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Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

theguardian.com

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Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#41

Post by mschuster91 »

trollbridge wrote: post #26
amarcheschi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more OK with it if prices weren't subsidized so much and people actually had to pay to ask opus how to pee, then maybe we would realize we don't need beefier models for everything

There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?) Training is quite expensive and it does look likely that the American providers have been doing that at a loss. In any case, you can go buy a MacBook Pro M5 48GB or an AMD R9700 and run Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B (a very capable model) and the only "subsidy" is you plugging it in, and 140W is not exactly a huge amount of power (roughly 50¢ per day i…

> There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?)

Well... why else would the major providers now tighten the screws on per-token pricing?

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#42

Post by kergonath »

trollbridge wrote: post #26
amarcheschi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more OK with it if prices weren't subsidized so much and people actually had to pay to ask opus how to pee, then maybe we would realize we don't need beefier models for everything

There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?) Training is quite expensive and it does look likely that the American providers have been doing that at a loss. In any case, you can go buy a MacBook Pro M5 48GB or an AMD R9700 and run Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B (a very capable model) and the only "subsidy" is you plugging it in, and 140W is not exactly a huge amount of power (roughly 50¢ per day i…

> There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?)

None of the big providers are profitable. It’s subsidised by overly enthusiastic VCs.

> In any case, you can go buy a MacBook Pro M5 48GB or an AMD R9700 and run Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B (a very capable model) and the only "subsidy" is you plugging it in

Right, people could. But they won’t, because that’s a bloody expensive computer and they don’t need that to ask ChatGPT. That war is lost already.

Subscription to the big players’ services would need to increase massively for that to happen. And the computational cost is only part of the problem; these models also eat a lot of storage and RAM, which is not exactly getting cheaper.

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#44

Post by vasco »

barnabee wrote: post #35
scottcha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have a growing amount of Scope 1 emissions (emissions from their on site sources) which originally was primarily on site diesel but due to grid interconnect delays have been growing number of on site gas turbines. This certainly wouldn’t be necessary with adequate generation and transmission capacity.

This is true, but I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that these data centres shouldn't be built, or at least allowed to operate until/unless they can be powered cleanly and without cornering the market and driving out existing consumers of power. If they're so keen to build that they're willing to fund power generation (e.g. on site gas generators) then it should be clean/renewable (solar, wind, small modular reactors,…

The need for memes knows no bounds. In short order the majority of power usage worldwide will be for compute and newer generations will wonder how it took so long.

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#45

Post by jezzamon »

amazingamazing wrote: post #43

legality of the datacenters aside, I wonder why countries don't at least demand that they're totally carbon neutral or free. it's possible today. it's not like it's sci-fi.

I think most ways of obtaining carbon neutrality are a little bit BS, that's why.

An alternative is what Google is theoretically aiming for: being carbon-free. But they've already started using language describing it as a moonshot or idealistic goal so seems likely they'll abandon that

https://sustainability.google/reports/247-carbon-free-energy...

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#46

Post by kubb »

simianwords wrote: post #18
amarcheschi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more datacenter bro one more datacenter bro please I swear bro one more datacenter and everything will be OK please bro

The optimal number of data centers is just enough so that my personal use is covered. No more. No less. Screw other people’s needs and demands because I know better. Pluralism? What’s that?

So infinite? There’s no amount of compute that would satisfy everyone’s needs and demands.

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#47

Post by throw-the-towel »

kergonath wrote: post #38
throw-the-towel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End humanity, maybe not. Causing very painful social changes, however, is absolutely on the cards.

More than on the cards, it is already happening.

Fair point! I meant "vastly more painful change than already is happening".

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#49

Post by blfr »

kubb wrote: post #46
simianwords wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimal number of data centers is just enough so that my personal use is covered. No more. No less. Screw other people’s needs and demands because I know better. Pluralism? What’s that?

So infinite? There’s no amount of compute that would satisfy everyone’s needs and demands.

I doubt this. It's probably quite high but there is a limit to how much compute you can genuinely use. Just like there's only so much water you're gonna use even if you greatly enjoy Californian almonds.

However, there's probably no limit to energy/electricity we can usefully allocate. And therefore yes, we should in fact provide as much as possible, Dyson spheres and all.

Re: Datacentres drive up big tech's carbon emissions to a third of those of France

#50

Post by blfr »

mschuster91 wrote: post #41
trollbridge wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?) Training is quite expensive and it does look likely that the American providers have been doing that at a loss. In any case, you can go buy a MacBook Pro M5 48GB or an AMD R9700 and run Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B (a very capable model) and the only "subsidy" is you plugging it in, and 140W is not exactly a huge amount of power (roughly 50¢ per day i…

> There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?) Well... why else would the major providers now tighten the screws on per-token pricing?

Because they thought they could. Turns out the Chinese and Elon had other plans.
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