AI data centers are burning through so much energy that — absurd as it may sound — outdated, polluting coal plants that were slated for retirement are now being kept open to meet the demand. It is a huge problem for our planet and one that is only getting worse.
The suddenly ubiquitous AI industry has received some bad press around this issue and, in the interest of appearing to care, has started to make some gestures toward running its data centers in a way that does not destroy the planet.
One of those recent gestures comes courtesy of tech company Lenovo, which recently debuted its ThinkSystem N1380 Neptune — a new product that Data Centre Magazine described as "a sixth-generation vertical liquid cooling breakthrough."
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The Lenovo ThinkSystem N1380 Neptune is reportedly more efficient than most current cooling systems because it uses liquid cooling instead of air cooling. The company said that it could reduce data center consumption by as much as 40%.
"Through groundbreaking liquid-cooling engineering and technology integration, ThinkSystem N1380 Neptune is unlocking a new era of data centre efficiency and design that will help bring NVIDIA Blackwell and trillion-parameter AI to all, while fundamentally changing how power is used in the data centre," said Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang.
Of course, whether the people who stand to make massive amounts of money selling AI products (as well as products branded with the word "AI" that don't actually do anything) really care about the harm their products are doing to the planet is another matter entirely.
At a recent conference, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told presenters, "We're not going to hit the climate goals anyway," and added that "the needs in this area will be a problem, but I'd rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it."
Luckily for Schmidt, he and his ilk are indeed the ones who get to make the bets — the rest of us are the ones who will have to live with the consequences.
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