0:00 Welcome to our debate about data centers. We're going to go over some of the negatives and some of the positives thanks to having Anthony Lee here on whether or not these things should be built in your town. >> He's pro data center and he uses a lot of data. >> Yeah, so Anthony's going to be pro data and the rest of us obviously going to be anti. >> Nah, dude, I'm mayor. >> [laughter] >> No to data centers. >> The mayor is the one that's pro data center by the way. >> [laughter] >> I said no to data centers. >> I don't think a single mayor has said no to data centers yet. >> No, Trump just came out for data centers. So Well, then I'm so not the mayor today. >> So here's some of the negatives. Like obviously these are like the really really obvious ones. There's Well, you can name a hundred of them, but we're just going to go over some of the main ones. One data center uses enough electricity equivalent to powering a small city.
0:51 It uh uses millions of gallons of water per day for cooling systems. Millions of gallons per day. >> Can use up to millions of gallons. >> They can't just cycle >> It's cooling. So like once it becomes like too hot, it'll like turn into things like steam for example. >> But that means it's just in the atmosphere and it'll come back down in rain. >> In a sense, that's it's arguable. It's arguable. >> It doesn't disappear. >> Here's why that's a problem. Every like area of America has allotted water use. So like let's say you live in a town, they they can't just use as much water as they want. They have like certain amounts. So if you build a data center, guess who now has priority over the water usage? It's not the citizens. >> Just like the farms in California, they use the most and then they blame us and they say, "If it's If it's brown, flush it down. If it's yellow, let it mellow." Remember that?
1:41 >> But then it takes like 50,000 gallons of of water to make an almond or some ████ >> Yeah, tons of water. Yeah, yeah. >> It's like, "Hey, don't wash your car or water your lawn." But they're out here ████ Yeah, spending hell of water. >> There's also the noise which um as many people are now documenting creates this constant humming. And apparently I don't know if they have proof yet, but the frequencies can bother livestock apparently. They have like farmers that are showing how their animals are just like kind of in like a near psychosis. Like you're going nuts because this sound doesn't stop or they can't sleep or they have to migrate to like different areas farther away to get away from it to even rest. So there's a lot of stuff about obviously the noise is going to bother people as well. And another negative is that relative to its size, the amount of
2:31 employees that these things make is very little. Like uh proportionately. >> Also doesn't bring jobs. Like the biggest data center could probably won't even break 200 employees. >> Here's my question. So remember when Monterey Park had that huge like debate about whether we had we should have it here or not. Anyways, um why does it have to be in the city? Like why can't we just have it like in the middle of nowhere where it doesn't bother nobody? >> The thing is that if you put it in the middle of nowhere, it costs a lot more for electrical infrastructure and all of the things surrounding it that it needs. In the city, all that that grid is already there. You don't have to make new substations, as many of them. And I believe that the cost is lower the closer you are to a city. >> This is why Elon's doing such a huge push to put them in space and build AI
3:21 data centers in space specifically because it's like you don't need water, it's constantly cooling, it's not going to take away resources from like a near town. But then he's got his own infrastructure when it comes to things like uh Starlink. So he can get the information, he can get the blah blah blah that's like anywhere around the globe in milliseconds or whatever the hell. Anyway, that just proposes a huge threat to the idea that he's private sector still, right? >> I didn't know you were such a Elon simp. >> [laughter] >> I'm trying not to be mayor. >> He's just trying to give you information. >> [laughter] >> All right, Anthony with the positives. Let's hear some more positives. Why, despite all these things, is it still a good idea to get a data center near you? >> The idea is to keep up with China, right? Like, cuz we're in an AI uh ra- what do you call it? AI >> race kind of, yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, arms race, thank you. And uh so, the idea is that China if China gets the
4:12 tech earlier than we do, they're going to have a huge leg up on us. That's what I keep hearing. >> What what is that, exactly? For a data center? Is it just for >> AI? >> Well, what is the thing What is the thing like ideally that China could reach before America and then we just America would just be pushed out? What is Is there a tangible >> That's what I genuinely don't know. >> Well, I think that's the whole point about revolution, I assume. Like, you think about like steam or like the industrial revolution, right? Like, in those moments, people just ████ raced. They just ran. Like, you would you would get things like the World's Fair to just see what would happen. And so, right now they're just building kind of like the foundational infrastructure that allows people to keep playing with this toy without knowing fully where it is. And we're going to run in into an overcorrection. We're going to run into the like AI stock market bubble and and ████ crashing. We're going to run into
5:03 like, you know, ████ emptying and ████ abandoned data centers that completely dest- demolished a city and everybody had Erin Brockovich cancer in 20 years. We're going to run into the probably worst versions of stuff, but you zoom out like 200 years and somehow human beings are going to do the mental gymnastics to justify because we we got to this version of of like evolution. >> I think it's just about weapons. I think that, you know, they want to use AI to generate better and better weapons, and they're afraid that China's going to get them before we do. >> And it's not necessarily just the regular weapons like uh bullets and and and missiles, right? It's it's the tech weapons so >> It's hacking, it's all that. >> It's like when Claude recently released Fable for the first time, they released it for a couple days and then they pulled it back and they needed apparently to potentially like there was a a pencil I think they needed to give
5:53 mythos which is like the back end of it to the Pentagon first because like when they release it's like it's like instead of giving it to just developers now this ████ is so crazy and can break cybersecurity we need to give it to the government or to our actual national defense first. They need to understand how to beat it or protect themselves. >> with it yeah. >> Yeah and then they can go to the the developer public and whatnot. So it's like we're we're just in a new era and new age. So it's like no matter what we say no matter how much we protest like no data centers. If you're going into a international race and like one side's not stopping you're ████ we're ████ out of luck. >> There's here's some of the positives. So number one positive which is I guess the one that gets everybody on board is the tax revenue that comes from having a a data center built in your town.
6:44 The second one would be the electrical infrastructure around it gets upgraded to the surrounding area. So like if you you're from a town where you know we're spoiled every town we've ever lived in that we don't have to think about that. Like yeah the power's going to be fine. You're never going to get those dimming lights that you see in like movies from like podunk little villages. >> We go through a lot of power outages in Hawaii and I'm always reminded how the grid is ████ Cuz like when you go to Honolulu you're around skyscrapers right? So you feel like you're in a city but they built that ████ so quick like most of that ████ was built in the 80s. So like everything's new right? But they built it so quick and kind of janky. >> That's a great place to put a data center. >> Yeah. >> The whole island should be a data center. >> Yeah. [laughter] So electrical infrastructure will get upgraded probably beyond like so far beyond like even where we probably live you know. >> And then if you have power outages all
7:34 the time you're probably just like thank god like we have stability. >> And the backup generator for like if the power does go out would be so strong that it would probably handle the city just as well. There's also another good perk is that the jobs, even though there's a few jobs, there's not that many, they're high-paying jobs. >> So like 10 people are now going to make 500k a year. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, whereas like the whole all the the team that's in the coal mines making like 10 bucks. Yeah, it's it's the jobs are really high-paying for those of you who can get it. But most of these are not going to be hiring local dudes that lived around it. >> For sure. >> They're not smart enough. No, they're getting recruited by headhunters from like other companies that >> Well, even like electricians, there's like war for electricians right now. So those guys are getting headhunted.
8:24 >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's going to be So the And I guess this would be the the benefit for everybody, not just like the people in the town, but the boost for modern digital services. So if you think about it now like it This kind of what Anthony's point is too is that everything's relying more and more on AI, whether you like it or not. The things that you go, "Wow, this is a lot better now." It's cuz of AI. You know what I mean? All the things that you're like, "Damn, that's This is working way more efficiently." Things like cloud computing, banking, healthcare, streaming, finance, all these things are implementing to the point where they do need these data centers in order to run more efficiently and get better. So everybody wins whether you in this way, whether you live near one or not. Like the fact that your life is going to be integrated with this so much no matter what you do. >> I'm going to push back and say I don't think anybody thinks things are getting
9:15 better with services. >> With services? >> Yeah, I think it's worse than ever. >> Really? How come? >> Yeah, think about like Joe trying to talk to Patreon and they're like, you know, you have to talk you can't talk to anybody anymore. Or like if you if you if you have a problem with an airline carrier now, you have to like go to Twitter and start yelling like, "Please pay attention to me." >> Oh, you you mean like customer service? Oh, yeah. >> Yeah, customer service and all that ████ is just worse than ever. >> Well, I think customer service by design is not meant to actually help you. It's meant to like stave you away long enough for you to solve it on your own. >> Right. Right. Right. >> And [snorts] I guess arguably the whole point cuz that's I agree that does suck. But arguably the whole point is that it's when you don't have a problem the efficiencies of your everyday, you don't realize how much better it's getting. >> I definitely don't. Right? Like I don't think anything in my personal life has gotten better because of AI.
10:06 >> though that we ordered something from like Amazon and then I saw a clip of like these giant Amazon facilities and then a robot's going to picking up the package and then it's like being dropped off to a thing that like it's carried over to another thing in your area and then a human finally gives it to you and you're like that's how it got to me for free shipping and in 24 hours. I ████ with this. >> I ████ with that, too. >> But like those are those are the little things, you know, that we just every single day we're like, all right, ████ it. >> One thing I do agree with you on is the how it hasn't made things easier is also because the things that AI made easier for me I feel like are the things that AI caused in the first place. You know, like the change of infrastructure and how our way of life is. Like if if this was let's say you you went back to the '80s and stuff and you wanted to solve the problems you had in the '80s, it wouldn't be with the tools we have really today. You know what I mean? Like the tools we have today are for the ████ problems of our economy being so
10:58 bad now. You know what I mean? Like lifestyle is just more difficult in general. So, I don't know if I don't know if it's like it didn't fix existing human issues from way back. >> Yeah, but I feel like if you're in the tech world, like the guys on the on that podcast with Chumash, you know, who used to run Google, like I feel like those guys are all all in this little AI bubble and they're all ████ sucking each other off about AI all day and and talking about how AI's improving their companies and ████ But I think I think middle-class people are just like, "What are you talking about?" >> [laughter] >> Yeah, for real. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's like is it going to make my spaghetti quicker? >> Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think Anthony had the best point with like yeah, Amazon fulfillment's probably getting better because of that. But that's about it brother that I can think of. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's also So, here's a really funny thing to end on. So, people are you might see this in comments for
11:49 anything about data centers. You're going to hear bamboo being mentioned. Have you heard anything about that? So, like people are always going to say like you say there's a post about a data center and the comment someone's going to be like whatever you do, don't plant bamboo around it. Because bamboo apparently is like so invasive and it hard to get rid of that it'll it grows through concrete, it grows through like all kinds of structural integrity. And so, people are starting to like I don't know if they're doing it yet. >> a counter-revolution. >> But the counter-revolution is to plant as much bamboo as possible around data centers. >> Bamboo's the new punk rock? >> It is, yeah. >> That's so sick. >> That's the new Sid Vicious. >> We'll finally get them in 3 years when it fully grows and it's it's rooted. >> [laughter] >> Dude, the idea of like trying to like break a data center in your town by planting bamboo is so ████ wild.
12:39 >> It's metal, dude. >> That's so and it works and imagine years from now there's bamboo everywhere. [laughter] We got to bring in pandas. >> But you don't think they have enough money to solve that ████ >> That's [laughter] we America has to import pandas. >> dude. >> From China. Do they really eat bamboo? >> No, that's that's all they do. They don't even they don't I don't even think they do anything >> else. There's no prey or predator. >> They just chew bamboo all day. >> That's the the conspiracy. Have you heard of that? >> Yeah, nobody eats them. They don't eat anything. >> Yeah. >> Like they're guys in a suit, right? >> Yeah. >> No, [laughter] not that. >> Oh, not that? >> No, that's part of it though. That's the China zoo theory. But the the conspiracy is that bamboos were bamboos pandas were bred just to eat bamboo and clear bamboo. That's why they have no ████ survival skills. They're like a domestic weird-ass dog
13:30 that like doesn't have any ability. >> Cuz big as bamboo was ████ up Imperial data centers back then. >> [laughter] >> Ancient history, dude. >> That's how hated bamboo must have been. >> Yeah, and the conspiracy the things that have followed is that there's no ancient paintings or or like there should be there should be way more ancient art of pandas. If they're truly part of cuz it's like a China specific like >> Right. >> But there's they don't have that. So >> Like they're a mascot now, dude. >> I know. Yeah, ████ the orange chicken, broccoli beef. Yeah, you can't have it without thinking of pandas.
// end of tape