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What's slowing down the AI buildout

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Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#171

Post by vasco »

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.

You know those big fields of panels in China? Where do you think they all will end up at the end of 25 years? To talk about nuclear waste is to be intentionally lying, nuclear waste amount generated is TINY.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#172

Post by vasco »

qlte wrote: post #70
vasco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind take up a bunch of space and generate a bunch of waste after the panels are decommissioned, plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have. With 5 nuclear stations per country you could cleanup so much of Europe.

> plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have. This feels, uh, wildly overstated.

For people that stay inside all day on the computer I can see why

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#173

Post by hraxz »

trescenzi wrote: post #85
mawadev wrote: post #83

"The primary bottleneck to this growth is the availability of electricity." We put the cart before the horse, lets stop talking about growth and focus on making it useful first lmao

Totally agree. One thing the AI bros believe though is that growth == useful. If you strongly believe that the larger the model the smarter it is then you think through growth we get AGI which implicitly is useful because reasons.

Or maybe you just lack the intellectual curiosity to get anything from these models.

You have to a fucking moron to think Claude is not "useful".

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#175

Post by fnordian_slip »

kulahan wrote: post #98
jimbokun wrote: post #96

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dIvV!,w_1456,c_limit... Of the items on this chart, I would say AI data centers are providing the least amount of value per % of GDP spent. And 1930s public works the highest.

I wonder how public works funding would look if 90% of the nation wasn’t painfully far behind in maintenance. But also, AI data centers have been around for like 3 years. It’s not surprising they haven’t reached a high level of efficiency yet. IMO they are not an argument against excessive power use (I know this is not your argument, just a common one), but rather and argument FOR better (read: nuclear) power generat…

Why do so many otherwise seemingly rational people pretend that nuclear is the answer to our energy needs? It doesn't make sense economically, it's just wishful thinking.

The only cheap nuclear energy is from plants that have already been built, because it won't help if we tear them down. But as soon as you factor in the costs of building, insurance and storage of materials, it's always more expensive than renewables.

And while the cost of renewables is still trending downwards, the cost of new reactors is rising, even in China.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#176

Post by m4rtink »

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…

Well, when there were no cars using gasoline, there were no gas stations, what a surprise!

Sure, there might sometime be a chicken-and-egg problem initially, but saying a new but proven technology is totally unusable because it does not have infrastructure everywhere seems kinda weird to me. The infrastructure will catch up as usage grows.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#177

Post by OKRainbowKid »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #35
lionkor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited energy for 200 years is a good step, no?

It's hardly unlimited. And not if plants can't get cooling water because of drought. https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/25/france-takes-nuclear-rea...

The sun provides unlimited energy for billions of years, significantly cheaper and without the hypothetical risk of turning huge areas uninhabitable or causing incidents with damage in the trillions.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#178

Post by sensanaty »

qlte wrote: post #70
vasco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind take up a bunch of space and generate a bunch of waste after the panels are decommissioned, plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have. With 5 nuclear stations per country you could cleanup so much of Europe.

> plus the wind generators are ruining every single landscape we have. This feels, uh, wildly overstated.

Not to mention completely subjective, I personally love the look of windmills, and I live in the Netherlands in a location where I see windmills (and I don't mean the old-timey ones, the big power generating kind) everywhere around me for miles. It's certainly prettier to watch than smoke stacks.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#179

Post by jurgenburgen »

TwoNineFive wrote: post #168
h4kunamata wrote: post #46

1. People fighting back due to never ending effects caused by these massive data centers 2. Companies realising that they are burning half million to get nowhere 3. Circular investment scaring investors 4. And more recently, companies hiring people back coz the AI aimed to replace humans, created more problems than solved them 5. Memory cartel falling apart, again, they did the same thing during 2000s 6. China is mak…

> AI buildout is not just slowing down but falling apart Premise perverted, FUD averted, false-victimhood denied. A datacenter did not murder your family.

A data center might not have murdered his family but the constant AI hype is super tiresome.

PR heads are raging over the amazing shit that AI does and how everything is going to change and just WOWZA BAZINGA.

Yet in my daily life I use it for years and it’s wrong _all_ the time, I end up having to yell at it because it keeps being lazy and gaslighting me, the data centers boil the oceans and rich assholes beg my government to throw billions of good money after bad to build more of this shit. What the fuck? I want to live in the future and all they gave me was some shitty Fisher’s price AI.

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