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How AI labs are solving the power problem

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Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#151

Post by Arn_Thor »

mucle6 wrote: post #140
guhidalg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase implies that powerful companies know that historically black neighborhoods don’t have the resources to mount a legal defense against abnormal pollution from data center generators, so the smart choice is to put all the pollution near historically black neighborhoods. The agenda, as it is every day, is how to externalize costs so that megacompanies don’t have to spend more money to keep our environment clea…

You’re conflating race with poverty. It feels racist to expect people to assume a neighborhood is 'resource poor' just because it is 'historically black'. Also, the OP explicitly states that lawsuits are pending. Clearly, the community was able to mount a legal defense

> It feels racist to expect people to assume a neighborhood is 'resource poor' just because it is 'historically black'.

Statistically poverty is correlated with race. For reasons to do with (quite recent) history.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#152

Post by trickyager »

oklahomasports wrote: post #132
miltonlost wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Getting a permit for 15 turbines after having illegally used 35 turbines that then poisoned the air for the residences around the turbines" is a clever way to achieve the goal? I wouldn't call doing a blatant illegal action "clever", but rather sociopathic. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/xai-gets-permits-for-15-na... https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

Youve posted the same think like 4 times now

I'm not sure if this matters. The illegality of the article's central premise seems like an important point excluded from the article.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#153

Post by lefra »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #138

Does anyone know a really good source for basic information estimating what % of global carbon emissions come from AI training and AI inference, both 1) now and 2) in the future if we believe AI companies' capacity projections? I would really like to read a detailed analysis of this avoids both AI hype and anti-AI hysteria. It's an important question but it excites strong reactions that tend to cloud the facts. Yes,…

US grid carbon intensity is 0.384 gCO2/kWh (source: ourworldindata). US datacenter energy use in 2023: 176 TWh (excluding crypto, source US congress). How much of that is AI, I couldn't find.

So that's 67Mt CO2, I hope I haven't misplaced my decimal point, please double check. That would be 1.3% of the 5Gt of CO2 the US emits per year.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48646#_Toc207199546

For global emission and future trends the IEA estimates about 500TWh/year globally today, and 1000TWh/year in 2030 (base scenario). Assuming these use the current US grid carbon intensity, that would be about 200MtCO2 today, 400 in 2030. Global CO2 emissions today are 40Gt/year, so that would be 0.5% today, and 1% in 2030 (if global emissions stay stable).

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-data-c...

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#154

Post by Dylan16807 »

discreteevent wrote: post #63
beepbooptheory wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "faster" really what we are talking about right now? It could be a lot faster to take a helicopter to work everyday too, versus riding a bike. Also, why are people moving mountains to make huge, power obliterating datacenters if actually "its fine, its not that much"?

> It could be a lot faster to take a helicopter to work everyday too, versus riding a bike. Great analogy.

It's not a good analogy at all, because of what they said about mundane hardware. They're specifically not talking about any kind of ridiculous wattage situation, they're talking about single GPUs that need fewer watts than a human in an office to make text faster than a human, or that need 2-10x the watts to make video a thousand times faster.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#155

Post by mucle6 »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #151
mucle6 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re conflating race with poverty. It feels racist to expect people to assume a neighborhood is 'resource poor' just because it is 'historically black'. Also, the OP explicitly states that lawsuits are pending. Clearly, the community was able to mount a legal defense

> It feels racist to expect people to assume a neighborhood is 'resource poor' just because it is 'historically black'. Statistically poverty is correlated with race. For reasons to do with (quite recent) history.

Statistics are not a license to assume.

Crime rates also statistically correlate with demographics, but if I assume a specific person is a criminal based on that stat, I would (rightly) be called racist.

Expecting people to assume 'historically black' == 'poor' similarly feels racist.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#156

Post by renewiltord »

g8oz wrote: post #101

>>xAI entirely bypassed the grid and generated power onsite, using truck-mounted gas turbines and engines. These generators polluted the nearby historically black neighborhoods in Memphis Tennessee with nitrogen oxides. Residents are afraid to open their windows, with the elderly, children and those suffering from conditions like COPD particularly affected. Lawsuits alleging environmental racism are pending. xAI says…

[flagged]

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#157

Post by renewiltord »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #151
mucle6 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re conflating race with poverty. It feels racist to expect people to assume a neighborhood is 'resource poor' just because it is 'historically black'. Also, the OP explicitly states that lawsuits are pending. Clearly, the community was able to mount a legal defense

> It feels racist to expect people to assume a neighborhood is 'resource poor' just because it is 'historically black'. Statistically poverty is correlated with race. For reasons to do with (quite recent) history.

[flagged]

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#158

Post by [deleted] »

badc0ffee wrote: post #124
skywhopper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas furnaces and stoves are known polluters of indoor air: https://www.psehealthyenergy.org/gas-stoves-and-indoor-air-p... Large gas plants are probably relatively clean overall, but the temporary, portable gas generators used by eg the xAI datacenter are not as tightly regulated and aren’t inspected or controlled in the same way. Given the particular corporate agent involved, I’d be surprised if any care at all were…

That is true of gas stoves, but gas furnaces don't exhaust into the house.

[deleted]

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#159

Post by [deleted] »

jordanb wrote: post #144
skywhopper wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the people who decided where to locate it and the people in government who could do something to stop it make decisions about how much they care based on those folks’ skin color. If those generators were placed near a rich white neighborhood, the government response would be wildly different. Mississippi in particular is well known at the state government level to actively choose not to enforce environmental…

To be fair they would definitely do this to rural and/or poor white people too.

[deleted]

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#160

Post by kube-system »

badc0ffee wrote: post #124
skywhopper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas furnaces and stoves are known polluters of indoor air: https://www.psehealthyenergy.org/gas-stoves-and-indoor-air-p... Large gas plants are probably relatively clean overall, but the temporary, portable gas generators used by eg the xAI datacenter are not as tightly regulated and aren’t inspected or controlled in the same way. Given the particular corporate agent involved, I’d be surprised if any care at all were…

That is true of gas stoves, but gas furnaces don't exhaust into the house.

Lower efficiency gas furnaces don’t have a completely sealed exhaust and rely on a draft for pollutant evacuation. This usually works good enough when properly installed and maintained but can be a source of indoor air pollution. Although typically minimal.

And there are also decorative and/or supplemental gas heating devices which exhaust into the home.

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