Rechenzentren sind eine tickende Zeitbombe. Wir müssen sicherstellen, dass die Vorteile der KI die Kosten überwiegen – sie verbrauchen Energie und Wasser und geben Wärme ab. Wer ist von all diesen Investitionen besser dran – außer den Tech-Brüdern?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/09/ai-artificial-intelligence-benefits-costs-datacentres-energy-water-environment
16 Kommentare
AI datacentres are gobbling energy and water fast. Benefits like better health scans or grid fixes sound real but the costs on emissions and bills could outweigh them quick. Australia might triple that use by 2030 and still burn fossils which slows any clean shift.
Not many local jobs after build either and gear comes from overseas. We need real checks on whether this boom helps regular people or just the big tech side.
Nobody cares what anyone thinks. The billionaires are in charge. People joke about our robot overlords, but they are already here.
Energy yes, water not so much compared to other industries. People are really pushing this narrative without actually doing any research on how cooling happens in the modern datacenters. But yes they need a lot of energy.
The politicians the tech bros are paying and who wont live long enough to face the repercussions seem to be making out pretty well
I don’t know about heat but the water thing is overrated. Look it up there are so much other that use much much more water. Data centers are a small part and AI even smaller.
Still we should find alternatives like space or underwater
Municipalities need to enact clear, equal regulations around water use, noise, emissions, and electrical use and generation. *Before* a data center or any other business comes knocking.
Those that do have no problem. If a company wants to locate there badly enough to follow the rules, great, and nobody minds because they’re following the established guidelines meant to preserve quality of life.
But you start banning “datacenters” because of feels, and lawyers easily push through the project because that’s discriminatory zoning.
This whole problem is squarely on the shoulders of poorly managed municipalities.
Please Dog stop talking about the water! IN & OUT consumes so much more water than AI ever dreamed of!
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China just introduced and open source medium weight model that can run on local hardware. It will just get better. It will be much cheaper to run than paying the service cost of a data center housed AI. The game has changed. The tech bros got a little greedy and short sighted. There will be pain here. https://slashdot.org/story/26/07/17/1820200/china-just-erased-americas-ai-lead
A cement factory uses more water, more energy, and produces more heat than a data centre. They also emit greenhouse gases because their energy source is coal or burning „recycled“ plastic.
Edit water not power
There it is. The costs are astronomical and will continue to rise as long as they center keeps running. The benefits are minimal and most are flatly unnecessary and also lead to damage when you look past the surface. Ultimately, data centers are another money grabbing scam against taxpayers by the billionaire greed class that will provide them with means to further financially and civilly abuse citizens.
Pivoting to maximal surveillance of every human – everyone is constantly monitored by AI stasi. Suspicious speech or even pre-crime is reported and punished. Data centers don’t need to profit if they can be leveraged for permanent authoritianism.
There is no path from our current AI models to general intelligence. There just isn’t.
Best case scenario, and not a good one, is that we move to a global digital currency and these centers are actually being built for that. The AI story is just a cover.
Worst case? Trillions wasted, and they’ll get stripped for parts, even illegally. Think GPUs at the swap meet for $40 ram thrown in for free.
Nobody is or will be better off than the tech bros
They’re going to make us dependant on it. AI is weaseling it’s way into every aspect of our lives. The next generation will know no world without it.
How are we going to fight off that which is built to help us with everything?
bro data centers are not new. u only care now cause people are talking about ai