Recently I took the bait and replied to someone asking for an explanation of a data centre: 

What’s the deal with these things, she queried the internet, explain it to me like I’m five.

My response was character limited, but she responded positively to the explanation. It went a little something like this:

“As fast and small as modern computers are, AI requires thousands of them to process the multiple trillions of calculations required to respond to millions of user requests.” I wrote. 

“Every setup is different but if you think of these servers, about the size of a phone book each, stacked into racks maybe eight feet tall consuming 2000 watts per rack, rows upon rows in warehouses, all generating heat and using so much power it boggles the mind, that’s a data centre.” I continued. I was basing this number off the wattage of my desktop computer but I should have dug deeper into the math because I suspect this is a deeply conservative estimate. Someone replied that I was probably off by about a 100-fold and the number was more like 200k watts per rack. The newly announced data centre near me is slated to use a gigawatt of power, which is a billion watts.  Either way, that’s a shitload of servers.

I added the punchline to my reply. “It connects to the net and runs twenty-four-seven.” 

Because, of course it does.  That’s the point. It is the beating heart of the internet and the soul of AI. What I left out—maybe implied—was that all this power consumption for making memes and sharing funny videos and generating buggy code—also generates a buttload of heat. You know how your laptop gets hot if you let it churn for too long? That, but it never stops and systems—usually fresh, cold water or other resource intensive systems—need to be employed to cool the processor chips so they don’t melt or catch fire.  Since when has cooling anything been free (except maybe in the depths of winter?)

Sounds exactly like something we should all want in our backyard, huh?  Thanks Meta.