AI won't use as much electricity as we are told (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: AI won't use as much electricity as we are told (2024)

#121

Post by NoPicklez » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 1:35 AM UTC

Not the greatest article, computing power consumption has absolutely increased and muddying it with greenhouse emissions isn't the point. It's still an increase in electricity, the way in which we supply it doesn't change that.

The average desktop computer uses much more power than mentioned, you only need to look at premium desktop components to see how much extra power those components require than compared to previous years.

High end graphics cards decades ago required only around 155w, nowadays the average GPU is pulling 300w and upwards of 400-500w. Data centers command significantly more power than they used to and will only increase with AI usage.

The International Energy Agency shows that global data center electricity usage has almost doubled since 2020 and is projected to double again.

Re: AI won't use as much electricity as we are told (2024)

#122

Post by dmd » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 2:03 AM UTC

acaloiar wrote: post #108

jerf wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not future demand, it's current demand. Microsoft has already said they're power blocked rather than chip blocked. Please note how I say current demand, and don't over project as to what my opinion about future demand is. I think there's a small, but reasonable chance that demand will sink for some reason or another in the next few years, and I think there's a pretty decent chance that in the next five years som…

> It's not future demand, it's current demand. Microsoft has already said they're power blocked rather than chip blocked. This is not me doubting you, but your comment will carry considerably more weight if you provide a reference to Microsoft's statement.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nvidia-stock...

Re: AI won't use as much electricity as we are told (2024)

#123

Post by dinfinity » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #28

It's been a while, but I don't recall any of the dotcom startups making deals with nuclear energy companies to buy out entire nuclear power stations: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-isla... And that's just an example, there are many power-related deals of similar magnitude. The companies building out capacity certainly believe that AI is going to use as much power as we are told. We are told t…

1. Microsoft is not a "dotcom startup". We live in a different, much more consolidated tech world of companies that either balloon to become behemoths or are bought by existing behemoths.

2. Power and data centers can be used for other things than AI.

3. They might turn out to be wrong and not need the deal/power. For companies sitting on a shitload of cash that would be an inconvenience whereas not investing and then later having to beg for electricity amounts to losing the race.

Re: AI won't use as much electricity as we are told (2024)

#124

Post by Arnt » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 1:00 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #113

Arnt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're telling me that graphs like these always point upwards, right? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... My own impression is that sometimes the aggregate total grows and sometimes it doesn't. And when it grows, sometimes that's because the rebound effect dominates.

Read the part in your link that says "Here, energy refers to primary energy". Primary energy in the US ignores the primary energy used in China for goods that end up being imported in the US.

I googled briefly now, and found https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/china. Looking at that (note that the X axis is not zero) it's clear that Chinese imports cannot account for any significant part of the changes to the the USA graph on https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...