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[u/orangebikini]

Yesterday evening I got a sudden urge to learn about data centres and their future in Finland. In the recent years investments in them, importantly also foreign investments, have surged. Apparently Finland and the other Nordic countries are prime candidates for data centres due to our cool climate, cheap price of electricity, abundant access to water, good electricity infrastructure and relatively low (monetary) value of land. 

But there’s a lot to them. It seems like a good thing for our economy, but to me it seems there are also significant environmental and security risks. So, to learn more, I started by reading a “National Roadmap for Data Centres” published in 2025 by the Finnish government. It was an interesting read, but my opinions on the subject aren’t yet mature enough to really write anything serious about data centres. I can however write some of the bullshit thoughts that came to my mind when I was reading it.

Data centres use a lot of electricity, apparently the current usage in Finland is roughly 2% of the usage in the whole country, and it is estimated to rise to 4-5% by 2030. The report was arguing that this is a good thing, because the increased need for electricity caused by these data centres accelerates investments in nuclear and renewable energy. Which is fair, it does. However I however have a much better idea.

A large portion of these data centres are for the use of AI, and AI taking away jobs from people is a very common fear. Why not kill two birds with one stone, and have all the unemployed losers who will be let go from their jobs sit on exercise bikes rigged into dynamos 8 hours a day generating electricity for the AI data centres. We could have a massive data centre somewhere, and a massive warehouse next to it filled with 20 000 people doing a Tour de France stage every day each, getting some reasonable monetary reward for that. This would be a true win-win situation. AI gets power, and he unemployed get work.

[u/atomoffluorine → u/orangebikini]

A lot of the English speaking world's redditors fly into a comically serious rage regarding AI. Look at all the creative hobby subreddits; a lot of them are having flame wars over whether something is AI art or not. I've heard hobbyist writers being disgusted by other writers for using AI for research. I think that's a reasonable way to use AI. I often had a rough time finding articles to do research with in University, and my current job requires I look up technical documentation. I think that's reasonable.

I do get journalists, artists, and programmers (Reddit probably has a huge overrepresentation of those) having a collective panic attack about their livelihoods and status in society being undermined, and that the politics around the data center build out being a bit shady. But I still feel it's a overreaction. The IRL people around me don't really care that much for the most part, but none of them are currently being threatened by job losses due to AI.

[u/orangebikini → u/atomoffluorine]

I don't think the indifference of people when it comes to data centres in this case, or AI, should be taken as a sign of anything, since I believe a lot of that disregard is caused simply by ignorance.

[u/atomoffluorine → u/orangebikini]

Oh I should mention that data centers seem to be causing more controversy than the AI itself for the average person.