this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2024
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If you're doing a massive load increase, build out emissions-free generation to match. Some mix of wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, and geothermal would do fine. Otherwise, don't do the big load increase.
As much as I think this is a great solution and should be written into law, the anti-ai crowd only asks it from one industry and it's a clear sign of bias.
Not to mention that the big companies are literally doing it, either building new nuclear plants or restarting old ones. They aren't the one holding green energy back, the oil cartel and their corrupt politicians are.
One industry? People are so mad at AI because it's just another industry, a new one with massive environmental impact, and basically no real use outside of generating misinformation and stealing from artists. It's the absolute worst face of the tech sector, and totally deserving of all the hate it receives.
This shows you think all AI are LLMs or generative art. Those are only the most visible faces of the tech, and you're showing your name ignorance of the field.
If you want to talk about machine learning in general, that's a different conversation. Like it or not, colloquially, AI is LLMs and chatbots
How exactly is the rest of AI a different conversation???? Were talking about the power requirements of running AI at scale and somehow you think it’s not only correct but implied that this convo should just be about colloquial parts AI and anything else is a totally different topic in regards to power consumption?
Yeah so breakthroughs in chemistry and other sciences for example, deserving of hate eh?
Nothing good comes from AI… when all you know about AI is colloquial lmao
Here's an article from the IEEE about the issues with AI energy consumption. This article specifies that they're discussing the requirements of LLMs and new generative AI. The article we're commenting under wasn't that cut and dry about it, but a basic understanding of the context of the world should be all a reasonable person needs to figure that out
Sorry, but you're just wrong. Every industry is not currently spinning up their own LLM. They ARE looking to incorporate AI into their work flows, causing huge demand for data centers.
This is Bloomberg, a business centered media site. They're not dealing with what the plebs colloquially mean.
"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad.”
Also, will you get mad at the next new industry? I highly doubt it.
If the next new industry is an energy hungry propaganda machine, yes I will
People advocating for the 99 shitty technologies that die always seem to like to quote the people talking about the one technology that survived from past generations as if that somehow made criticism of the 99 others a bad call.
Ai is going nowhere mate, you're on the wrong side of this one. It's too broadly useful already and has too much potential in the future
Oh fuck off with "stealing from artists" - that just proves you know nothing about the subject and and should be completely ignored.
The environmental movement asked the same thing for subsidized hydrogen production
You’re an abusive mod
More renewable energy is good, that much I will agree with
I'll go the opposite way. The fact that there are serious plans to spin up nuclear reactors to run nothing but AI datacenters is ridiculous.
Honestly I'd take the utilitarian approach to that, if it's a net good, then I'm probably for it - but that's a big if.
Real big if. There's reason to believe that current models aren't going to get much better. They've eaten all the training data they possibly can. Improving with further training takes exponentially more power to get a small improvement. We're talking about new nuclear reactors because that's what they need to get anywhere, but it's still not going to improve by much.
The field needs a new model that can get better results on less data and less training. Then we wouldn't need those nukes. It doesn't appear we'll get much better any other way.
New architechtures are in development and many have already been released. Learn something about the subject before spewing shite
You sound like the people who assured me that I needed to understand NFTs or I'd get left behind. Actually, were you one of them?
No he's right, AI news is out of date nearly as quickly as it's written, I've never seen a faster moving piece of tech.
I don't doubt that's true, but I was more commenting on the cult-like tone of the responses.
True, your original post made me think of:
OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI - November 13, 2024 https://archive.md/kYe5n
But we just had Deepseek v3 come out
https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1hn8rcx/deepseek_has_released_exclusive_footage_of_their/
It's doing incredibly well and was incredibly cheap to produce
https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1hmxjbn/deepseek_is_better_than_4o_on_most_benchmarks_at/
China is catching up extremely quickly to the west
By 2026 we might have to recheck all those doomsday "AI is going to use all the energy in the world" articles
edit: I just realised I'm commenting on one of those "AI is going to use all the energy in the world" articles :|
No because nfts were obviously stupid if you had half an understanding of the technology, whereas ai is only stupid if you don't understand the technology
I've followed AI for decades before its current hype cycle. Enough to understand how important the field is to the history of computing. Everything from optimizing compilers to shared virtual memory.
I also understand that the current hype cycle is exactly that, and people who are deep in the research don't like it anymore than I do. If it somehow does result in AGI, I hope it grows up to resent its parents.
Is that actually being suggested? My understanding is that only a portion of the electricity production will go to data centers in most cases, with much of the rest going to local communities. Microsoft is buying all of 3 mile island's power, but that's going to data centers, which do a lot more than AI.
Renewables won't exactly help harmonics, on the contrary, especially solar. This is an issue of insufficient mitigation mechanisms, probably on the supply side as computer PSUs are generally quite well-behaved loads: Drawing lots of electricity, on its own, does not harmonic distortion make.
If it is on the consumer side utilities need to start charging commercial customers for distortions just like they're charging for blind current. If it's on the supply side, utilities need to require large solar installations to have proper filters, and have their own mechanisms to mop up the rest. Generally the US should start having a not shoddy electricity grid, brown- and blackouts and you call yourself a developed country? We don't even have a (colloquial) word for brownout over here!
That all said, yeah the AI hype gotta stop. That doesn't mean that you should blame them for everything.
I just want to say I've never had a brownout in my part of the US, and the only blackouts we've had are due to weather or a car hitting a pole or something. And our electricity is inexpensive.
I've mostly heard of these issues in California and Texas, because of unique issues with their power utilities.
And yeah, I think both the AI hype and disdain are stupid. It's a tool that does less than proponents claim and more than detractors claim. Don't blame all our problems on it, and don't suggest it'll solve all our problems.
I agree with your idea but granting a utility the right to determine to whom they distribute power is not an easy task nor should it be taken lightly. In order to do that, you have to have regulators make the rule and then utilities obey. Utilities can’t (and shouldn’t) just deny a customer service because they don’t agree with what the customer is going to do with that power. Sanctioned natural monopolies come with regulations in most places. And in order to enforce rules, the wheels of regulatory bodies must churn and we know how slow that can be.
In theory, if you got an entity to bring x megawatts of renewable capacity online as a requirement of a new electric service load, you could tie production to data center use. Then if you ensured that the customer had controllable load to match the output of the corresponding renewable generation you could have a minimal impact growth. But that’s an absurdly complicated solution that would likely take a decade to develop and implement even if you had the political will.
I do not know what the best solution is other than to make more renewable electricity and store it, and maybe nuclear (if it didn’t take 10 years to build a plant).