151–160 of 308 posts
Will all these data centers really be needed in 5 or 10 years from now? The technology, compression, etc, for models are getting better and better requiring less and less H/W and power to run the same inference power. Perhaps our hunger for ever more powerful models will be enough to offset this, but I am not sure.
I expect as LLMs penetrate further, we'll see much more of it, continually running, and doing more 3D work.
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> But if what’s happening is they’re displacing previous nuclear power users onto dirtier, that’s not really reducing carbon That's not the case, because in EU (and thus Finland) electric production is under cap-and-trade. There is just no way to increase dirty electricity production in EU. Apart from political pressure to change rules, which for example Italy is doing because Italy built their grid on gas...
If I consume all the clean energy your country can produce with my data center, explain how cap and trade blocks a country from using other sources - I don’t think anyone will like news stories of people freezing to death in the winter.
Of course, would the latter happen, political actions would be done before people freeze. It will be unpredictable what the would be - allow fossil fuels "temporarily" or order datacenters to shut down during dunkelflaute? Interesting times (I would prefer less interesting times).
Generally speaking cap and trade is the most sure way to reduce emissions (emissions drop exactly at the pace the CAP drop annually) and the most cost-effective way also - the TRADE part ensures emissions are cut first by those who it easiest, while hard-to-decarbonize sectors have most time to sort their plan.
The only problem is "carbon leakage" where co2 emissions simply move to asshole countries like USA and China that do not utilize cap-and-trade. That should be dealt with hefty carbon tariffs. Oh wait, even china is building their own cap-and-trade system. Well, anyways, tariffs against the climate assholes.
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> Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK The solution is to build nuclear power stations on ships in China, then sail them to the UK and plug them in. If power prices elsewhere in the world become advantageous, sail them elsewhere and plug them in there. You still have the interconnection costs, but seaside places sometimes have high voltage connections for existing or historic power pl…
A Chinese nuke on the coast of Britain might be hard politically. Even if it's benign, you can bet the US will run an expensive campaign to discredit it in public opinion.
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At least Sweden is struggling a lot with scaling its power production, to the point where it's a problem for existing and new industries and causing some rather extreme price volatility. A lot of the green energy is from hydro dams and you can't really add new rivers to the geography to support additional industry.
>you can't really add new rivers to the geography to support additional industry. yes, you can - with all those fiords surrounded by mountains you can use excess wind/solar (your own as well as German, etc.) and pump water up a dammed fiord to generate the electricity later when no cheap excess available.
The solution works only to keep a steady production of electricity, but if the demand would require full output all the time then these "mechanical batteries" don't help.
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> Since it appears to be impossible to build anything cheaply in the UK The solution is to build nuclear power stations on ships in China, then sail them to the UK and plug them in. If power prices elsewhere in the world become advantageous, sail them elsewhere and plug them in there. You still have the interconnection costs, but seaside places sometimes have high voltage connections for existing or historic power pl…
A Chinese nuke on the coast of Britain might be hard politically. Even if it's benign, you can bet the US will run an expensive campaign to discredit it in public opinion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The company my brother works for (fairly small) is involved in the construction and maintenance of the electrical side of the data grid. Apparently they need to hire at least 20 people a month for the foreseeable future to keep up with demand, as they're already booked out with projects into 2030 or something like that. Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothin…
> Overall, it's not exactly a ton of jobs for how much money is going into them, but it isn't nothing. I’m not disputing that data center buildouts will have some localized job creation, but the net effect of all those data centers will be overwhelmingly negative on employment if everything the AI companies are saying is true
That's your original point, which is wrong since, as you admitted, data center boom is clearly creating jobs.
If you meant those jobs are offset by the negative effect of AI in general if we believe AI companies, a study by Anthropic was actively discussed here a few days ago. TLDR: they don't believe there will be mass unemployment because of AI
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Do you know the specific of which countries buying how much electricity from this plant, or just your wildly guess?
Quick Duck search away: this power plant exports energy to Estonia where energy production is 4x less CO2 efficient. Literally exporting energy right now https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
Side note: Really nice dashboard.
Will all these data centers really be needed in 5 or 10 years from now? The technology, compression, etc, for models are getting better and better requiring less and less H/W and power to run the same inference power. Perhaps our hunger for ever more powerful models will be enough to offset this, but I am not sure.
The his will likely put a strain on neighbouring countries energy supply who used to buy that surplus before. Prices will go up even more.