The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
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From the article
>So near the river’s banks in Central Washington, Microsoft is betting on an effort to generate power from atomic fusion — the collision of atoms that powers the sun — a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for the past century. Physicists predict it will elude Microsoft, too.
>The tech giant and its partners say they expect to harness fusion by 2028, an audacious claim that bolsters their promises to transition to green energy but distracts from current reality. In fact, the voracious electricity consumption of artificial intelligence is driving an expansion of fossil fuel use — including delaying the retirement of some coal-fired plants.
>In the face of this dilemma, Big Tech is going all in on experimental clean-energy projects that have long odds of success anytime soon. In addition to fusion, they are hoping to generate power through such futuristic schemes as small nuclear reactors hooked to individual computing centers and machinery that taps geothermal energy by boring 10,000 feet into the Earth’s crust.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dma84o/ai_is_exhausting_the_power_grid_tech_firms_are/l9u9eaj/
No this has to be wrong. Someone just argued with me yesterday and told me that AI was the greatest invention of all time with literally no negatives, and is also the best thing to ever happen to the environment, and I have a decel degrowth mindset. So clearly we’re all just missing something.
🫣
1. **Quantum Fluctuation Energy Harnessing**: Implementing a system that captures the random energy fluctuations in the quantum vacuum to power data centers. This cutting-edge method leverages subatomic particles' spontaneous energy bursts to create a perpetual power source.
2. **Nanobot Swarm Kinetic Energy Harvesting**: Deploying billions of nanobots to capture kinetic energy from the motion of air molecules, converting ambient motion into a steady energy supply for AI operations.
3. **Interdimensional Energy Transfer**: Tapping into energy from alternate dimensions using advanced interdimensional physics. By accessing parallel universes, we can draw limitless power without environmental impact.
4. **Gravitational Wave Power Plants**: Building facilities that convert the energy from passing gravitational waves into usable electricity. These power plants would use sophisticated sensors to harness the ripples in spacetime caused by cosmic events.
5. **Atmospheric Antimatter Collectors**: Creating devices that gather and store antimatter particles naturally present in the Earth's atmosphere. Once collected, these particles can be used in matter-antimatter annihilation reactors to produce massive amounts of energy.
6. **Bio-Engineered Algae Super Reactors**: Developing genetically modified algae that can photosynthesize with unprecedented efficiency, producing biofuel at rates far surpassing traditional plants. These reactors would provide a sustainable and virtually unlimited energy source.
7. **Magnetohydrodynamic Space Tethering**: Establishing a network of space tethers that exploit magnetohydrodynamic principles to generate electricity from the Earth's magnetic field. These tethers would extend into the upper atmosphere, capturing energy from geomagnetic interactions.
8. **Piezotronic City Infrastructure**: Transforming urban landscapes into energy generators by embedding piezoelectric materials in sidewalks, roads, and buildings. The mechanical stress from everyday urban activity would be converted into electrical energy.
9. **Solar-Powered Data Crystals**: Storing computational data in solar-powered crystalline structures that harness sunlight directly to power data processing and storage, eliminating the need for traditional energy sources.
10. **Psychokinetic Energy Amplification**: Utilizing advanced brainwave technology to amplify human psychokinetic energy, allowing specially trained operators to generate power through mental focus alone. This method taps into the latent potential of human cognition as an energy source.
The solution is kind of obvious: AI is just going to have to be expensive, until someone figures out how to build an AI without the enormous power consumption. The same laws of physics that apply to other businesses still apply to computing, it's just taken longer to hit them.
I mean the solution is stop trying to use a one size fits all AI and get a specialized one designed for your application but in a lot of cases that’s a lot of up front cost
Speed at the cost of accuracy. If I need to process 400k ocean buoys data for average sea height,temp, etc with a lot of data variables, I can do it mathematically and take a very long time or I could use AI to shortcut the math based on my previous model and get close enough for what I need. Both are specialized software by humans it’s just a different way to handle the same problem
What I don't get is that you mentioned design.
Humans are going to have to put thought into your specific issue in any case, so why direct that thought into designing a specialized AI program rather than designing a specialized program, period?
So using the ocean data as an example (I’m going to severely over simplify this) let’s say every time the ocean rises a foot the water drops 1 degree in temp. Let’s also say you do not know this while writing the software. This means you won’t be able to make that optimization by hand or if you do it’ll be in a patch later down the line but your AI design will handle correlations like this meaning the AI will only have to process the rise in sea level and then it will just use the model to calculate temperature. The AI will self train on your data and you optimize it for ocean data. As to your question theoretically writing specialized AI is a specialized program it just adapts to the data without the programmer having to know what the data will look like so less updates and less cost to maintain. In a lot of cases it’s more like hundreds of variables that could or could not have correlations instead of 2 or 3.
One example of specialized AI is self driving which needs to adapt to tons of combinations of things that you would never know would actually happen so instead of writing code to account for the infinite possibilities you write AI/ML to make an estimation of what the best action would be to take
It’s like saying a square is a rectangle, that’s contained within ai, without needing people to understand the difference because it doesn’t matter here, as well as preventing weirder versions from being included by those who do
The point isn’t “it’s expensive” the point is, it will be funded one way or another, so in the meantime, find better options of energy production in hopes that one day it will be figured out. Whether it be private, public, local government or foreign, the costs will be covered, and as there is still no “global fix” for climate change or alternative energy source, we the people will be blamed for what we do on this planet. Meat eating carbon spewing parasites!
:)
It's the training that is expensive, not the use
This is the eternal struggle of capital investment, it will save you money in the long run but you need to put down a large sum at the beginning
The use is *significantly* more expensive, because it's ongoing. Training GPT-3 took ~1.3 GWh. Huge number, sure. OpenAI were running over 3600 HGX A100 servers for GPT-3 - servers that consume 3KW. That's about 260 MWh/day, outstripping the training power consumption in a mere 5 days.
GPT-4's training was estimated to use 50-62 GWh over 90-100 days. It uses over 500 MWh/day, meaning it's used over 225 GWh since its release last year - nearly 5 times the amount burned in the training session, and only slightly less per day.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.02001
https://medium.com/@zodhyatech/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-consume-4cba1a7aef85
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/03/12/chatgpt-and-generative-ai-innovations-are-creating-sustainability-havoc/
I think the obvious solution is for electricity on a progressive scale. I don’t really care if they fail at developing nuclear fusion, but there needs to a system in place that allows residential customers to get electricity without competing with industrial usage.
Neuromorphic computing will probably be the solution to this. Chips like TrueNorth and BrainChip use neuromorphic architectures that drastically reduce the power needed to run neural networks while simultaneously increasing speed.
Neuromorphic computing remains a failure. We've heard promises and promises over the years and all implementations ate shit (or are in the process of eating shit). We'll sooner see quantum computers finally becoming useful than we will see neuromorphic computing becoming practical.
Your *brain* is a neuromorphic computer, in case that has eluded you. We haven't found a practical implementation we can fully understand and control, is the problem.
Edit: where is the implication that I'm supporting biotech-based neurocomputing? What I'm saying is we have the most perfect neurocomputer ever and we haven't studied it enough to replicate its functionality inorganically. I think it's short-sighted to trash neurocomputing as unfeasible or unworkable when neurocomputing *has literally dreamed up and built every computer known to mankind* thus far. It hasn't had its breakthrough moment yet, is all. Saying it's a dead end is like saying "those horseless carriages will never be practical." Jeez.
Also the obvious benefits of not using biology.
Your brain runs at 200hz. My kids CPU from a decade ago runs circles around that. The tradeoff in power saving isnt beneficial
Using brain tissue would be a quick way to get stuck in a dead end as we cannot improve upon it. Also brain tissue gets tired unlike semiconductor ICs.
I can't see Neruomorphic computing taking over unless it has close to the same compute per dollar or the electricity price skyrockets or new energy capacity can't be added, because of how expensive the hardware is compared to the cost of the electricity.
A new Nvidia rack costs \~$3M and uses 100kw, that's $10 per hour \~$0.1 kwh.
A whole year of running 24/7 still only accounts for \~$87k / \~3% of the cost of the machine.
A machine doing the same compute using 1% of the electricity would at most justify \~$100k per year it is active in electricity savings without hard electricity limits.
In other words, AI needs to find a solution to climate change so that continuous energy production won't result in an uninhabitable planet. Otherwise, humans die from climate changr, energy production stops and AI dies when there's no more power.
It’s not just that it’s expensive it simply won’t work. It’ll cause rolling blackouts, the service simply won’t work, etc. all those errors and issues you get from it are likely power constraints already.
Well there *are* analog chips that can cut matrix multiplication (basis of neural networks computing) power user by almost 90%. But they tend to have the classic analog problem of drifting values. In digital, if 0v=0 and 5v=1, then a transistor putting out 4v not 5 is fine, and 1v instead of 0v is fine. Anything above 2.5 gets categorized as a 1. But with analog, the output 4.95 and 4.24 are different enough to break the system.
So you need to incorporate layers that will filter and clean up the signals so you don't get wrong outputs. The actual reliable power savings on a larger scale are probably at maybe 70-80%.
But I think the bigger issue isn't about how much power AI *currently uses*. It's about our ability overall as a society to decide when something is enough. Because if our response to power savings is just going to be "use it even more" then power savings are meaningless. We could cut power use of AI by 99.99% and the only result would be higher resource consumption when we build 10,000 times more AI hardware.
Power needs to reflect our generation, we get way more at certain times. So when our grid is peaking on excess, power should dip in price and make charging cars and using AI affordable.
Never made sense to me how we are wasting so much power in solar and aren't incentivizing power use at peak generation hours
That is already how it works for large customers. In fact, some state governments even allow that model for ordinary people. Most states don't allow it though, because they're more concerned about unsophisticated people getting swindled than they are about incentives for efficient residential use.
> until someone figures out how to build an AI without the enormous power consumption.
That happens anyway. In 3 years you'll get a chip which has the same performance for ~50 % of the power. Like it always has.
Done:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15myK_6eTxEPuKnDi5krjBM_0jrv3GELs8TGmqOYBvug/edit#heading=h.gboye8hkf0r8
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x
“one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes” for 180.5 million users (that’s 5470 users per household)
Blackwell GPUs are 25x more energy efficient than H100s: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/18/24105157/nvidia-blackwell-gpu-b200-ai
Significantly more energy efficient LLM variant: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17764
In this work, we introduce a 1-bit LLM variant, namely BitNet b1.58, in which every single parameter (or weight) of the LLM is ternary {-1, 0, 1}. It matches the full-precision (i.e., FP16 or BF16) Transformer LLM with the same model size and training tokens in terms of both perplexity and end-task performance, while being significantly more cost-effective in terms of latency, memory, throughput, and energy consumption. More profoundly, the 1.58-bit LLM defines a new scaling law and recipe for training new generations of LLMs that are both high-performance and cost-effective. Furthermore, it enables a new computation paradigm and opens the door for designing specific hardware optimized for 1-bit LLMs.
Study on increasing energy efficiency of ML data centers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10350
Large but sparsely activated DNNs can consume <1/10th the energy of large, dense DNNs without sacrificing accuracy despite using as many or even more parameters. Geographic location matters for ML workload scheduling since the fraction of carbon-free energy and resulting CO2e vary ~5X-10X, even within the same country and the same organization. We are now optimizing where and when large models are trained. Specific datacenter infrastructure matters, as Cloud datacenters can be ~1.4-2X more energy efficient than typical datacenters, and the ML-oriented accelerators inside them can be ~2-5X more effective than off-the-shelf systems. Remarkably, the choice of DNN, datacenter, and processor can reduce the carbon footprint up to ~100-1000X.
Scalable MatMul-free Language Modeling: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02528
In this work, we show that MatMul operations can be completely eliminated from LLMs while maintaining strong performance at billion-parameter scales. Our experiments show that our proposed MatMul-free models achieve performance on-par with state-of-the-art Transformers that require far more memory during inference at a scale up to at least 2.7B parameters. We investigate the scaling laws and find that the performance gap between our MatMul-free models and full precision Transformers narrows as the model size increases. We also provide a GPU-efficient implementation of this model which reduces memory usage by up to 61% over an unoptimized baseline during training. By utilizing an optimized kernel during inference, our model's memory consumption can be reduced by more than 10x compared to unoptimized models. To properly quantify the efficiency of our architecture, we build a custom hardware solution on an FPGA which exploits lightweight operations beyond what GPUs are capable of. We processed billion-parameter scale models at 13W beyond human readable throughput, moving LLMs closer to brain-like efficiency. This work not only shows how far LLMs can be stripped back while still performing effectively, but also points at the types of operations future accelerators should be optimized for in processing the next generation of lightweight LLMs.
Lisa Su says AMD is on track to a 100x power efficiency improvement by 2027: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/lisa-su-announces-amd-is-on-the-path-to-a-100x-power-efficiency-improvement-by-2027-ceo-outlines-amds-advances-during-keynote-at-imecs-itf-world-2024
Intel unveils brain-inspired neuromorphic chip system for more energy-efficient AI workloads: https://siliconangle.com/2024/04/17/intel-unveils-powerful-brain-inspired-neuromorphic-chip-system-energy-efficient-ai-workloads/
But it's also delaying the closure of coal fired plants.
So definite increase in emissions, and possible long term decrease in emissions.
Cynic in me would suggest fusion research is just greenwashing PR for their increased dirty coal usage.
You know we could use a technology that's been around since the 50s and update it with modern safety and best practices.
Nuclear energy really is and was the energy of the future, it has gotten a bad rap, and if managed wisely , including waste disposal it could be a good stopgap until greener alternatives and future generation like fusion gets scaled up.
Honestly, I prefer solar for spaceborn projects since there isn’t an atmosphere to get in the way. If nuclear is properly managed it’s probably a good source of energy earthside, since it doesn’t care about the weather and I don’t trust it in a position where it could spread a disaster across the planet.
Nuclear is needed for Mars/deep space missions because solar power strength falls off the further you get from the sun.
We’ve already used small nuclear power sources for Mars rovers with great success.
As long as your launch system is reliable, there is little safety risk from the small amounts of nuclear material contained in the launch.
So you think the solution to needing power a month from now is a power source that takes 10+ years to build?
And what do you mean by "stopgap until greener future generation gets scaled up". Greener generation like solar and wind can be scaled up way faster, solar+wind alone got scaled up in just 7 years to all nuclear generation combined. And likely to repeat that again in 4 years, than again in 2 years than again in 1 year
Scale is about mass production
The only reason it takes that long is due to a hostile regulatory environment the lack of a nuclear industry because of said environment. It's a factor that can be worked around by simply building more reactors and stabilizing regulations so that they no longer change mid-job. Portable nuclear reactors seem to be the solution to this problem and this massive demand can easily be the spark.
Solar and wind will never replace nuclear. They are not a viable alternative to steady baseline power. I really wish people could get this through their head. All the push for green over nuclear (also green btw) has done is hold us back from getting off oil and coal for power generation.
> All the push for green over nuclear (also green btw) has done is hold us back from getting off oil and coal for power generation.
Nuclear technology lost out in the West in the eighties purely on cost. There was a small push after Bush embarked on the New American Century warpath, but fracking absolutely destroyed it.
>The only reason it takes that long is due to a hostile regulatory environment the lack of a nuclear industry because of said environment. It's a factor that can be worked around by simply building more reactors and stabilizing regulations so that they no longer change mid-job. Portable nuclear reactors seem to be the solution to this problem and this massive demand can easily be the spark.
Everyone has to deal with hostile regulation, that is just the reality of things. Nuclear's centralization, need for expertise and long build times relative to others just makes it more vulnerable to it
You aren't going to build a nuclear reactor in a year no matter what
>Solar and wind will never replace nuclear.
As I already mentioned, solar and wind already built out more generation in just 7 years than all of nuclear combined. And the build rate is only getting faster
>They are not a viable alternative to steady baseline power. I really wish people could get this through their head.
That is nothing more than fossil fuel industry propaganda, the modern grid doesn't need baseload power, it needs power on demand. Stop trying to replicate a fossil fuel based grid, and think outside the box. Adding an engine in a mechanical horse wouldn't work well either, hence why the engine was added to the carriage. The same applies with a renewable energy grid, you have to use overgeneration, diversifying renewable energy, transmission, demand response and some storage and you get a cheap reliable grid (not one of the above, all of the above)
>All the push for green over nuclear (also green btw) has done is hold us back from getting off oil and coal for power generation.
Nuclear has been around for what, 70 years?
In comparison, renewable energy like solar and wind have mostly pilot projects at best with some light build outs in the 90s and early 00s. Only after 2010 when it became somewhat viable did it start seeing more rapid build outs with only last 4-6 years did it become cost competitive with fossil fuels to see rapid rise
Trying to blame it all on renewable energy for stopping nuclear is nonsense. If anything, in recent years it is nuclear who is causing delays in getting off coal, natural gas and oil
If we were going to go nuclear, we should have did that decades ago. But the boat for that has long sailed. Trying to blame renewables for it when they weren't even really competing for 40-50 years is nonsense
The nuclear regulatory environment is particularly hostile, enough so that the entire industry has basically shut down. That's not some 'everyone faces regulations' issue, it's a strangulation by regulation issue.
As for there being more solar/wind energy production over nuclear, of course it's easy to generate more power than nuclear; nuclear has been declining due to the regulatory environment. That doesn't mean solar and wind are better, it simply means that nuclear has been massively handicapped. Were it not for the overregulation of the industry destroying the industry we'd be in a much better position today than we are now.
None of what you're saying is a problem with nuclear power itself or an advantage of renewables, it's a consequence of bad regulations holding us back. Combined with every advantage being given to wind and solar and them still not working great, it's pretty clear that nuclear is and always has been the way to go.
The boat hasn't sailed, there's no end point. We need to stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole and get back on nuclear energy. It doesn't make sense to keep pushing inefficient and unreliable power sources for baseline energy when we already have the solution.
That doesn’t matter. The point I’m making is that once you account for the longevity and efficiency of nuclear power, in the long run it’s a cheaper source of energy as opposed to offshore wind and battery storage. Solar and standard wind is cheaper but they’re unreliable and shouldn’t be relied on to make up the bulk of energy generation. We need sources of power that can be fully relied on to provide a continuous source of energy.
We shouldn't count on fusion to have any impact on lowering green gas emissions. Even if it proves to be feasible, we won't even start building commercial fusion reactors for the next 40 years.
Counting on it means just delaying replacement of coal/gas.
Offhand I promised someone my life savings that there wont be a functioning, commercial, fusion reactor before 2050. And they were so confident that there would be, they were annoyed with the joke of an offer outright lmao
>commercial fission reactors
You mean fusion?
I don't see why not. I seriously doubt it's viable and I don't think we'll live to see any major breakthroughs, but if there *was* some major breakthrough tomorrow, then whoever discovers it could start building a reactor within a few years. It might even be beneficial to share this technology with other nations so they can start theirs in time to stop climate change.
In the meantime, reefs are dying worldwide, the most powerful (and plentiful) hurricanes ever are churning off our coasts, people are dying in droves every summer from excessive, unprecedented heat, ocean levels are rising and swallowing up whole island nations, wildfires the likes we’ve never seen are burning millions of acres of forest (and homes), and maybe the worst of all, our oceans are slowly acidifying from excess CO2 absorption. If our oceans die, we die.
But by all means, carry on with this AI arms race so we can use it for misinformation, deepfakes, and college kids cheating on their exams. All I see is disaster written all over AI. Making us dummer, lazier and pushing our power usage to the point where we exacerbate climate change even more. Look, AI has its uses but if history is any indication, humans tend to shoot first and ask questions later. There are no guarantees AI will solve anything. Are we willing to risk that? At the peril of our already dying planet?
Short answer: yes, because humans are wholly incapable of willingly giving up the standards of living they currently enjoy to make the sacrifices needed for zero or close to zero emissions right now.
You mean the status quo. We don't need to give up standards of living, actually standards of living can go up by a lot. But the status quo has a lot of power and money and wants to change as slowly as possible
I mean think about it, fossil fuels are a consumable limited resource controlled by tiny elite of rich and countries which lets them mark it up and get a huge profit
In comparison, renewable energy is non-consumable, and anyone can mass produce it as it doesn't require anything too difficult to get. And once in operation in lasts decades and then can be recycled. It will force the cost of energy to be ridiculously cheap, there will virtually be no profit in energy
>I guess if it pushes innovation to create virtually limitless clean energy, so be it.
It's not though.
The fusion company is bullshiting.
It hasn't even been able to achieve net energy gain.
It will not be up and running in 2028.
That is about 5 years ahead of the most optimistic predictions from experts, with most saying commercial fusion is 20 years way.
AI is going to be responsible for massive greenhouse gas emission increases until then.
The allure of AGI is the only thing that would ever be able to overcome fossil fuel companies doing everything they can to stifle innovation in the energy sector.
Considering the damage we do to the planet with limited energy, I shudder to imagine how fast we'd kill and raze everything if we get limitless energy...
Limitless energy would let us save the planet. We have technology available to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. The issue is that removing carbon-releasing generation from the system is more effective than adding it on. But if we had extra power on the grid worldwide, then all excess power could be used to power carbon capture plants and we start burying blocks of carbon underground where we took it out.
Only if, and that's a big fucking if, we radically change society as it is now. Carbon in the atmosphere is only one parameter.
Fusion won't produce oil-based fertilizer, fusion won't produce plastic, fusion won't help against deforestation, biodiversity collapse, wealth-hoarding billionaires, and increased scarcity of metals.
And that's just a few examples. Replace fusion by whatever other technology you love.
Agreed. Carbon capture is a final piece of the puzzle after generating excess clean power and all it does is fix the mess of released carbon. It'll do nothing for any other other issues you mention and fusion isn't a magic bullet that'll solve everything.
To be honest, I feel that is a lot of a tech bro solution (carbon capture), I mean we had trees and bamboo for ages that grows itself, you plant a tree farm with fast growing trees/bamboo, then chop it down into wood. Not only do you get materials needed anyways, it captures the carbon in the atmosphere
Trying to capture carbon is just a fossil fuel industry scam to keep fossil fuels around longer as they can "offset their emissions"
I'm with you, carbon capture only works if we magically have substantial excess energy in the grid. It's not the solution, reducing energy use is and then this becomes the cherry on top.
Hmm... interesting. Human bodies aren't very good components if electricity is all you're looking for.
But I could see our brains being used like AI chips. A literal hivemind!
Didn't Nvidia make 4 billion in one day with AI products?
Get them to fix their own damn problem, they could make an entire country's worth of power off of a single month of revenue.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Even if we transition from fissile fuels, corporate fucking tech greed will make electricity too expensive for regular people while at the same time the very thing the electricity is being used for will decimate the lives of the entire labour pool. If workers don't pull their head out of our collective asses and form a legitimate opposition to the uncontrolled corpopolitical insanity, most of us are absolutely fucked. Like, we're all homeless dying in the streets, fucked because the economy no longer has any use for us.
But for real though- could someone explain this to me like I’m 5? If we’re already in an energy crisis, why is this being allowed to continue? Won’t it cancel out any energy saving advancements over the last 15 years or so?
Edit: It honestly keeps me up at night.
Because if we get to AGI soon, which is something people using that energy believe in, we would be able to get x1000 of energy we use now in few years. I understand, that most likely you tgink AGI is either fantasy or the ebd of humanity, but people with money and power don't think so. That's why AI will keep getting every resource it needs, at least in US.
Gotcha. So the people with money and power think AGI will find a solution that human intelligence hasn't been able to?
Edit: I'm living in SLC right now, and there's been internet disruptions with the current heat wave. Let along A/Cs not being able to keep up. I'm wondering whether we will be able to leverage AGI "in time" when the increased energy expenditure will be taxing an already overworked energy grid. It seems very snake eating its own tail.
There is a lot of work done in Solar, Nuclear, Fusion. Regular person does not need a lot of energy, so I don't think that it will be that much of a problem. But you are most likely correct about eating its own tale - AI will consume every new energy that is produced. We will know soon, depending on how much more energy is needed to train next generation of models. OpenAI works with Helion ( which is on the pic of thread), so it looks like we will need magnitudes more energy that we have now.
There's companies that are developing reactors specifically for this purpose.
Oklo Inc. is one example. OpenAI founder Sam Altman is also chairman. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Inc.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Inc.)
For centuries humans have proven to burn and destroy the planet for profit. And we’re acting surprised and dismayed that they’re doing it again?
Nothing has changed. Just what’s being consumed.
We're not doing it for profit. We're doing it for *power*.
And yes, despite the risk that it will lead to our demise, fueling the advancement of our new super brain technology to become masters of the universe is a *very compelling* reason to ignore the warning signs and keep consuming whatever fuel we can get our hands on.
It's all very Faustian to me.
Tech companies should be required to create their own energy for their expenditure. It will both limit progress (a good thing since the lightning fast developments are shredding social fabric) and drive them to develop more efficient solutions that could be used large scale.
What’s next? National blackouts blamed on Ai’s galactic power needs? 🤣🤣🤣 so ridiculous. That’s not futurology, that’s bullshittery! (and it’s from the Washington Post… 🤣🤣) What a joke!
You just put the humans into pods and use them as batteries. Problem solved! A bit of VR to keep them entertained and hope they don’t notice the occasional glitch in the matrix…
But seriously, it’s an industry like anything else and it’s hitting energy limitations, just like anything else.
AI as it stands isn’t very energy efficient and the costs we’ll have to be borne by the end users eventually when the VC runs thinner.
The Washington post knows that AI doesn’t use its articles as sources so what they do? Make it seem like AI is the biggest carbon emitter on this planet 🙂
Maybe AI can synthesize a useful solution, like green power or super-conductivity. Instead I fear it’ll be used to fleece people via finance industry and numb them via entertainment/porn.
This is the part that pisses me off, truly. ERCOT (manager of the TX power grid) said we need to double our power generation to accommodate all the crypto mining companies and AI data centers moving here. But that just means the consumer will now have to pay for that and they will exempt the businesses by offering them special rates.
In reality they should require the business to invest in the power grid by funding 150% of their projected power usage in new generation.
I mean this isn't really outrageous. If you look at other commercial plants that are trying to do something similar like through the wave version of fusion like there are a lot of promising aspects out there. With the money behind Microsoft, I don't see this as an impossibility. Now that it has gotten to the point where we have generated positive fusion, it is just at this point a matter of scaling. Mean there are some other challenges and I get that. But I mean when you look at it from a perspective of overall engineering, there are ways to do this. It might not be perfect. Granted it might need a situation where not a power plant on the grid.
It might be a situation where they have a solar field set up to start the initial reaction and then go from there. And maybe you know it's not completely perfectly. You know 100% a generation type of situation, but it would be enough to offset what they need for AI.
There's also the aspect of using AI to solve the problem in the first place.
Last time I checked there was a laboratory that generated positive fusion power. Using lasers. Now the whole plant that did this is not designed for this. Designed for something else entirely and it was more of an experiment than anything else. So unless I'm misunderstanding what the article was saying, we at the very least broke even if not positive even though it wasn't like an amazing positive.
Not to mention the The location that did this is like 50 years old and using lasers that are that old.
The national iginition facility created the first controlled fusion burn which is huge. The only other time that has happened is in nuclear weapons so we had no proof that it could be done before that in the lab. Maybe within a decade we'll have a few devices that can do that. Note, the helion reactor (shown in the image above) does not require the same scientific breakeven as other devices since it recovers something like 95% of the input power which is how their concept is unique.
We aren't going to get economic fusion until at least 2100. We need more electricity like tomorrow.
Using far away from commercialization tech solutions is how these companies avoid responsibility of investing into energy infrastructure today. By promising to do so decades from now
It's the corporate version of "I'll clean my room tomorrow"
Question: Does AI really need to exist? It will make a handful of tech companies a lot of money and make doing XYZ easier for them. The dangers and societal impact far outweigh any benefits the average person will see.
Whatever future AI reads this will prob drone strike me in 5 years.
It becomes more close to the social media boom. At some point it seemed so great to re-connect with people from the distant past. Now many have forgotten how to meet people
Most applications of AI are just making us dumber and lazier.
But some AI tools are worth it - stuff like Alphafold is amazing, humans couldn’t map all those protein configurations. Sadly, the more we all focus on the dumb and useless AI, the less we can benefit from the stuff that actually gives us incremental capabilities for utilitarian ends
This is just another rage bait AI article. Electricity consumption is going to continue to grow in the future due to everything from industry, residential, and commercial use. In comparison, AI data centers still use a tiny fraction of total end use. Major investments in electric generation will already be required for solar installation for the grid, to support the ev industry, and to continue sustaining a high quality, modern life. If we instead frame the problem as AI investment will be just a portion of already necessary energy infrastructure commitments, we can start to see energy in AI investment as an opportunity rather than some negative spin. Because when we include Wright's economic scaling law into the picture - where increased investment actually reduces marginal cost - then increased investment in renewable electricity generation for AI end purposes only has a symbiotic benefit for supporting sustainable energy investment for other purposes. Those who say or think otherwise have no real understanding of economics or the historical development of industry.
It’s true electricity consumption will continue to rise, as transportation, heating, and other energy uses are electrified.
But it’s worth noting that total energy use in the US has been flat for the last 25 years, and is not expected to grow in the future.
From the article
>So near the river’s banks in Central Washington, Microsoft is betting on an effort to generate power from atomic fusion — the collision of atoms that powers the sun — a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for the past century. Physicists predict it will elude Microsoft, too.
>The tech giant and its partners say they expect to harness fusion by 2028, an audacious claim that bolsters their promises to transition to green energy but distracts from current reality. In fact, the voracious electricity consumption of artificial intelligence is driving an expansion of fossil fuel use — including delaying the retirement of some coal-fired plants.
>In the face of this dilemma, Big Tech is going all in on experimental clean-energy projects that have long odds of success anytime soon. In addition to fusion, they are hoping to generate power through such futuristic schemes as small nuclear reactors hooked to individual computing centers and machinery that taps geothermal energy by boring 10,000 feet into the Earth’s crust.
I think it's a bit facetious to complain about AI training being a sink of energy while there still are crypto mining operations which have absolutely zero economic value whatsoever.
I'm not concerned about AI's power consumption, I'm more concerned about how the economy will be structured when AI will automate most economic processes.
It’s interesting because my state pays crypto farms to shut down during peak grid usage times yet now data centers will take that capacity up by the end of next year
If only we started turning on all those nuclear power plants we mothballed on the 80s
If this is what it takes to get industry to invest in fusion to the degree necessary for actual progress then count me in. The fact that fusion isn’t an all-out global effort at this stage is baffling to me.
Good old diesel generators! Just completed a temp gen plant to add capacity to a site that the utility couldn't provide enough power for. This is happening all over as they rush to the future with AI!! In a few years we will see the error of our ways I'm afraid.
I mean if the need for AI focuses more people on fusion and other power sources I don't see the problem. It'll suck short term, but we should learn a lot.
Personally they could fire up a couple nuclear reactors. That tech is incredibly stable now and has a great output.
You say that until you are the one sitting without power for days. Especially if it gets hot/cold enough that it is life threatening
We need power generation tomorrow, not decades from now. And these companies should be forced to build out generation quickly if they want to do AI or face severe fines
Just... hear me out... just task AI with solving the issue? You know, like we use AI to find new antibiotic combinations that it would take us decades to figure out, or we missed completely. Isn't that the point of AI in the first place? To help us do what we currently cannot?
They can't figure it out because it isn't actually intelligent. It just processes stuff that real humans do, and then re-presents it in a different format.
This is pretty sad. AI is not as useless as blockchain, but at the same time it’s still very much a work in progress and has an even worse impact on the environment
I haven't read the article but big doubt that AI is exhausting the power grid, it's a very minor percent of US electricity demands like 0.5% type. Also pushing emissions? The tech companies are comparatively green, so AI absolutely doesn't push emissions measurably.
Can we focus on actual environmental concerns?
As AI is the new cryptocoin energy problem? Great, just grand. It's already infecting every areas now, AI this and AI that, like having a toothbrush with usb and wifi, it's going too fucking far.
if anyone can deal with the ludicrous investment costs of nuclear power plants it would be the AI trillion dollar companies.
But I doubt they want to wait 20-30 years for them to go online
I don’t get all the negativity. If Microsoft wants to use it’s own money — not taxpayer money — to fund research into clean energy sources that can then be used by all mankind, why is this a bad thing?
It's never a bad thing when some of the largest corporations on the planet decide that they need to find a way to create cheap electricity. Eventually it will lead to better prices for consumers.
This isn’t nonsense or a distraction. We deserve intentional investments in fusion because yes it is possible and it’s the obvious next step in our energy evolution. They’re also investing in nuclear. This isn’t something to be attacked or shamed because we’re driving the consumption that’s demanding higher energy rates. We’re all part of this.
No it is not. There are not that many AI training facilities worldwide. And yes having more nuclear power plants would more than meet any real extra demand in any case. You don't at all need fusion. Fission would work just fine.
for the people that ask how is AI hurting the grid, I think this video exxplains it the best [https://youtu.be/mxUBrb3QBtI?si=cq8lMkZGsOzmb1C3](https://youtu.be/mxUBrb3QBtI?si=cq8lMkZGsOzmb1C3)
Look, I think AI is over-hyped. But this could be a good thing. Let those rich companies find solutions that aren't 'let's take it away from the common plebs'. I like that.
It takes decades for a government contractors to make them. They make more money the longer it takes, this is not true for private companies working with private companies.
Bahahaha…. but don’t you dare use any electricity to fundamentally fix the monetary system stripping the government ability to print your personal wealth away.
The GPUs used to run A.I. are power hungry. Just one Nvidia A.I. card can consume around 1000 watts. These companies purchase 10s of thousands of these cards.
Maybe not in larger states like California and Texas?
Wait a second, at first I was like, in a year a few data centers can probably overwhelm a power grid. A data center can be 100MWh, get a few dozens of those per year all the sudden and maybe that’ll overwhelm the power grid. Maybe distribution becomes a problem, but the US can definitely support them. Maybe other countries?
California for example has 200GWh generated in 2022, and imports 80-100 GWh.
US data center consumption in 2022 was 17 GWh and expected to be 35 GWh a year in 2030 apparently. That doesn’t seem like it could exhaust our grid.
>But "exhausting the power grid"? Come on
https://time.com/6987773/ai-data-centers-energy-usage-climate-change/
>the IEA predicts that in two years, data centers could consume the same amount of energy as Sweden or Germany. Relatedly, researchers at UC Riverside estimated that global AI demand could cause data centers to consume over 1 trillion gallons of fresh water by 2027.
The paper linked in the article is referring to water involved in on site cooling and off site energy generation for data centers. The water consumption isn’t taking into account water used in making the chip etc. one big way water is used for cooling is the water that is evaporated from a cooling tower.
The former provides a useful product, the latter is an online gambling platform/scam money transfering tool/schizo-libertarian delusion. Know the difference.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305: --- From the article >So near the river’s banks in Central Washington, Microsoft is betting on an effort to generate power from atomic fusion — the collision of atoms that powers the sun — a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for the past century. Physicists predict it will elude Microsoft, too. >The tech giant and its partners say they expect to harness fusion by 2028, an audacious claim that bolsters their promises to transition to green energy but distracts from current reality. In fact, the voracious electricity consumption of artificial intelligence is driving an expansion of fossil fuel use — including delaying the retirement of some coal-fired plants. >In the face of this dilemma, Big Tech is going all in on experimental clean-energy projects that have long odds of success anytime soon. In addition to fusion, they are hoping to generate power through such futuristic schemes as small nuclear reactors hooked to individual computing centers and machinery that taps geothermal energy by boring 10,000 feet into the Earth’s crust. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dma84o/ai_is_exhausting_the_power_grid_tech_firms_are/l9u9eaj/
They should ask ChatGPT if they need a numbered list of solutions that all sound plausible but are actually unworkable nonsense.
Oh, and tell it to throw in corporate jargon!!!
No this has to be wrong. Someone just argued with me yesterday and told me that AI was the greatest invention of all time with literally no negatives, and is also the best thing to ever happen to the environment, and I have a decel degrowth mindset. So clearly we’re all just missing something.
🫣 1. **Quantum Fluctuation Energy Harnessing**: Implementing a system that captures the random energy fluctuations in the quantum vacuum to power data centers. This cutting-edge method leverages subatomic particles' spontaneous energy bursts to create a perpetual power source. 2. **Nanobot Swarm Kinetic Energy Harvesting**: Deploying billions of nanobots to capture kinetic energy from the motion of air molecules, converting ambient motion into a steady energy supply for AI operations. 3. **Interdimensional Energy Transfer**: Tapping into energy from alternate dimensions using advanced interdimensional physics. By accessing parallel universes, we can draw limitless power without environmental impact. 4. **Gravitational Wave Power Plants**: Building facilities that convert the energy from passing gravitational waves into usable electricity. These power plants would use sophisticated sensors to harness the ripples in spacetime caused by cosmic events. 5. **Atmospheric Antimatter Collectors**: Creating devices that gather and store antimatter particles naturally present in the Earth's atmosphere. Once collected, these particles can be used in matter-antimatter annihilation reactors to produce massive amounts of energy. 6. **Bio-Engineered Algae Super Reactors**: Developing genetically modified algae that can photosynthesize with unprecedented efficiency, producing biofuel at rates far surpassing traditional plants. These reactors would provide a sustainable and virtually unlimited energy source. 7. **Magnetohydrodynamic Space Tethering**: Establishing a network of space tethers that exploit magnetohydrodynamic principles to generate electricity from the Earth's magnetic field. These tethers would extend into the upper atmosphere, capturing energy from geomagnetic interactions. 8. **Piezotronic City Infrastructure**: Transforming urban landscapes into energy generators by embedding piezoelectric materials in sidewalks, roads, and buildings. The mechanical stress from everyday urban activity would be converted into electrical energy. 9. **Solar-Powered Data Crystals**: Storing computational data in solar-powered crystalline structures that harness sunlight directly to power data processing and storage, eliminating the need for traditional energy sources. 10. **Psychokinetic Energy Amplification**: Utilizing advanced brainwave technology to amplify human psychokinetic energy, allowing specially trained operators to generate power through mental focus alone. This method taps into the latent potential of human cognition as an energy source.
The solution is kind of obvious: AI is just going to have to be expensive, until someone figures out how to build an AI without the enormous power consumption. The same laws of physics that apply to other businesses still apply to computing, it's just taken longer to hit them.
I mean the solution is stop trying to use a one size fits all AI and get a specialized one designed for your application but in a lot of cases that’s a lot of up front cost
What would be the benefit of a specialized AI over a specialized piece of software written by humans?
Speed at the cost of accuracy. If I need to process 400k ocean buoys data for average sea height,temp, etc with a lot of data variables, I can do it mathematically and take a very long time or I could use AI to shortcut the math based on my previous model and get close enough for what I need. Both are specialized software by humans it’s just a different way to handle the same problem
What I don't get is that you mentioned design. Humans are going to have to put thought into your specific issue in any case, so why direct that thought into designing a specialized AI program rather than designing a specialized program, period?
So using the ocean data as an example (I’m going to severely over simplify this) let’s say every time the ocean rises a foot the water drops 1 degree in temp. Let’s also say you do not know this while writing the software. This means you won’t be able to make that optimization by hand or if you do it’ll be in a patch later down the line but your AI design will handle correlations like this meaning the AI will only have to process the rise in sea level and then it will just use the model to calculate temperature. The AI will self train on your data and you optimize it for ocean data. As to your question theoretically writing specialized AI is a specialized program it just adapts to the data without the programmer having to know what the data will look like so less updates and less cost to maintain. In a lot of cases it’s more like hundreds of variables that could or could not have correlations instead of 2 or 3. One example of specialized AI is self driving which needs to adapt to tons of combinations of things that you would never know would actually happen so instead of writing code to account for the infinite possibilities you write AI/ML to make an estimation of what the best action would be to take
I see, thanks for explaining!
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It’s like saying a square is a rectangle, that’s contained within ai, without needing people to understand the difference because it doesn’t matter here, as well as preventing weirder versions from being included by those who do
If AI is expensive, that kills the main reason to use it over a person. Economics is THE singular factor that would drive the adoption of the tech.
Oh sick, 2 birds with 1 stone then
Was just about to say "don't threaten me with a good time"
The point isn’t “it’s expensive” the point is, it will be funded one way or another, so in the meantime, find better options of energy production in hopes that one day it will be figured out. Whether it be private, public, local government or foreign, the costs will be covered, and as there is still no “global fix” for climate change or alternative energy source, we the people will be blamed for what we do on this planet. Meat eating carbon spewing parasites! :)
It's the training that is expensive, not the use This is the eternal struggle of capital investment, it will save you money in the long run but you need to put down a large sum at the beginning
The use is *significantly* more expensive, because it's ongoing. Training GPT-3 took ~1.3 GWh. Huge number, sure. OpenAI were running over 3600 HGX A100 servers for GPT-3 - servers that consume 3KW. That's about 260 MWh/day, outstripping the training power consumption in a mere 5 days. GPT-4's training was estimated to use 50-62 GWh over 90-100 days. It uses over 500 MWh/day, meaning it's used over 225 GWh since its release last year - nearly 5 times the amount burned in the training session, and only slightly less per day. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.02001 https://medium.com/@zodhyatech/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-consume-4cba1a7aef85 https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/03/12/chatgpt-and-generative-ai-innovations-are-creating-sustainability-havoc/
Nope, if else they could just slow down the training as a lot of data has already been collected.
I think the obvious solution is for electricity on a progressive scale. I don’t really care if they fail at developing nuclear fusion, but there needs to a system in place that allows residential customers to get electricity without competing with industrial usage.
Currently AI is sold for free or at a loss, using billions of investment money.
Neuromorphic computing will probably be the solution to this. Chips like TrueNorth and BrainChip use neuromorphic architectures that drastically reduce the power needed to run neural networks while simultaneously increasing speed.
Neuromorphic computing remains a failure. We've heard promises and promises over the years and all implementations ate shit (or are in the process of eating shit). We'll sooner see quantum computers finally becoming useful than we will see neuromorphic computing becoming practical.
Your *brain* is a neuromorphic computer, in case that has eluded you. We haven't found a practical implementation we can fully understand and control, is the problem. Edit: where is the implication that I'm supporting biotech-based neurocomputing? What I'm saying is we have the most perfect neurocomputer ever and we haven't studied it enough to replicate its functionality inorganically. I think it's short-sighted to trash neurocomputing as unfeasible or unworkable when neurocomputing *has literally dreamed up and built every computer known to mankind* thus far. It hasn't had its breakthrough moment yet, is all. Saying it's a dead end is like saying "those horseless carriages will never be practical." Jeez.
Also the obvious benefits of not using biology. Your brain runs at 200hz. My kids CPU from a decade ago runs circles around that. The tradeoff in power saving isnt beneficial
Using brain tissue would be a quick way to get stuck in a dead end as we cannot improve upon it. Also brain tissue gets tired unlike semiconductor ICs.
I can't see Neruomorphic computing taking over unless it has close to the same compute per dollar or the electricity price skyrockets or new energy capacity can't be added, because of how expensive the hardware is compared to the cost of the electricity. A new Nvidia rack costs \~$3M and uses 100kw, that's $10 per hour \~$0.1 kwh. A whole year of running 24/7 still only accounts for \~$87k / \~3% of the cost of the machine. A machine doing the same compute using 1% of the electricity would at most justify \~$100k per year it is active in electricity savings without hard electricity limits.
In other words, AI needs to find a solution to climate change so that continuous energy production won't result in an uninhabitable planet. Otherwise, humans die from climate changr, energy production stops and AI dies when there's no more power.
It’s not just that it’s expensive it simply won’t work. It’ll cause rolling blackouts, the service simply won’t work, etc. all those errors and issues you get from it are likely power constraints already.
Or they'll have to make power cheaper... But compute farms would be a great place to also build generation (be it renewable or otherwise).
Well there *are* analog chips that can cut matrix multiplication (basis of neural networks computing) power user by almost 90%. But they tend to have the classic analog problem of drifting values. In digital, if 0v=0 and 5v=1, then a transistor putting out 4v not 5 is fine, and 1v instead of 0v is fine. Anything above 2.5 gets categorized as a 1. But with analog, the output 4.95 and 4.24 are different enough to break the system. So you need to incorporate layers that will filter and clean up the signals so you don't get wrong outputs. The actual reliable power savings on a larger scale are probably at maybe 70-80%. But I think the bigger issue isn't about how much power AI *currently uses*. It's about our ability overall as a society to decide when something is enough. Because if our response to power savings is just going to be "use it even more" then power savings are meaningless. We could cut power use of AI by 99.99% and the only result would be higher resource consumption when we build 10,000 times more AI hardware.
Power needs to reflect our generation, we get way more at certain times. So when our grid is peaking on excess, power should dip in price and make charging cars and using AI affordable. Never made sense to me how we are wasting so much power in solar and aren't incentivizing power use at peak generation hours
That is already how it works for large customers. In fact, some state governments even allow that model for ordinary people. Most states don't allow it though, because they're more concerned about unsophisticated people getting swindled than they are about incentives for efficient residential use.
> until someone figures out how to build an AI without the enormous power consumption. That happens anyway. In 3 years you'll get a chip which has the same performance for ~50 % of the power. Like it always has.
Done: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15myK_6eTxEPuKnDi5krjBM_0jrv3GELs8TGmqOYBvug/edit#heading=h.gboye8hkf0r8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x “one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes” for 180.5 million users (that’s 5470 users per household) Blackwell GPUs are 25x more energy efficient than H100s: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/18/24105157/nvidia-blackwell-gpu-b200-ai Significantly more energy efficient LLM variant: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17764 In this work, we introduce a 1-bit LLM variant, namely BitNet b1.58, in which every single parameter (or weight) of the LLM is ternary {-1, 0, 1}. It matches the full-precision (i.e., FP16 or BF16) Transformer LLM with the same model size and training tokens in terms of both perplexity and end-task performance, while being significantly more cost-effective in terms of latency, memory, throughput, and energy consumption. More profoundly, the 1.58-bit LLM defines a new scaling law and recipe for training new generations of LLMs that are both high-performance and cost-effective. Furthermore, it enables a new computation paradigm and opens the door for designing specific hardware optimized for 1-bit LLMs. Study on increasing energy efficiency of ML data centers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10350 Large but sparsely activated DNNs can consume <1/10th the energy of large, dense DNNs without sacrificing accuracy despite using as many or even more parameters. Geographic location matters for ML workload scheduling since the fraction of carbon-free energy and resulting CO2e vary ~5X-10X, even within the same country and the same organization. We are now optimizing where and when large models are trained. Specific datacenter infrastructure matters, as Cloud datacenters can be ~1.4-2X more energy efficient than typical datacenters, and the ML-oriented accelerators inside them can be ~2-5X more effective than off-the-shelf systems. Remarkably, the choice of DNN, datacenter, and processor can reduce the carbon footprint up to ~100-1000X. Scalable MatMul-free Language Modeling: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02528 In this work, we show that MatMul operations can be completely eliminated from LLMs while maintaining strong performance at billion-parameter scales. Our experiments show that our proposed MatMul-free models achieve performance on-par with state-of-the-art Transformers that require far more memory during inference at a scale up to at least 2.7B parameters. We investigate the scaling laws and find that the performance gap between our MatMul-free models and full precision Transformers narrows as the model size increases. We also provide a GPU-efficient implementation of this model which reduces memory usage by up to 61% over an unoptimized baseline during training. By utilizing an optimized kernel during inference, our model's memory consumption can be reduced by more than 10x compared to unoptimized models. To properly quantify the efficiency of our architecture, we build a custom hardware solution on an FPGA which exploits lightweight operations beyond what GPUs are capable of. We processed billion-parameter scale models at 13W beyond human readable throughput, moving LLMs closer to brain-like efficiency. This work not only shows how far LLMs can be stripped back while still performing effectively, but also points at the types of operations future accelerators should be optimized for in processing the next generation of lightweight LLMs. Lisa Su says AMD is on track to a 100x power efficiency improvement by 2027: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/lisa-su-announces-amd-is-on-the-path-to-a-100x-power-efficiency-improvement-by-2027-ceo-outlines-amds-advances-during-keynote-at-imecs-itf-world-2024 Intel unveils brain-inspired neuromorphic chip system for more energy-efficient AI workloads: https://siliconangle.com/2024/04/17/intel-unveils-powerful-brain-inspired-neuromorphic-chip-system-energy-efficient-ai-workloads/
I guess if it pushes innovation to create virtually limitless clean energy, so be it.
But it's also delaying the closure of coal fired plants. So definite increase in emissions, and possible long term decrease in emissions. Cynic in me would suggest fusion research is just greenwashing PR for their increased dirty coal usage.
You know we could use a technology that's been around since the 50s and update it with modern safety and best practices. Nuclear energy really is and was the energy of the future, it has gotten a bad rap, and if managed wisely , including waste disposal it could be a good stopgap until greener alternatives and future generation like fusion gets scaled up.
Honestly, I prefer solar for spaceborn projects since there isn’t an atmosphere to get in the way. If nuclear is properly managed it’s probably a good source of energy earthside, since it doesn’t care about the weather and I don’t trust it in a position where it could spread a disaster across the planet.
Nuclear is needed for Mars/deep space missions because solar power strength falls off the further you get from the sun. We’ve already used small nuclear power sources for Mars rovers with great success. As long as your launch system is reliable, there is little safety risk from the small amounts of nuclear material contained in the launch.
So you think the solution to needing power a month from now is a power source that takes 10+ years to build? And what do you mean by "stopgap until greener future generation gets scaled up". Greener generation like solar and wind can be scaled up way faster, solar+wind alone got scaled up in just 7 years to all nuclear generation combined. And likely to repeat that again in 4 years, than again in 2 years than again in 1 year Scale is about mass production
The only reason it takes that long is due to a hostile regulatory environment the lack of a nuclear industry because of said environment. It's a factor that can be worked around by simply building more reactors and stabilizing regulations so that they no longer change mid-job. Portable nuclear reactors seem to be the solution to this problem and this massive demand can easily be the spark. Solar and wind will never replace nuclear. They are not a viable alternative to steady baseline power. I really wish people could get this through their head. All the push for green over nuclear (also green btw) has done is hold us back from getting off oil and coal for power generation.
> All the push for green over nuclear (also green btw) has done is hold us back from getting off oil and coal for power generation. Nuclear technology lost out in the West in the eighties purely on cost. There was a small push after Bush embarked on the New American Century warpath, but fracking absolutely destroyed it.
>The only reason it takes that long is due to a hostile regulatory environment the lack of a nuclear industry because of said environment. It's a factor that can be worked around by simply building more reactors and stabilizing regulations so that they no longer change mid-job. Portable nuclear reactors seem to be the solution to this problem and this massive demand can easily be the spark. Everyone has to deal with hostile regulation, that is just the reality of things. Nuclear's centralization, need for expertise and long build times relative to others just makes it more vulnerable to it You aren't going to build a nuclear reactor in a year no matter what >Solar and wind will never replace nuclear. As I already mentioned, solar and wind already built out more generation in just 7 years than all of nuclear combined. And the build rate is only getting faster >They are not a viable alternative to steady baseline power. I really wish people could get this through their head. That is nothing more than fossil fuel industry propaganda, the modern grid doesn't need baseload power, it needs power on demand. Stop trying to replicate a fossil fuel based grid, and think outside the box. Adding an engine in a mechanical horse wouldn't work well either, hence why the engine was added to the carriage. The same applies with a renewable energy grid, you have to use overgeneration, diversifying renewable energy, transmission, demand response and some storage and you get a cheap reliable grid (not one of the above, all of the above) >All the push for green over nuclear (also green btw) has done is hold us back from getting off oil and coal for power generation. Nuclear has been around for what, 70 years? In comparison, renewable energy like solar and wind have mostly pilot projects at best with some light build outs in the 90s and early 00s. Only after 2010 when it became somewhat viable did it start seeing more rapid build outs with only last 4-6 years did it become cost competitive with fossil fuels to see rapid rise Trying to blame it all on renewable energy for stopping nuclear is nonsense. If anything, in recent years it is nuclear who is causing delays in getting off coal, natural gas and oil If we were going to go nuclear, we should have did that decades ago. But the boat for that has long sailed. Trying to blame renewables for it when they weren't even really competing for 40-50 years is nonsense
The nuclear regulatory environment is particularly hostile, enough so that the entire industry has basically shut down. That's not some 'everyone faces regulations' issue, it's a strangulation by regulation issue. As for there being more solar/wind energy production over nuclear, of course it's easy to generate more power than nuclear; nuclear has been declining due to the regulatory environment. That doesn't mean solar and wind are better, it simply means that nuclear has been massively handicapped. Were it not for the overregulation of the industry destroying the industry we'd be in a much better position today than we are now. None of what you're saying is a problem with nuclear power itself or an advantage of renewables, it's a consequence of bad regulations holding us back. Combined with every advantage being given to wind and solar and them still not working great, it's pretty clear that nuclear is and always has been the way to go. The boat hasn't sailed, there's no end point. We need to stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole and get back on nuclear energy. It doesn't make sense to keep pushing inefficient and unreliable power sources for baseline energy when we already have the solution.
Your "stopgap" solution has worse scaling problems and takes far longer to deploy than solar.
It's also the most expensive 🫰 energy source out there
No it isn’t. And that kind of thinking is ridiculous when French energy prices are nearly half that of Germany.
Well yes but those have already been build.
That doesn’t matter. The point I’m making is that once you account for the longevity and efficiency of nuclear power, in the long run it’s a cheaper source of energy as opposed to offshore wind and battery storage. Solar and standard wind is cheaper but they’re unreliable and shouldn’t be relied on to make up the bulk of energy generation. We need sources of power that can be fully relied on to provide a continuous source of energy.
We shouldn't count on fusion to have any impact on lowering green gas emissions. Even if it proves to be feasible, we won't even start building commercial fusion reactors for the next 40 years. Counting on it means just delaying replacement of coal/gas.
Offhand I promised someone my life savings that there wont be a functioning, commercial, fusion reactor before 2050. And they were so confident that there would be, they were annoyed with the joke of an offer outright lmao
>commercial fission reactors You mean fusion? I don't see why not. I seriously doubt it's viable and I don't think we'll live to see any major breakthroughs, but if there *was* some major breakthrough tomorrow, then whoever discovers it could start building a reactor within a few years. It might even be beneficial to share this technology with other nations so they can start theirs in time to stop climate change.
In the meantime, reefs are dying worldwide, the most powerful (and plentiful) hurricanes ever are churning off our coasts, people are dying in droves every summer from excessive, unprecedented heat, ocean levels are rising and swallowing up whole island nations, wildfires the likes we’ve never seen are burning millions of acres of forest (and homes), and maybe the worst of all, our oceans are slowly acidifying from excess CO2 absorption. If our oceans die, we die. But by all means, carry on with this AI arms race so we can use it for misinformation, deepfakes, and college kids cheating on their exams. All I see is disaster written all over AI. Making us dummer, lazier and pushing our power usage to the point where we exacerbate climate change even more. Look, AI has its uses but if history is any indication, humans tend to shoot first and ask questions later. There are no guarantees AI will solve anything. Are we willing to risk that? At the peril of our already dying planet?
Short answer: yes, because humans are wholly incapable of willingly giving up the standards of living they currently enjoy to make the sacrifices needed for zero or close to zero emissions right now.
You mean the status quo. We don't need to give up standards of living, actually standards of living can go up by a lot. But the status quo has a lot of power and money and wants to change as slowly as possible I mean think about it, fossil fuels are a consumable limited resource controlled by tiny elite of rich and countries which lets them mark it up and get a huge profit In comparison, renewable energy is non-consumable, and anyone can mass produce it as it doesn't require anything too difficult to get. And once in operation in lasts decades and then can be recycled. It will force the cost of energy to be ridiculously cheap, there will virtually be no profit in energy
>I guess if it pushes innovation to create virtually limitless clean energy, so be it. It's not though. The fusion company is bullshiting. It hasn't even been able to achieve net energy gain. It will not be up and running in 2028. That is about 5 years ahead of the most optimistic predictions from experts, with most saying commercial fusion is 20 years way. AI is going to be responsible for massive greenhouse gas emission increases until then.
Hasn‘t fusion energy been 20 years away for the last few decades?
The allure of AGI is the only thing that would ever be able to overcome fossil fuel companies doing everything they can to stifle innovation in the energy sector.
How are they going to have enough power to run our billion strong robot workforce if chatbots have already brought the grind to its knees?
Human battery
The Matrix is about to become a documentary rather than a sci-fi movie.
Considering the damage we do to the planet with limited energy, I shudder to imagine how fast we'd kill and raze everything if we get limitless energy...
Limitless energy would let us save the planet. We have technology available to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. The issue is that removing carbon-releasing generation from the system is more effective than adding it on. But if we had extra power on the grid worldwide, then all excess power could be used to power carbon capture plants and we start burying blocks of carbon underground where we took it out.
Only if, and that's a big fucking if, we radically change society as it is now. Carbon in the atmosphere is only one parameter. Fusion won't produce oil-based fertilizer, fusion won't produce plastic, fusion won't help against deforestation, biodiversity collapse, wealth-hoarding billionaires, and increased scarcity of metals. And that's just a few examples. Replace fusion by whatever other technology you love.
Agreed. Carbon capture is a final piece of the puzzle after generating excess clean power and all it does is fix the mess of released carbon. It'll do nothing for any other other issues you mention and fusion isn't a magic bullet that'll solve everything.
To be honest, I feel that is a lot of a tech bro solution (carbon capture), I mean we had trees and bamboo for ages that grows itself, you plant a tree farm with fast growing trees/bamboo, then chop it down into wood. Not only do you get materials needed anyways, it captures the carbon in the atmosphere Trying to capture carbon is just a fossil fuel industry scam to keep fossil fuels around longer as they can "offset their emissions"
I'm with you, carbon capture only works if we magically have substantial excess energy in the grid. It's not the solution, reducing energy use is and then this becomes the cherry on top.
Hilarious that we’re willing to burn shit to the ground for mediocre chat bots.
hey don't worry, Massachusetts just banned plastic bags, everything is going to be OK now /s
And piss poor “hallucinated” art.
I mean it could be pr0n. So I mean on the level of trivial we've taken one tiny teensy step forward.
They both spew transparent and sometimes disturbing fantasies. I don't see much difference.
This is why we all wound up in pods in the matrix lol
Hmm... interesting. Human bodies aren't very good components if electricity is all you're looking for. But I could see our brains being used like AI chips. A literal hivemind!
We blacked out the sun though which gave the machines no choice I guess
They'll do anything to keep the car from crashing except put the brakes on
Why would you propose a perfectly logical solution when we're making shit up and throwing around fantasies?
fear and greed the prime motivators
Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck...
Didn't Nvidia make 4 billion in one day with AI products? Get them to fix their own damn problem, they could make an entire country's worth of power off of a single month of revenue.
This just makes me even more concerned about a bubble.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Even if we transition from fissile fuels, corporate fucking tech greed will make electricity too expensive for regular people while at the same time the very thing the electricity is being used for will decimate the lives of the entire labour pool. If workers don't pull their head out of our collective asses and form a legitimate opposition to the uncontrolled corpopolitical insanity, most of us are absolutely fucked. Like, we're all homeless dying in the streets, fucked because the economy no longer has any use for us.
Don forget that the companies will be given tax breaks while the cost of the power infrastructure will be passed on to civilian consumers
But for real though- could someone explain this to me like I’m 5? If we’re already in an energy crisis, why is this being allowed to continue? Won’t it cancel out any energy saving advancements over the last 15 years or so? Edit: It honestly keeps me up at night.
Because if we get to AGI soon, which is something people using that energy believe in, we would be able to get x1000 of energy we use now in few years. I understand, that most likely you tgink AGI is either fantasy or the ebd of humanity, but people with money and power don't think so. That's why AI will keep getting every resource it needs, at least in US.
Gotcha. So the people with money and power think AGI will find a solution that human intelligence hasn't been able to? Edit: I'm living in SLC right now, and there's been internet disruptions with the current heat wave. Let along A/Cs not being able to keep up. I'm wondering whether we will be able to leverage AGI "in time" when the increased energy expenditure will be taxing an already overworked energy grid. It seems very snake eating its own tail.
There is a lot of work done in Solar, Nuclear, Fusion. Regular person does not need a lot of energy, so I don't think that it will be that much of a problem. But you are most likely correct about eating its own tale - AI will consume every new energy that is produced. We will know soon, depending on how much more energy is needed to train next generation of models. OpenAI works with Helion ( which is on the pic of thread), so it looks like we will need magnitudes more energy that we have now.
There's companies that are developing reactors specifically for this purpose. Oklo Inc. is one example. OpenAI founder Sam Altman is also chairman. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Inc.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Inc.)
Altman also is the Chairman of Helion.
For centuries humans have proven to burn and destroy the planet for profit. And we’re acting surprised and dismayed that they’re doing it again? Nothing has changed. Just what’s being consumed.
We're not doing it for profit. We're doing it for *power*. And yes, despite the risk that it will lead to our demise, fueling the advancement of our new super brain technology to become masters of the universe is a *very compelling* reason to ignore the warning signs and keep consuming whatever fuel we can get our hands on. It's all very Faustian to me.
Yeah but now people can make “art” without learning or practicing anything
Tech companies should be required to create their own energy for their expenditure. It will both limit progress (a good thing since the lightning fast developments are shredding social fabric) and drive them to develop more efficient solutions that could be used large scale.
Let's try it! Okay... our rate of progress was just decimated, in which time China's doubled. How do you say "social fabric" in Mandarin?
I should have clarified, tech companies *of the world*
Who'll enforce that? The President *of the world*?
I just said *should*
What’s next? National blackouts blamed on Ai’s galactic power needs? 🤣🤣🤣 so ridiculous. That’s not futurology, that’s bullshittery! (and it’s from the Washington Post… 🤣🤣) What a joke!
You just put the humans into pods and use them as batteries. Problem solved! A bit of VR to keep them entertained and hope they don’t notice the occasional glitch in the matrix… But seriously, it’s an industry like anything else and it’s hitting energy limitations, just like anything else. AI as it stands isn’t very energy efficient and the costs we’ll have to be borne by the end users eventually when the VC runs thinner.
The Washington post knows that AI doesn’t use its articles as sources so what they do? Make it seem like AI is the biggest carbon emitter on this planet 🙂
Here we go. Toy needs power. Innovation to power toy. Its how discoveries have been made
OK, so AI are using A LOT of power. Not for learning, but in regular use. Are they generating enough value? I mean what is actual $/kwh of LLM?
Maybe AI can synthesize a useful solution, like green power or super-conductivity. Instead I fear it’ll be used to fleece people via finance industry and numb them via entertainment/porn.
Huh, who knew AI would pave the way for nuclear energy
Next up. Texas power grid goes down due to AI power consumption
This is the part that pisses me off, truly. ERCOT (manager of the TX power grid) said we need to double our power generation to accommodate all the crypto mining companies and AI data centers moving here. But that just means the consumer will now have to pay for that and they will exempt the businesses by offering them special rates. In reality they should require the business to invest in the power grid by funding 150% of their projected power usage in new generation.
I mean this isn't really outrageous. If you look at other commercial plants that are trying to do something similar like through the wave version of fusion like there are a lot of promising aspects out there. With the money behind Microsoft, I don't see this as an impossibility. Now that it has gotten to the point where we have generated positive fusion, it is just at this point a matter of scaling. Mean there are some other challenges and I get that. But I mean when you look at it from a perspective of overall engineering, there are ways to do this. It might not be perfect. Granted it might need a situation where not a power plant on the grid. It might be a situation where they have a solar field set up to start the initial reaction and then go from there. And maybe you know it's not completely perfectly. You know 100% a generation type of situation, but it would be enough to offset what they need for AI. There's also the aspect of using AI to solve the problem in the first place.
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Last time I checked there was a laboratory that generated positive fusion power. Using lasers. Now the whole plant that did this is not designed for this. Designed for something else entirely and it was more of an experiment than anything else. So unless I'm misunderstanding what the article was saying, we at the very least broke even if not positive even though it wasn't like an amazing positive. Not to mention the The location that did this is like 50 years old and using lasers that are that old.
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The national iginition facility created the first controlled fusion burn which is huge. The only other time that has happened is in nuclear weapons so we had no proof that it could be done before that in the lab. Maybe within a decade we'll have a few devices that can do that. Note, the helion reactor (shown in the image above) does not require the same scientific breakeven as other devices since it recovers something like 95% of the input power which is how their concept is unique.
We aren't going to get economic fusion until at least 2100. We need more electricity like tomorrow. Using far away from commercialization tech solutions is how these companies avoid responsibility of investing into energy infrastructure today. By promising to do so decades from now It's the corporate version of "I'll clean my room tomorrow"
Question: Does AI really need to exist? It will make a handful of tech companies a lot of money and make doing XYZ easier for them. The dangers and societal impact far outweigh any benefits the average person will see. Whatever future AI reads this will prob drone strike me in 5 years.
It becomes more close to the social media boom. At some point it seemed so great to re-connect with people from the distant past. Now many have forgotten how to meet people
Most applications of AI are just making us dumber and lazier. But some AI tools are worth it - stuff like Alphafold is amazing, humans couldn’t map all those protein configurations. Sadly, the more we all focus on the dumb and useless AI, the less we can benefit from the stuff that actually gives us incremental capabilities for utilitarian ends
This is just another rage bait AI article. Electricity consumption is going to continue to grow in the future due to everything from industry, residential, and commercial use. In comparison, AI data centers still use a tiny fraction of total end use. Major investments in electric generation will already be required for solar installation for the grid, to support the ev industry, and to continue sustaining a high quality, modern life. If we instead frame the problem as AI investment will be just a portion of already necessary energy infrastructure commitments, we can start to see energy in AI investment as an opportunity rather than some negative spin. Because when we include Wright's economic scaling law into the picture - where increased investment actually reduces marginal cost - then increased investment in renewable electricity generation for AI end purposes only has a symbiotic benefit for supporting sustainable energy investment for other purposes. Those who say or think otherwise have no real understanding of economics or the historical development of industry.
It’s true electricity consumption will continue to rise, as transportation, heating, and other energy uses are electrified. But it’s worth noting that total energy use in the US has been flat for the last 25 years, and is not expected to grow in the future.
From the article >So near the river’s banks in Central Washington, Microsoft is betting on an effort to generate power from atomic fusion — the collision of atoms that powers the sun — a breakthrough that has eluded scientists for the past century. Physicists predict it will elude Microsoft, too. >The tech giant and its partners say they expect to harness fusion by 2028, an audacious claim that bolsters their promises to transition to green energy but distracts from current reality. In fact, the voracious electricity consumption of artificial intelligence is driving an expansion of fossil fuel use — including delaying the retirement of some coal-fired plants. >In the face of this dilemma, Big Tech is going all in on experimental clean-energy projects that have long odds of success anytime soon. In addition to fusion, they are hoping to generate power through such futuristic schemes as small nuclear reactors hooked to individual computing centers and machinery that taps geothermal energy by boring 10,000 feet into the Earth’s crust.
How to profit as a little investor on this coming energy for AI boom? 🤔
Start investing in Anti-Gravity [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZRwlYtAMps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZRwlYtAMps) [https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en)
It's like 4-8% of the total grid, this is sensationalist reporting.
Are you joking or serious? You are assuming that AI use will stagnate instead of grow exponentially
I think it's a bit facetious to complain about AI training being a sink of energy while there still are crypto mining operations which have absolutely zero economic value whatsoever. I'm not concerned about AI's power consumption, I'm more concerned about how the economy will be structured when AI will automate most economic processes.
We need to somehow harness human bioenergy as a power bank of some sort……
It’s interesting because my state pays crypto farms to shut down during peak grid usage times yet now data centers will take that capacity up by the end of next year If only we started turning on all those nuclear power plants we mothballed on the 80s
Or your state could have you know just banned those crypto farms saving everyone a ton of money
If this is what it takes to get industry to invest in fusion to the degree necessary for actual progress then count me in. The fact that fusion isn’t an all-out global effort at this stage is baffling to me.
if survival of our species isn't motivation enough please be very skeptical that this will bring about good things for everyone
Cool, so are you willing to stop using electricity altogether until said fusion is built? I am sure you'll be fine without electricity until 2100
Time to start shooting the hardwear for ai into space and manufacturing solar panels for them!
Good old diesel generators! Just completed a temp gen plant to add capacity to a site that the utility couldn't provide enough power for. This is happening all over as they rush to the future with AI!! In a few years we will see the error of our ways I'm afraid.
Just when the fossil-fuel luddites thought that EVs would do the grid in...
I mean if the need for AI focuses more people on fusion and other power sources I don't see the problem. It'll suck short term, but we should learn a lot. Personally they could fire up a couple nuclear reactors. That tech is incredibly stable now and has a great output.
You say that until you are the one sitting without power for days. Especially if it gets hot/cold enough that it is life threatening We need power generation tomorrow, not decades from now. And these companies should be forced to build out generation quickly if they want to do AI or face severe fines
Just... hear me out... just task AI with solving the issue? You know, like we use AI to find new antibiotic combinations that it would take us decades to figure out, or we missed completely. Isn't that the point of AI in the first place? To help us do what we currently cannot?
They can't figure it out because it isn't actually intelligent. It just processes stuff that real humans do, and then re-presents it in a different format.
Did I miss something or humans will eventually compete with AGI/AI for power? Starting to feel very matrix like….🤨
This is pretty sad. AI is not as useless as blockchain, but at the same time it’s still very much a work in progress and has an even worse impact on the environment
I haven't read the article but big doubt that AI is exhausting the power grid, it's a very minor percent of US electricity demands like 0.5% type. Also pushing emissions? The tech companies are comparatively green, so AI absolutely doesn't push emissions measurably. Can we focus on actual environmental concerns?
If you ask an AI how much energy it uses to process a user request - it always answers that it is a very small, minuscule amount… hmmm…
Then they should use those corporate profits to create more energy....like go green idiots.
If AI puts these two articles together, we are doomed https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/t36cOH9FUW
As AI is the new cryptocoin energy problem? Great, just grand. It's already infecting every areas now, AI this and AI that, like having a toothbrush with usb and wifi, it's going too fucking far.
if anyone can deal with the ludicrous investment costs of nuclear power plants it would be the AI trillion dollar companies. But I doubt they want to wait 20-30 years for them to go online
I don’t get all the negativity. If Microsoft wants to use it’s own money — not taxpayer money — to fund research into clean energy sources that can then be used by all mankind, why is this a bad thing?
It’s almost like they need a thinking machine that can figure out problems…
It's never a bad thing when some of the largest corporations on the planet decide that they need to find a way to create cheap electricity. Eventually it will lead to better prices for consumers.
Train the next AI in Iceland using geothermal for power and air-chilled or sea-chilled water for cooling.
This isn’t nonsense or a distraction. We deserve intentional investments in fusion because yes it is possible and it’s the obvious next step in our energy evolution. They’re also investing in nuclear. This isn’t something to be attacked or shamed because we’re driving the consumption that’s demanding higher energy rates. We’re all part of this.
No it is not. There are not that many AI training facilities worldwide. And yes having more nuclear power plants would more than meet any real extra demand in any case. You don't at all need fusion. Fission would work just fine.
for the people that ask how is AI hurting the grid, I think this video exxplains it the best [https://youtu.be/mxUBrb3QBtI?si=cq8lMkZGsOzmb1C3](https://youtu.be/mxUBrb3QBtI?si=cq8lMkZGsOzmb1C3)
Look, I think AI is over-hyped. But this could be a good thing. Let those rich companies find solutions that aren't 'let's take it away from the common plebs'. I like that.
Why not nuclear? No carbon, gobs of power, runs all day and night.
Takes decades to build a new plant.
It takes decades for a government contractors to make them. They make more money the longer it takes, this is not true for private companies working with private companies.
No private company is willing to make a plant. Nothing is stopping them now.
They haven’t needed that much power until now. I believe its microsoft that is a major investor in small form nuclear reactors.
Okay, if they build the affordable plants you are referring to I will admit I was wrong. Until then, my point stands.
Fusion is always 20 years away. Every single time. Why oh why does no one ever go for the Thorium?
Bahahaha…. but don’t you dare use any electricity to fundamentally fix the monetary system stripping the government ability to print your personal wealth away.
ENERGY USE IS OKAY FOR THINGS I LIKE NOT U LIKE
Isn't the solution to get an AI to design a fusion power plant that works?
What makes you think AI can do this?
How is AI exhausting the power grid? It's just software. Seems like a false statement.
The GPUs used to run A.I. are power hungry. Just one Nvidia A.I. card can consume around 1000 watts. These companies purchase 10s of thousands of these cards.
But "exhausting the power grid"? Come on
Maybe not in larger states like California and Texas? Wait a second, at first I was like, in a year a few data centers can probably overwhelm a power grid. A data center can be 100MWh, get a few dozens of those per year all the sudden and maybe that’ll overwhelm the power grid. Maybe distribution becomes a problem, but the US can definitely support them. Maybe other countries? California for example has 200GWh generated in 2022, and imports 80-100 GWh. US data center consumption in 2022 was 17 GWh and expected to be 35 GWh a year in 2030 apparently. That doesn’t seem like it could exhaust our grid.
>But "exhausting the power grid"? Come on https://time.com/6987773/ai-data-centers-energy-usage-climate-change/ >the IEA predicts that in two years, data centers could consume the same amount of energy as Sweden or Germany. Relatedly, researchers at UC Riverside estimated that global AI demand could cause data centers to consume over 1 trillion gallons of fresh water by 2027.
Why freshwater?
The paper linked in the article is referring to water involved in on site cooling and off site energy generation for data centers. The water consumption isn’t taking into account water used in making the chip etc. one big way water is used for cooling is the water that is evaporated from a cooling tower.
When it's AI, they need a solution, but when it was Bitcoin, it was bad.
The former provides a useful product, the latter is an online gambling platform/scam money transfering tool/schizo-libertarian delusion. Know the difference.