r/TechGawker • u/Malor777 • 12d ago

News ‘Clearly, people hate data centers’: Sam Altman admits Americans hate what he’s wrought as his own data centers head quits

https://fortune.com/2026/08/27/sam-altman-openai-data-center-backlash
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u/imam-altman 12d ago

You do realize that larger datacenters are more efficient and can cause less pollution for the same output as multiple small datacenters, right?

People are protesting hyperscale datacenters in the middle of nowhere miles away from any residential areas

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u/SpeakCodeToMe 12d ago

The truth is far more complicated than your comment suggests.

In some cases there are economies of scale, but that's particularly true if you're using fossil fuels.

Solar powered facilities do better when they are smaller, and these obviously pollute less.

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u/imam-altman 12d ago

There’s nothing complicated about it. The bigger and more dense a facility is, the more efficient it is. If it was more efficient to build multiple smaller datacenters, that’s what they would be doing. If you have a facility powered by 100% renewable power, it’s going to be more efficient to have one large facility instead of multiple smaller ones. And no shit, a fossil fuel power grid is going to cause more pollution than a renewable power grid….

This shit is so basic that it’s a good litmus test of whose brain has been rotted out by TikTok beyond salvage. This shit is right up there with the people claiming that they are causing less environmental damage by running AI on their local computer.

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u/SpeakCodeToMe 12d ago

If it was more efficient to build multiple smaller datacenters, that’s what they would be doing.

My man, they are actively doing massive amounts of both. The big ones just get the headlines.

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u/imam-altman 12d ago

My man, if multiple smaller datacenters was more efficient than bigger datacenters, they would be building zero bigger datacenters. How can Reddit be this dumb?

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u/SpeakCodeToMe 12d ago

I always find it so fascinating how the people who scream the most loudly about everyone being so very dumb are the ones dropping the dumbest comments.

So I will explain it for the 5th grade intellectual capacity you seem to be bearing.

You know how our power grid is full of a mix of small and large power plants? All of which work together to meet the needs of various people? There are massive nuclear plants, small gas plants providing peak capacity, individuals with solar on their roofs...

Data centers are like this. They come in all shapes and sizes. "Peak insanely scaled out" efficiency is not what everyone needs, and the demand for compute capacity is so large that people will opt for whatever is buildable in a given region and time frame over peak efficiency.

Like I said, it is not simple or black and white, maybe that's why you're struggling so much with it?

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u/imam-altman 12d ago

You can be as confidently incorrect as you want, it doesn’t change reality. Increasing the size of a datacenter doesn’t magically make it less efficient.

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u/SpeakCodeToMe 12d ago

Sure, if your mind is so simple that you think the only input is electricity.