say you're a homebuilder, if I tell you I want a new home and I want to live there tomorrow, you can all of a sudden build it in a day, right?
Electricity use is skyrocketing for various reasons, these datacenters being one of them. There are a lot of countries struggling to keep up with demand. So incompetence? No, probably more like supply lagging demand.
Or ASML and Nvidia and all also are incompetent, because they didn't see demand coming....
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That isn't a problem of inept government, its a problem of over regulation and what amount to state-sponsored monopolies in many areas.
We don't need the government to fix it by expanding power grids from the top down, we need free markets allowing competition.
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These are the same companies and individuals who are actively working to destroy functional government, and are happily looting the US treasury rather than let it be spent on things such as encouraging more energy production.
And Anthropic can pay money to Musk to absorb all that liability while they keep training models.
Seems like selc's time would be better spent trying to close the loophole that allows for unpermitted turbine generators instead of going after one company for doing what they were allowed to do when they did it.
Yup, and now Anthropic is complicit in the environmental damage and health problems for local residents that these data centers are causing.
But hey, number must go up, right?
Have you considered that the march of progress requires human blood to grease the gears and mulched skulls to pave the (highly efficient) road? Really, when you take into account all of the future lives this will improve and save it's difficult to claim any cost now is too high. Would you stand in their way and delay the day that Mythos cures cancer?
This is a joke. Read it in a mocking tone.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
I wonder what percentage of GDP expenditure will give us SkyNet.
Undoubtedly, it will find cures to all cancers… The ARR and stock appreciation will be amazing. Except the cures will be found long after it has wiped out all humans.
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Not Anthropic, but Sam Altman - AI will solve climate change and cure all diseases.
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I'm not saying human blood and mulched skulls are a renewable source of power, I'm just saying. Or maybe they can partner with SoulCycle to power computation with 24/7 spin classes?
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Per sanguinem ad astra
I loled
When do we start building pyramids and doing the Sardaukar blood letting ritual?
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Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice that I am willing to make.
A superintelligent AI will be safe though, because it learnt its morality from us.
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Do you think Boris cares about people getting cancer and dying from these data centers? No, he cares about becoming rich as fuck.
Isn't he rich already by now?
This is simply called disruption. They really don't care.
Given how much our EPA has been gutted by the current administration, I don’t think relief is very likely.
So much for Dario’s ethics. He happily partners with Elon. He seems like just another power hungry monopoly seeking liar.
That’s because he is. None of these people are your friends and all of them will fuck you over if it means getting richer and more powerful.
> So much for Dario’s ethics. He happily partners with Elon. He seems like just another power hungry monopoly seeking liar.
Dario has been glorified unnecessarily. He's just like all the other people in the space: not good, not bad.
And keep in mind that when Dario was opposing AI usage by the US State he wasn't really opposing, he was just saying "not yet".
this is why ai in space will win
The physics of data centers in space will be extremely difficult and expensive to pull off in any meaningful timeline.
I fully expect "space AI" to be about as realistic as the flying cars and hover boards we've been promised since televisions were black and white.
xAI’s turbines produce meaningful local/regional pollution (especially NOx in a vulnerable area) but represent a rounding error nationally and globally.
> xAI’s turbines produce meaningful local/regional pollution (especially NOx in a vulnerable area) but represent a rounding error nationally and globally.
If you shoot someone in the face, it will produce a meaningful increase in local/regional murder, but represent a rounding error nationally and globally.
No one should drive any kind of vehicle because they cause accidents.
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Gave me a chuckle on my commute, thanks!
It doesn’t matter if people have to suddenly live by gas turbines that run 24/7 because why again? Can you repeat that last part back to me but say it a little dumber for me?
farting in a crowded elevator because the people outside the elevator won't even notice
multiply rounding errors by thousands and you get somewhat meaningful impact. you are underestimating the scale of independently small pollutions
What's the tremendous externality of gas generators? People heat their own homes with natural gas and it's no big deal. How can a datacenter that is miles away be worse than that?
Its totally inefficient - burning the same gas in a co-generation plant, ideally combined with district heating, would produce the same amount of pollution and basically make use of all the energy.
How can something that is a million times bigger than your home be any different, right?
The gas furnace in my basement don't have a massive jet turbine emiting high frequency noise
It's the low frequencies that's more of an issue apparently. Benn Jordan has a great series of videos about it, including one on Colossus
I wouldn't call noise pollution a "tremendous externality". The gas turbines should just be placed far enough from where people live.
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