Post #3603100

2025-10-10 18:14 UTC

Today I learned that there are only three English cities with an electrical consumption greater than 200 megawatts: London, Manchester and Birmingham. By comparison, the people who want to build AI data centres here, which nobody asked for, want a supply of up to 1 gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) for each one. That’s how skewed this whole nonsense is.

Replies (7)

@WhiteCatTamer@mastodon.online 2025-10-10 20:28

@christineburns@mastodon.green New rule: you can open and run any data center you want, tax free for life, if and only if it runs entirely upon the output of what the C-suite can pedal.

Open ##3608970
@christineburns@mastodon.green 2025-10-10 18:17

And that’s before we discuss the precious cooling water they’ll use once and dump. Maybe if each data centre provided a city-wide district heating system from their waste heat…

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@alexadeswift@lgbtqia.space 2026-07-06 13:29

@christineburns@mastodon.green This will crash and burn, as not only is nobody asking for it, it is also exceedingly useless providing predominantly incorrect results, but once it is charged at a level that will return a profit nobody will be able to afford to use it! Of course there are edge cases where a mature form of "AI" will be useful, but the current engines are nowhere ready yet, and cannot even be considered genuinely AI as they are not truly intelligent. They just regurgitate words, and often in an extremely flawed way.

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@Tresallier@piaille.fr 2025-10-10 19:09

@christineburns@mastodon.green All to help with what? Dumbing down citizens further?

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@okohll@hachyderm.io 2025-10-10 19:59

@christineburns@mastodon.green A Cleaning Up listener? Half way through that episode. They do have some interesting conversations and yes that is mad. There was someone a few days ago (forget where) who said that after all the AI hype has crashed we'd be left with lots of very cheap computing capacity as a side effect, or I guess at least electricity.

Open ##3654828
@robcornelius@climatejustice.social 2025-10-10 20:07

@christineburns@mastodon.green This has to end, right here and now. There is talk of building a huge new reservoir in Oxfordshire too. I bet it will be used for data centres not for drinking water. Neo-liberal economics demands unlimited economic growth so capitalists create new shit to buy whether we want or need it. AI is the equivalent of cheap plastic crap at the dollar/pound store. We know its crap and it will break in 5 minutes. We still buy it because we are told we have to and there is no alternative. Model collapse can't come quick enough. On the other hand it might have already happened and the people making billions shovelling this shit down our throats don't care.

Open ##3654829
@Npars01@mstdn.social 2025-10-10 21:21

@christineburns@mastodon.green The intent of AI & cryptocurrency data centers isn't to produce a product with revenues. https://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/15/trump-ai-oil-energy-summit It's to stop the switch to solar & wind & inflate fossil fuel demand. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/04/pfas-pollution-data-centers-ai https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/10/08/trumps-quest-to-cure-cancer-with-ai-is-powered-by-energy-that-can-cause-it-00594678 https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/renewable-energy-outpaces-electricity-demand-coal-trump-ai-data/ https://apnews.com/article/trump-artificial-intelligence-energy-data-centers-f216660b80f992ae303b348dac0b2f87 Trump's billionaires are converting "free markets" into state capitalism (ie kleptocracy) https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/trumps-state-capitalism https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2025/09/americas-quiet-turn-towards-state-capitalism/ https://www.investors.com/news/trump-stock-market-grab-nvidia-intel-mp-materials-us-economy/

Open ##3689704