AI data centers are all the rage right now. Every time generative AI services crawl through their immense language models to get a chatbot to answer one of your questions, it takes a ton of computing power to sift through all that data. That can utilize a ton of energy, which means the proliferation of AI raises questions about how sustainable the technology is and how it affects the ecosystems around it. Some companies think they have a solution: running these data centers underwater, where they can utilize the surrounding seawater to frosty and better control the temperatures of the GPUs working strenuous inside. But it turns out that just throwing something into the ocean isn’t always a foolproof plan for reducing its environmental impact.
This week Gadget LabWIRED journalists Paresh Dave and Reece Rogers join the show to discuss their reporting on underwater data centers and how the race to power AI systems is affecting the environment.
Program Notes
Read Paresh and Reece’s story about their plan to put an underwater data center in San Francisco Bay. Read Reece’s story about what it’s like to be an AI hyperconsumption era and how to cut through all the AI hype. Read Lauren’s story about a social network populated entirely by bots. Read Karen Hao’s story in Atlantic about how companies like Microsoft work taking water from the desert to be used to frosty AI data centers. Here is a Black Cat substack article about the character Harper With Industry. Follow all of WIRED’s coverage of AI and climate.
Recommendations
Paresh recommends borrowing cookbooks from your local library. Reece recommends soundtrack of the first Dusk movie for all the fall feels. Lauren recommends the HBO series Industry. Mike recommends a book by Anna Weiner Grant Peterson’s Bike Designer Profile IN Novel York.
Reece Rogers can be found on social media atthick chalk. Paresh Dave is @bird33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode.Michael Calore is @snack fight@heads.social. Call the main hotline at @GadgetLab.The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is Solar Keys.
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