this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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As I said, yes, it uses electricity. You realize that there are ways to generate electricity that don't contribute to global warming? We're going to need to be switching to those methods anyway.
You seem utterly confused about the scale of the problem I described. Which isn't entirely surprising. But I think you should go look up those sources. Because the output of a good sized nuclear station is about 1GW and we aren't going to be building a nuclear station next to every single datacenter, now are we...
I fail to see any problem here at all.
It's really quite simple. If AI is useful enough that people are willing to pay for the electricity it consumes, then they will pay for that electricity and the generating capacity will be funded by that. If it's not useful enough for people to be willing to pay for the electricity, then the AI won't be run. This is a trivial supply and demand situation. The AIs won't use "too much electricity" because nobody's going to want to pay for that.
So if you point at an AI and exclaim "it's using a kajillion dollars worth of electricity!" I'll shrug and say "it must be providing a kajillion dollars worth of services, otherwise who's paying for it?"
You fail to see a problem with increasing power demands by 10-20x beyond their existing consumption rates? While the world burns around you? Alright Niro, enjoy your fiddle.
Let me change your sentence, then you try it on for size and see how you like it.
"If CFCs are useful enough that people are willing to pay for them, then they will pay for those CFCs and the hole in the ozone will be an acceptable consequence". I could go on with Asbestos, lead in gasoline, literally anything that releases a greenhouse gas.
And again, you clearly can not conceive of what you're talking about. The cost for such generation is beyond reasonable, and you've entirely missed that point. Not a surprise, really, but you've missed it all the same. Guessing the next word isn't useful enough to humanity to burn the world to the ground, but it IS something that companies can sell to simple rubes that have been conned into thinking that the illusion is real magic. And we know what companies will do for money.
It isn't. Because as it is already, these systems are behemoths that consume insane amounts of energy, they are not making enough money to pay for themselves, they are not serving a real utility that provides value, and still the drooling masses use them for their amusement. Either way, you've proven you don't understand the technical aspects of this, the consumption aspects of it, the as-implemented state of the industry, or the scale of demand induced by companies trying to make a buck. So I think the value of this conversation is about the value of any of these rube goldberg guessing machines.
Do you have any sources to back up that asspull? Seriously, you have no idea what you're talking about here. How would we suddenly build ten to twenty times as many power generators as we currently have, even with infinite money being thrown at the problem?
Again, do you not realize there are environmentally friendly ways to produce electricity?
Then how are the people who are running them able to keep running them?
Directly from a keynote given at OpenCompute a few weeks ago. Swing and a miss.
List for me which ones can be built in 1GW installations feasibly and cost effectively, please. And if you choose solar, detail the physical size of the facility. I'll wait here.
Do you forget my initial comment? Go read it again.