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How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

ourworldindata.org

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Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#31

Post by sroussey »

axus wrote: post #9
Aurornis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising because that's all anyone hears about right now. Many are surprised to learn that data centers use much less water than golf courses or pools. We hear about it so much in the news it sounds like it's the overwhelming largest consumption problem around.

If they use so little water and power, why aren't they being built in the empty office buildings? Seems like commercial real estate was made for ... commercial activity.

The data centers in L.A. are in old bank buildings. I used to locate my servers at One Wilshire.

Water is too expensive and wasteful to just run through pipes and send out to the ocean just for cooling. Power though… the reason bank buildings are loved for data centers is that they are on two power lines so if one goes out the other is available.

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#32

Post by simonw »

DenisM wrote: post #25
simonw wrote: post #22

> For longer queries or requests that rely on AI agents or reasoning, the footprint is higher. Epoch AI estimated that a long query (7,500 words of input) could consume about 2.5 Wh, and a very long one (75,000 words) could consume 40 Wh. Those are far higher than the simple text query. One thing that's missing from almost all of these energy estimates is the impact of "agentic" queries, which were rare a year ago an…

Where did the tokens go?

I ran a couple of prompts to reverse-engineer my ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/*/sessionstore-backups/recovery.jsonlz4" file - Codex figured out how to lz4 decompress the file, then I had it interpret some base64 encoded binary data in the JSON, that session is here: https://gisthost.github.io/?986cb066dd8502cf0200a5cc6fdeb4c6

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#33

Post by dundarious »

sroussey wrote: post #26
dundarious wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was 2% for VOD streaming, and 3% for every other service that is delivered by a networked computer, I would think "wow, streaming is huge". 2% for one thing that most people hardly use at all, versus 3% for everything else on the computer, is still a remarkable statistic. I'm not making any value judgment in order to say that. I also don't think it's particularly conclusive about anything though. It doesn't on…

> 2% for one thing that most people hardly use at all AI is hardly used at all? Basically every company and consumer in the country is using it, transitively if not directly.

Every company is using it? The deli and the laundromat too? Every consumer? Maybe transitively because they use Google or what have you, but most people I know still don't really know what AI is, never mind have a puritan revulsion over using it (some people are quite performative about this on here), but they just don't use it themselves, except transitively on occasion.

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#34

Post by palmotea »

shipman05 wrote: post #10

I'm dismayed by the current political discourse on this topic. Seems like the two camps are 1) let mega corps build data centers with impunity or 2) use NIMBY tactics to oppose them in all cases. I want to see a pro-growth approach that makes the mega corps assume the costs of their negative externalities. I want to see an increased build out of renewable and nuclear energy sources. I want to see environmental protec…

I am pro-AI datacenters. I just think they should all be built in Atherton and the Hamptons, with the stipulation they're only allowed to be built adjacent to the most expensive residential property in the area, in the way of its most impressive view.

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#35

Post by dundarious »

gruez wrote: post #30
dundarious wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was 2% for VOD streaming, and 3% for every other service that is delivered by a networked computer, I would think "wow, streaming is huge". 2% for one thing that most people hardly use at all, versus 3% for everything else on the computer, is still a remarkable statistic. I'm not making any value judgment in order to say that. I also don't think it's particularly conclusive about anything though. It doesn't on…

>that most people hardly use at all Speak for yourself. For "most people", "streaming" is basically TV for them, and the average american watches 2.6 hours per day [1]. It's probably safe to say that at least half of that is "streaming" of some sort, even more if you include other types of "streaming" like music streaming. Moreover nowadays even if they're not plopped in front of a TV, they're watching short form vid…

I was referring to AI in that statement, I wrote it somewhat poorly.

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#36

Post by ggreer »

xnx wrote: post #8

Our World in Data is great, but this article would've been improved if it offered a chart that offered a comparison to it's leading "1.5% of global electricity number". For example: 7% to 10% of all global electricity is consumed by air conditioning. It's not hard to think of relatively small interventions that could save 1.5% of global energy use annually.

Increasing global electricity production by 1.5% (or 500 terawatt-hours) would also be a solution. Production from solar power increased by 600TWh from 2024-2025 and its rate of adoption is increasing as costs go down, so this doesn't seem like a problem worth worrying about.

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#37

Post by ggreer »

chrisgd wrote: post #17

We all just look at energy as a price. I think more people are concerned if our prices will go up, not how much energy it uses. The bigger question is water. How much water do they use? Is it potable to begin with? Is it usable after? Will they drive prices up. These are one time builds with minimal jobs created after for a tech that could end my career. If I lose my job, I don’t also want to have no water and higher…

The talk about AI water usage exists because in Karen Hao’s book Empire of AI, she got water usage wrong by three orders of magnitude.[1] For data centers that use water cooling, it's almost always non-potable water, and it's usually returned to the body of water it was pumped out of (though slightly warmer).

If you're worried about water consumption, things like golf courses and farm subsidies for water-intensive crops are much bigger issues.

1. https://blog.andymasley.com/p/empire-of-ai-is-wildly-mislead...

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#38

Post by sroussey »

fxwin wrote: post #16
axus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they use so little water and power, why aren't they being built in the empty office buildings? Seems like commercial real estate was made for ... commercial activity.

Nobody is saying that they use "so little water and power", just that the average person has no clue about the orders of magnitude at which anything outside of a private household uses these things, including things they previously didn't really have a problem with (like golf courses or almond farms) Most people just hear and their brain goes "damn, that must be a lot, i don't use nearly that much at home"

Water usage for a data center is nowhere near any agricultural use (which is subsidized in California so they aren’t incentivized to change much). Data centers don’t need water at all. It’s just the municipality offering cheaper way to cool by offering water cheaper than power for cooling.

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#39

Post by Abh1Works »

Something I havent heard alot of people talk about is meat. I dont think you can be against data centers, but also buy cheap meat. I understand food != compute, and thats a fact. BUT the same people who are protesting against AI data centers are the same people who fly every year, eat steak in every other dinner, and generally indulge in activities that are bad for the planet (and theres no acknowledgement).

Re: How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

#40

Post by reticulates »

shipman05 wrote: post #10

I'm dismayed by the current political discourse on this topic. Seems like the two camps are 1) let mega corps build data centers with impunity or 2) use NIMBY tactics to oppose them in all cases. I want to see a pro-growth approach that makes the mega corps assume the costs of their negative externalities. I want to see an increased build out of renewable and nuclear energy sources. I want to see environmental protec…

Democracy isn't to blame, capitalism is. The mega corps have every incentive to dodge the costs of their negative externalities and they have them money to lobby for that. The "reasonable" citizen supporting growth with caveats will be drowned out by the mega corp and their mega wallets. The loud NIMBYs are the only group that have any chance of stopping the negative externalities which they achieve by blocking the growth. Your enemy isn't the NIMBY, your enemy is the mega corp, the NIMBY is your ally, they are the backstop.
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