What's in the Data Center?

Flock cameras are not the problem.

The data they create is.

The data centers are not the source of the problem.

The need for them is.

The electrical/water usage of the data centers is not the source of the problem.

The need for that is.

The use of AI is not the problem.

The data predators stealing our data and ideas to make their AI are the problem.

The centralization of data is the problem.

Attack the infrastructure of AI as the problem all you want. It’s the data that is the real culprit in the problem state.

The theft, use, buying, and selling of your “data” is now the Global Economy.

The rise of what is called Artificial Intelligence has consumed the majority of “data” humanity has created up to this point in our existence as a species on this planet.

What is called AI is a mechanism whose only purpose is to survive and predict what you will do next based on what you or others have already done—the race for the next token. A game. Who can predict what you will do next the fastest and best wins.

You are the product that is What’s in the Data Center—the digitization of humanity.

Humans and human consciousness cannot be reduced by math to software code.

"In a computer, there are only local processes without the global and unified perspective of a conscious"

— Federico Faggin ( Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature )

Trillions upon trillions of dollars are spent to own the data you create by your basic existence in a Digital World. Dollars that rarely filter back to you.

The problem today is twofold: they are running out of “new and clean” data, and what was once “free” now costs $.

The foundation models, and those that aspire to become foundation models, are also experiencing model collapse due to the overconsumption of what already exists. Garbage in, garbage out; “clean” data is needed to keep the wheels going around on the AI bus.

New data that has not been used for training is the new gold. Data that a computer did not create using math and a transistor is needed to keep data flowing through transistors via math-based software.

All of that is just the symptom of what is now the current most pressing issue in the experiment called Artificial Intelligence.

The real problem today is agency. The Hugging Face attack is the symptom. Agents exploiting and attacking agents to defend from agents attacking and exploiting agents.

Not word salad, what is actually happening right now.

There is a new arms race, and it is based on simulated consciousness and intelligence—offensive and defensive AI agents. Security threats are detected by creating offensive threats to elicit defensive responses and prevent failures.

Security decisions are now being made at machine speed without humans in the loop. The kill switch is after the fact rather than before.

There is an asymmetric speed war between AI’s ability to attack and humans' ability to turn off the light switch right now. Humans are too slow to stop the agents. They rely on defensive AI to fight back. If there are any mistakes or bugs, including adversarial influence, the offensive agent can cause catastrophic damage before a human even realizes an attack is underway.

I know that I have made some oversimplifications, generalizations, hyperbolic, and negative-framing statements here. However, it is time to address the reality of what is called AI today as the world rushes into the development of human-level intelligence and, by association, consciousness – AGI Artificial General Intelligence.

This may read as anti-data center or AI, and that is not the intent. I like the Digital World of our times. It is the future of computers and technology I dreamed of when I was younger, learning electronics in school, working in the tech field, and just being a general tech nerd.

AI, AGI, Data, and Human Provenance have a role to play in the future of humanity. It’s time for reciprocity for what has been created using our data and its continued use.

We are in a time when using AI to prove that it was not created by AI is an adaptive strategy. Using AI to prove AI created it is a failure at this point. Synthetic watermarking and detection fail because they lack provenance in the first place. In many cases, the AI was developed from data lacking provenance, collected without consent.

A time when using fire to fight fire is now using AI to protect us from AI.

So, What’s in the Data Center? You are.

Everything you send to the cloud. Everything you do that creates the smallest bits of data. Every ping from your cell phone to every micro movement of your computer mouse is processed in the data center.

Nearly every electronic record in most databases is there. If it does not currently exist in digital form, someone is working to convert it.

AI lives there.