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What's slowing down the AI buildout

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Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#121

Post by ssl-3 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #118
ssl-3 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning an EV doesn't necessitate spending a few grand to have a fast charger installed. They charge fine from a regular 110v US wall outlet -- they just do it slowly. And by "slowly," I mean: Somewhere in the realm of 2-5 miles per hour. It's not fast at all. But that's compatible with many lifestyles, wherein: The car is probably just sitting there at home for 12 or more hours per day, anyway. If the round-trip comm…

Even people who have a round trip commute of 30 miles drive other places than work on average days and have days when they drive 2 and 3x as much as normal days every time enough greater than average days line up you have to contend with finding a charger which gets more contentious as more electric cars exist AND as they age in the hands of people who cannot afford to just replace car or battery.

So all of these problems are intractable? There is no way that any of them can be dealt with at all?

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#122

Post by Schiendelman »

noosphr wrote: post #115
rconti wrote: post #68

Remember when we didn't have enough electricity for electric cars?

We still don't. Until free/at cost car charging is provided at work when the sun shines you're just moving the place where combustion happens. This may be a worth while trade in downtowns where the main form of car pollution is engine exhaust at an average of 20mph.

All three employers I've had over the last ten years now offer free charging at work. New houses everywhere have been putting in extra circuits for charging for years. Apartment buildings are commonly built with chargers now, and older ones are starting to see retrofits.

Electricity generation is almost always much, much cleaner than burning fuel in an internal combustion engine, and has been since long before EVs became available.

I think you may need to reset some of your assumptions. :)

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#123

Post by karahime »

nibbleyou wrote: post #55
rayiner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its only expensive because its been regulated to death. In terms of potential energy output in a given area its tops.

Unregulated nuclear energy is only going to show us how unsafe it is.

Most of the US's problems on this have little to do with putting too much priority on safety. There are countries that show that you can have a sane regulatory process and still get well priced nuclear. France from the 70s through the 90s and South Korea are the classic examples. Neither compromised on what's actually needed, but both cleared the way on redundant walls that don't demonstrate or stop anything bad from happening. You can achieve both greater nuclear safety and reduced process burden through standardization, which is how most places that have done it got it done.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#124

Post by Schiendelman »

buckle8017 wrote: post #77
rconti wrote: post #68

Remember when we didn't have enough electricity for electric cars?

Have you seen the price of electricity? That's with only about 5% of cars being electric. We've consumed nearly all of the slack in transmission capacity. I'm expecting transmission costs to balloon.

The price of electricity in Seattle has effectively dropped - we went from a flat 13.4c/kWh to an opt-in time of use system with an overnight rate of 8c/kWh. My bill dropped by a third.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#125

Post by Schiendelman »

cdrnsf wrote: post #79

Apparently they're fast tracking gas fired power plant approvals, so we can expect production to increase and the climate crisis to worsen. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/donald-trump-ep...

These gas fired plants are just not that meaningful, it's too little to be a big deal - we're limited by gas supply and pricing. Renewables are already most new generation: https://environmentamerica.org/center/updates/renewable-ener...

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#126

Post by Schiendelman »

pitched wrote: post #17
onion2k wrote: post #5

The primary bottleneck to this growth is the availability of electricity. The bottleneck for building some AI datacentres and switching them on is electricity, sure, but that's not what drives growth. There also needs to be demand for the additional capacity; people need to be waiting for capacity to catch up so they can do the useful work that grows [society|GDP|something] that they aren't doing right now. There's a…

In the Innovation Adoption Curve, we are absolutely beyond the Early Adopters phase and possibly the Early Majority. The growth rates necessarily have to start trending down because there’s no one left to sell to.

I doubt it. We're less than six months in to really good coding agents, and they keep improving. Software will eat a lot more of the business world when it's this much cheaper and faster to produce.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#127

Post by overgard »

> But if AI is a race with national security implications, they won’t be fast enough.

I really don't think this is the case. As far as I can tell there are two national security things where LLMs have some utility; mass surveilance (ick!!!) or software security. To me that does not justify a huge infrastructure buildout considering the implications of said infrastructure.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#128

Post by nradov »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #112
asdff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why are people so convinced that we need an EV charger per car at every home? We need enough high speed chargers in the right places. The average American drives 37 miles per day. That pencils out to less than 30 minutes of charging per week using current high speed standards (which will continue to drop). Your friend could take their car at 20% if they knew that they could charge quickly at their destination. We don…

I live in the SF Bay Area and the local shopping centers closest to me have zero EV chargers. California is supposedly going to mandate that all new vehicles be electric in 2035 but that's obviously a ridiculous fantasy; the deadline will be pushed back or eliminated.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#129

Post by fragmede »

wongarsu wrote: post #92
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It has to be more viable than sending GPUs to space.

Both are questionable. Tidal power is super neat in theory but we really struggle to make it viable in practice. GPUs in space are probably the lower risk option, but with even more questionable economics My preferred outlandish idea would be to put the data centers next to solar farms in the Sahara. I just don't know yet how we are going to make the batteries to power that through the night

You put mirrors in space so the sun shines at night in certain places.

Re: What's slowing down the AI buildout

#130

Post by asdff »

ssl-3 wrote: post #121
michaelmrose wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even people who have a round trip commute of 30 miles drive other places than work on average days and have days when they drive 2 and 3x as much as normal days every time enough greater than average days line up you have to contend with finding a charger which gets more contentious as more electric cars exist AND as they age in the hands of people who cannot afford to just replace car or battery.

So all of these problems are intractable? There is no way that any of them can be dealt with at all?

It falls into the bin of "tragedies of the commons we could fix with current technology but fail to sufficiently fund and support in earnest"

Really, when is the last time we overhauled our built environment and actually followed through with a comprehensive plan in the west? We couldn't even finish the interstate highway system in a time when we had seemingly great alignment towards it along with far cheaper costs. Public housing failed too. Broadband access failed. Cell service is still pretty spotty and unreliable.

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