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What's slowing down the AI buildout

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Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#131

Post by constantius »

59percentmore wrote: post #102
constantius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably are aware of nuclear waste and of the modalities of dealing with it, and still believe that not investing into nuclear is shooting yourself in the foot. FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or…

How many tons does it take to make a dirty bomb that irradiates a city center or small downtown? To poison an aquifer when storage fails? How much does it cost to make sure neither of these events, or any other similar hypothetical, doesn't happen, not even once?

As far as I know, it hasn't happened, not even once.

Your objection appeals to emotions, not to reason. The very kind of objection that has enabled fossil fuels to be seen as less dangerous. FYI, nuclear energy has killed single digits of people. Fossil fuels kill around 10M annually through pollution alone.

Granted, your lament aims to make people privilege clean energy over nuclear, but in nature it is still the kind of thought-terminating fearmongering that gets us surveillance to protect children, so I object on principle.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#133

Post by constantius »

dawnerd wrote: post #60
constantius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably are aware of nuclear waste and of the modalities of dealing with it, and still believe that not investing into nuclear is shooting yourself in the foot. FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or…

Solar doesn’t produce that much waste either and that was the point. Just because you don’t see the nuclear waste doesn’t mean it isn’t sitting there somewhere. The person was acting as if clean energy is dirty via its waste. For the record I’m all for nuclear - it’s insane we’ve regressed so much and not invested into more. But it’s also insane we’re not taking more advantage of green energy where we can.

Fair. I've seen the use of nuclear waste to derail conversations about nuclear so often that I reacted without looking at the context, sorry.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#134

Post by anthonypasq »

surgical_fire wrote: post #51
user43928 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not know whether subscription plans are unprofitable at all. Some estimates suggest that this is the case only for the heaviest users. Many seem to confuse API prices with the actual cost to serve the models, and thus reach the conclusion that subscriptions must be deeply unprofitable. Anthropic is officially citing capacity constraints with the intent to bring the Fable model back to subscriptions plans as soo…

> We do not know whether subscription plans are unprofitable at all. That's pretty much certain. It's sort of cute when people like to pretend otherwise. > Many seem to confuse API prices with the actual cost to serve the models, and thus reach the conclusion that subscriptions must be deeply unprofitable. I don't make that mistake. I actually suspect that the actual costs may be higher than the API prices. I think t…

> I don't make that mistake. I actually suspect that the actual costs may be higher than the API prices. I think those may still be subsidized.

how are you still under this delusion? so you think that all the hosting companies on openrouter are just burning money selling GLM 5.2 tokens at 1/6th the cost of opus 4.8 api pricing?

Mark Zuckerberg literally tweeted today that they are pricing Muse Spark 1.1 much lower because other companies have excessive margin.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#135

Post by nradov »

asdff wrote: post #130
ssl-3 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all of these problems are intractable? There is no way that any of them can be dealt with at all?

It falls into the bin of "tragedies of the commons we could fix with current technology but fail to sufficiently fund and support in earnest" Really, when is the last time we overhauled our built environment and actually followed through with a comprehensive plan in the west? We couldn't even finish the interstate highway system in a time when we had seemingly great alignment towards it along with far cheaper costs.…

Public housing failed not because of insufficient funding or support but because a small fraction of residents were sociopaths and criminals. The authorities refused to take decisive action to quickly evict the troublemakers and so they wrecked the projects for everyone. Section 8 vouchers have been far more effective by enabling low-income people to rent housing from private landlords at market rates. There are some abuses but overall it's a better model than public housing.

Starlink satellite cellular service is available pretty much everywhere now.

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#136

Post by nradov »

fragmede wrote: post #42
bob1029 wrote: post #37

Project Kilby is probably the most intelligent approach to this problem so far. https://www.chevron.com/newsroom/2026/q2/chevron-signs-20-ye... The idea is to bring the data centers, power generators and energy supply together in the ~same physical space so the only thing you have to transmit is data. Moving energy is way more expensive than moving information.

The ocean tidal power data center idea was a neat one.

Neat how? Tidal power never made economic sense. There are only a limited number of places with enough tidal flow to even potentially make it viable. Any moving parts in the marine environment require frequent expensive maintenance due to growths and corrosion. Environmentalists will file lawsuits against anything that causes any damage anywhere, even if it would be a net environmental benefit compared to alternatives.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#137

Post by trhway »

kind of reminded USSR history of 100 years ago - a mostly agrarian country destroyed by war and revolution doing jump into industrialization with electrification being the driving core of it (the other major factor was GULAG - electrification plus unlimited free labor - winning formula :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO

"In 1920, British writer H. G. Wells visited Soviet Russia and met with Vladimir Lenin. Wells believed that it was impossible to realise the Russian revolutionary’s plan, as he wrote in his book Russia in the Shadows:

For Lenin, who like a good orthodox Marxist denounces all "Utopians," has succumbed at last to a Utopia, the Utopia of the electricians. He is throwing all his weight into a scheme for the development of great power stations in Russia to serve whole provinces with light, with transport, and industrial power..."

Our civilization is converging on electricity right now. 200 year ago electricity looked like a set of disparate phenomena. I wonder if in 200 years we'll be basing our society on some new energy form instead of electricity - something like gravitational conductors or some StarTrek singularity generators and plasma coils.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#138

Post by bjustin »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #20

This is part of why the AI bubble will burst. The only way to make the profit numbers backing the loans to AI companies is to get increased capacity, and the capacity requires energy, and the energy won't arrive in time, only partly due to all the factors here, and partly because building transmission and generation is speculative and can fail for a number of reasons. US administration can try to pull a China and bas…

Deploying thousands more gas turbines in a short time is impossible. Lead times for gas turbines are already multiple years.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#139

Post by arjie »

rconti wrote: post #68

Remember when we didn't have enough electricity for electric cars?

I think Elon Musk would have happily built gas turbines on high-rises if we let him build them in the middle of the city to power those electric cars. I don't think that's a good idea, though.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#140

Post by alsetmusic »

asdff wrote: post #97
rconti wrote: post #68

Remember when we didn't have enough electricity for electric cars?

From the headline: >the problem is getting it where it's needed. Same issue with EV rollout. EVs are great if you have a single family home and a few grand to spend on outfitting a fast charger. Most apartment renters however are shit out of luck. I mean it has been how many years now of EV cars on the road and virtually no sweeping buildout of EV chargers in apartment complexes that I can see at least. There was a p…

Ew apartment buildings have them where I live, though a limited number so I can imagine that their use fluctuates. Someone who can’t reserve an open charger can’t move in. Someone who can’t get the floor plan they want is less likely to sign a lease even if a charger is available.

This is in the Bay Area, fwiw.

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