this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Can Australia build one of the world’s largest data centres? (stories.theconversation.com)
submitted 3 hours ago by Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
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[–] Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The better question is, should we?

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours ago

I hope we don't

AI is a useful tool, but right now it's being weilded by fools as a solution in desperate search of a problem

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Interesting to compare this quote,

But generating this silly AI video requires a lot of energy – roughly 940 watt hours – which is akin to running a microwave for over an hour.

To this quote from an Our World in Data post on c/overseasnews,

Let’s consider a typical single-room air conditioner that uses around 1,000 watt-hours of electricity in an hour. ... In at least 45 countries, the average residential electricity use per person for an entire day is less than the electricity that is required to power an air conditioner for one hour.

So we can use about the same electricity to run an AC unit for an hour as it takes to make an AI generated cat video. Both actions use more electricity than the average person gets in a day in at least 45 countries.

Edit: changed link to Our World in Data link. Other link wasn't working.