The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.
That’s fair. The nuance that people lose is more that people are often painting them all with the same brush. Protesting any datacenter regardless of impact.
It becomes something like: “datacenters are evil and are a symbol of techno fascist distopia! If they build a datacenter in my city, the taps will run dry and Elon Musk will use it to make ai porn of my children!” Even if it’s a small solar powered closed loop that provides VPS, storage and web hosting for nerds and small businesses.
I also do think there’s also a scale of evil there. Some environmental impacts are not immediately obvious and might not be known about during planning. Some were built a long time ago with older tech and are a bit shitty but have a plan to transition to be more sustainable, etc.
The world is full of “alright but a little bit shit.” It’s not all perfect angels and mustache twirling villains.
I don’t want to detract too much from the real villains though. Nobody needs a 9GW datacity for military ai.