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How AI labs are solving the power problem

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Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#11

Post by imglorp »

goda90 wrote: post #3

Power problem: solved Natural Gas supply problem: worsened Carbon in the atmosphere problem: worsened

And the air quality around these plants is poor, leading to health problems for the neighbors.

This short term, destructive, thinking should be criminalized.

I think it's time to discuss changing the incentives around ai deployment, specifically paying into a ubi fund whenever human jobs are replaced by ai. Musk himself raised the idea.

https://www.indexbox.io/blog/tech-leaders-push-for-universal...

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#13

Post by roflmaostc »

pdpi wrote: post #7

Part of what bothers me with AI energy consumption isn't just how wasteful it might be from an ecological perspective, it's how brutally inefficient it is compared to the biological "state of the art" — 2000kcal = 8,368 kJ. 8,368 kJ / 86,400 s = 96.9 W. So the benchmark is achieving human-like intelligence on a 100W budget. I'd be very curious to see what can be achieved by AI targeting that power budget.

try to calculate 12312312.123213 * 123123.3123123

A computer uses orders of magnitude less energy than a human.

It's all about the task, humans are specialized too.

EDIT: maybe add a logarithm or other non-linear functions to make the gap even bigger.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#15

Post by saghm »

goda90 wrote: post #3

Power problem: solved Natural Gas supply problem: worsened Carbon in the atmosphere problem: worsened

Yeah I guess I'm not the target audience for this because I assumed that "the power problem" was "massive increase in electricity costs for people despite virtually unchanged usage on their part", not "AI companies have to wait too long to be able to start using even more power than they already are":

> Nicole Pastore, who has lived in her large stone home near Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University campus for 18 years, said her utility bills over the past year jumped by 50%. “You look at that and think, ‘Oh my god,’” she said. She has now become the kind of mom who walks around her home turning off lights and unplugging her daughter’s cellphone chargers.

> And because Pastore is a judge who rules on rental disputes in Baltimore City District Court, she regularly sees poor people struggling with their own power bills. “It’s utilities versus rent,” she said. “They want to stay in their home, but they also want to keep their lights on.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec...

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#16

Post by thunderbird120 »

pingou wrote: post #4

What about renewables + battery storage? Does it take much longer to build? I can imagine getting a permit can take quite a long time, but what takes so long to set up solar panels and link them to batteries, without even having to connect them to the grid?

Takes much longer to build, requires a much larger up-front investment, and requires a lot more land.

The footprint needed when trying to generate this much power from solar or wind necessitates large-scale land acquisition plus the transmission infrastructure to get all that power to the actual data center, since you won't usually have enough land directly adjacent to it. That plus all the battery infrastructure makes it a non-starter for projects where short timescales are key.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#17

Post by Aurornis »

Apreche wrote: post #6

> An AI cloud can generate revenue of $10-12 billion dollars per gigawatt, annually. Citation needed.

This is coming from a group that does analysis on the semiconductor and cloud industries and provided very expensive access to their models and info. They are the citation.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#18

Post by talideon »

roflmaostc wrote: post #13
pdpi wrote: post #7

Part of what bothers me with AI energy consumption isn't just how wasteful it might be from an ecological perspective, it's how brutally inefficient it is compared to the biological "state of the art" — 2000kcal = 8,368 kJ. 8,368 kJ / 86,400 s = 96.9 W. So the benchmark is achieving human-like intelligence on a 100W budget. I'd be very curious to see what can be achieved by AI targeting that power budget.

try to calculate 12312312.123213 * 123123.3123123 A computer uses orders of magnitude less energy than a human. It's all about the task, humans are specialized too. EDIT: maybe add a logarithm or other non-linear functions to make the gap even bigger.

A GenAI does not, however.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#20

Post by memoriuaysj »

pingou wrote: post #4

What about renewables + battery storage? Does it take much longer to build? I can imagine getting a permit can take quite a long time, but what takes so long to set up solar panels and link them to batteries, without even having to connect them to the grid?

land. compute what surface you need for 1 GW of solar
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