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Transcript

The AI Data Center Boom · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we're live.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some technical difficulties, but that's life.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to AI Made Simple.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Steve Brown.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Steve R O Y Brown, and today we're going to talk about this AI explosion that's happening at the moment.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's very impactful.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's changing our world, and it's changing your world.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And just the other day I realized that there is a major AI data center being constructed just within miles of where I am.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll share my screen in a minute and show you that this article, but it got me thinking, you know, it's like when we're using you're here because I'm helping you understand how to use AI.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's um it's a simple way to walk into uh taking advantage of it and preparing yourself to be effective and to be uh relevant in your very near future, as in today, right?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have our businesses, we have our professions, we have our jobs, we have we have these things, and realize it or not, we can be proactive and take advantage of and up-level ourselves.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So this data center is going in.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's going in right here.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna share my screen, and we're going to see if I can do this correctly.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I think this is the right one.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is where I want to be.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this data center right here, an announcement was just made.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's your snackers, your snacker crackers.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: This announcement was just made uh June 27th, and Texas Tex and Fermi America announced world's largest AI energy campus near Pantex.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is uh outside of Amarillo, Texas.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Pantex plants here, and it's a giant place outside of here.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But this this uh project's going to be across 5,800 acres, 18 million square feet of AI data centers powered up by 11 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear, solar, wind, and natural gas resources.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a rendering of how significant of a facility this will be.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I guess these are the solar panels.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's my little town right there, Amarla, Texas, way off in the horizon.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But when you think about what's it going to take to set up this facility, there's a lot, you know.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I've spent some time uh in the uh economic development uh corporation world.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, one of the things that these economic development corporations, the probably most of the cities you're in, has a version of one, they're supposed to attract what are called primary businesses, meaning businesses that will establish in your community and pull in money from outside of your economy, bring it into your economy, and create jobs and opportunities.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have the immediate impact of that facility and the actual jobs that are created to produce that facility, man it, and uh um maintain it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's all the secondary or the indirect impact that happens in your community from the establishment of these uh facilities, and it's significant, and the trickle-down effect is uh amazing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was uh reading about this, I was thinking about all the uh businesses.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not only are you having to prepare yourself and understand how to use AI and be confident in applying AI and whatever responsibilities you have now, but the companies, um the leaders of these companies that you work for, they need to be uh doing the same thing, and then they need to be expecting their team, and it's impacting your business model, whether you know it or not.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's all these opportunities coming, and the version of your business model that you have now will look very different in just uh just a year or two.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not off in the future, it's it's now and immediate.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's this great uh I watched this uh Bloomberg, it's in Bloomberg Originals on YouTube, but it's called Project Stargate Abilene.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in Abilene, Texas, uh you may have uh be aware that one of the largest AI data centers that are being um being invested by OpenAI, um Larry Ellison, and um and a majing a major um uh banking uh company, significant investments, and this is what it looks like when a data center is being uh being built.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: You see all these uh immediate construction jobs, HVAC, wiring, construction, um, ditching, you know, all of these uh everything.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: This will go on for a year and a half or two years.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're gonna bring all of that all of that activity and all these employees into this economy, and it's going to boost and provide indirect impact for these economies as well.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Later, after these um data centers get established, you have you have less jobs.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many thousands of jobs that um immediately impact here, but it'll come down to about 40 to I don't know, 200 uh jobs that that you need to run and maintain and repair this data center.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the big thing is the amount of power and infrastructure improvements that have to be made to bring the power to, to bring the logistics and the um equipment and all of this, all of this area impacts from an immediate upgrade in the infrastructure, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If we look at this uh overview of the XAI's data center, so at XAI, you may be familiar with uh Elon Musk, he's got a uh a major data center in Memphis and one in uh Atlanta as well.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they've they ramped up this data center almost in in no time, in just weeks.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they brought in all of these um computers and set it up, and it's a major facility there in uh Memphis.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Recently, you know, that once they bring in and go live, they just double and double as as um demand increases, and we'll we'll talk about that in a minute.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there's 35 on-site methane gas turbines.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that have?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they have methane gas turbines?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: When these data centers show up, obviously the uh infrastructure, the electrical infrastructure that this data center is going to demand is not in place.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: These are out in areas where I have flat country, uh cheap energy, and the infrastructure may not be present.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are all these um um innovative ways to immediately spin up while the grid and the electric infrastructure catches up and comes online, and this takes time, and so when you think about you've got 35 on-site methane gas turbines.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these are mounted on trucks.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at this, these are they're brought in on trucks, then the gases, um the natural gas is brought in and they run these things, and it provides the power to run all of these computers and the uh cooling and etc.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: that's going on.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you do a uh put in a prompt in chat GPT, uh I heard someone say you're burning about the equivalent of the amount of electricity it takes to boil a bathtub of water.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when you think about the uh millions of people that are adopting AI on a daily basis, then the demand for this is huge.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when I started doing a little research, it's uh it's crazy to think about that.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know there's right now there's 750 of new AI sub supercomputing centers planned or under construction up until uh 2029?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: 750 of these major places being built all across the country in rural areas as well.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at what it costs to set these up, like that this one here that's uh in the documentary here in this YouTube, you know, it's 500 million billion, five hundred billion with a B.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is a potential investment that goes into a project like OpenAI's Stargate.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that this XAI data center, this is a huge, they pay their local electric provider, they pay them seven million dollars a month for the electricity that's running at this data center.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about the innovation that's going to arise from this, because now you can co-locate, as in this, which is uh mentioned here, you can co-locate your own power production at these data centers.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they won't just be depending upon the grid, they'll be bringing in their own um solutions, innovative solutions for electricity in this area.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is called uh in the Amarillo area, it's called Class 4 winds.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the best areas in the country for uh wind generation, and so this plant will be utilizing solar wind capacity, generation capacity, it'll be using um uh nuclear and natural gas sources.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: This area is you know just natural gases area.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Permian Basin is just a few hours from here, and so the natural gas resources, these things will create new versions of energy production that won't just power these, but they'll be sold to the communities as well.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: But when you think about how much is being uh invested in all of these uh structures, you know, it's a 500 billion, as I mentioned, with the open AI.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Amazon has a hundred uh billions, this Microsoft infrastructure, 80 billion.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: This uh is 18 billion, that one that I showed you there in uh Memphis, but there is also another one going up in Atlanta.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: These are billions and billions, and so it's going to bring in all this dynamic mix of energy solutions that are going to not only power these data centers, but they'll spill off and impact the communities.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is where your business is going to be impacted in one way or another.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know that for every job that's estimated as a direct employee of the data center in some way, there's 10 10 um indirect jobs.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So um thousands of construction jobs, logistics, supply chain growth, hospitality, food service, professional services.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you're one of these, your business is sitting in the footprint, most likely, of one of these 750 or the next additional 750 that will be uh exploding all around.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how can you start to think about your business and your business model now?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what if you knew this was coming around the corner, how would you pivot?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: What would you start to specialize in?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because these are these are huge, and so you know, when I think about the pivots that need to happen, there's a blue-collar pivot.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, a loach a local, maybe an HVAC company, you know, needs to get its team certified in special data center cooling systems.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Makes sense, you know.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is all so many ways for companies to start thinking about and investigating and researching what they can do to become even a more amazing version of their business uh now that they're established and they've got all their fundamentals, how can they up level?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: The white collar reinvention, you know, like small marketing agencies or you know, law firms, or who knows, what you know, a law firm would start to specialize in um how to help existing local companies to negotiate and set up agreements, uh, contracts, etc.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding all of these things would be amazing.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe you're going to be displaced in some way, and and so instead of like being um you know disappointed that maybe the job that you lost, maybe not your favorite job, but it was paying the bills, then what would you do as an employee to go, hey, I'm gonna take this opportunity.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need to specialize in?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: What certification?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are what are things that I can do that can land me a higher paying job, for example, like a logistics role with a major contractor at the data center site.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: But these are, you know, I'm using the data centers as a way to reframe or rethink the way we're doing, but it's not just these data centers.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: This flows over into many, many um uh things that are happening.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: All the logistics, all the you know, highways, bridges, you know, you're right now our um uh the administration is pouring and bringing all of these businesses into the US and the whole infrastructure.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need double the amount of electricity today, just in Texas alone, to accommodate all these data centers.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing, and so that means a whole infrastructure upgrade, and that's going to happen in roads, um you know water, electricity, all the infrastructure um systems that are in place now to serve us.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's crazy to think about what's happening in um in our world and what the future holds.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you're when you're learning about these things, you know, that thing using chat GPT, it's downstream, what's going on is only if you think about the folks that are adopting chat GPT, just chat GPT, and um well Google Gemini and Claude and um all of the others, every day those are being being adopted by individuals.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the next level that's coming behind that are AI agents.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine a whole army of AI agents um grabbing these tools and using these tools on an exponential scale of just what we use the tool every day.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to we're gonna need more than these 750 data centers, but the opportunity for you is amazing.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: The opportunity to pivot and to rethink about how you can start to upgrade your situation.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're moving from that that COVID situation where we got caught flat footed and we we had to react and we had to figure out a way to survive.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: To now that we have this opportunity, we can start to be proactive and start to navigate in this direction and really excel and uh flourish in this new um, you know, in just the next quarter.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is really impactful.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you like, if you get value from these um AI-made simple programs, I'm glad I'm um be sure to subscribe and like on these.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: That tells the algorithms.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, hey, this uh Steve Joker, he's actually uh delivering content that people appreciate.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And be sure to um uh go to roionline.com forward slash link tree, and there you'll be able to download free custom GPTs that you can just bring into your uh Chat GPT environment and start to use uh prompt support or marketing messaging support.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: These are free and they can level up your situation, but uh keep following on on these.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have uh some good episodes previous to this.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have some um surprise guests coming up.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks again for hanging out, and we'll look forward to uh seeing you next time on uh AI Made Simple, and that's a wrap.