this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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'A Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center Is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community (www.404media.co)
submitted 2 weeks ago by riot@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
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A massive data center for Meta’s AI will likely lead to rate hikes for Louisiana customers, but Meta wants to keep the details under wraps.

Holly Ridge is a rural community bisected by US Highway 80, gridded with farmland, with a big creek—it is literally named Big Creek—running through it. It is home to rice and grain mills and an elementary school and a few houses. Soon, it will also be home to Meta’s massive, 4 million square foot AI data center hosting thousands of perpetually humming servers that require billions of watts of energy to power. And that energy-guzzling infrastructure will be partially paid for by Louisiana residents. 

The plan is part of what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be “a defining year for AI.” On Threads, Zuckerberg boasted that his company was “building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” posting a map of Manhattan along with the data center overlaid. Zuckerberg went on to say that over the coming years, AI “will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build! 💪”

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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 19 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I have a personal conspiracy theory that part of the AI hype is pushed by dirty energy companies. Most American politicians say we can't remove dirty energy plants until we have enough clean energy to replace them. AI (and some other technologies) increase energy demand in a way that counters any clean energy production being built, such that the dirty energy production will always be needed unless we're willing to shut some things down.

Politicians say we can't scale down production below demand, so dirty energy companies benefit most from inflating demand instead of shutting down and being replaced with clean alternatives.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

You guys know Murphy's law that says anything that can go wrong will go wrong? I think it was an indirect law about capitalism that extends enshittification. "If anything can be enshittified for profit, it will be." and that includes fucking up infrastructure and dare I say progress.