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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

#191

Post by mucle6 »

dsr_ wrote: post #182
mucle6 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Historically black" is a euphemism -- that's a term that makes people feel better about something awful -- which refers to the fact that for the majority of the last three hundred years people have been systematically, governmentally, socially and personally discriminated against because of the color of their skin, and that racism led to massive inequity reflected in wealth, income, education and standards of living…

[flagged]

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#192

Post by pastel8739 »

cl0ckt0wer wrote: post #183
dzonga wrote: post #181

the rather uninformed question I had: but answered in comments below was why not solar ? Yeah Hydrocarbons have no competition if you have to deploy power quickly 1.2GW is a small turbine - compared to the land & battery needed for Solar. how about Gas ? if you're building in the middle of nowhere ? & there's no gas lines ?

If you just paid a jillion dollars for a shiny new AI datacenter, would you be ok with just running it during the day?

Tesla is a battery company

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#193

Post by strange_quark »

Apreche wrote: post #6

> An AI cloud can generate revenue of $10-12 billion dollars per gigawatt, annually. Citation needed.

Even if that’s true, that seems like a putrid number, no?

Assuming a single 1GW the data center runs 24/7 365, it’s consuming 8.76 TwH per year. Only being able to generate $10-$12B in revenue (not profit) per year while consuming as much electricity as the entire state of Hawaii (1.5M people) seems awful.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#194

Post by foobarqux »

ACCount37 wrote: post #176
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…

These "gas turbines" are located next door to the Allen Combined Cycle Plant, a grid scale natural gas power plant with 1.1GW capacity. It's there to power a nearby steel mill. That's the kind of neighborhood xAI has put its cluster in. I'm incredibly skeptical of any claim that xAI's power use is putting a dent in the local environment, and "environmental racism" just reeks of the usual agenda pushing.

That plant is subject to regulations. The xAI turbines have evaded regulations by claiming that they are portable.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#195

Post by foobarqux »

ACCount37 wrote: post #172
badc0ffee wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit skeptical about this. I know diesel generators make these kind of pollutants, but I haven't heard the same about natural gas. My city has a big NG facility downtown that pipes heated water to a bunch of buildings, and it is surrounded by condos. I've never heard anything about it impacting the air (other than CO2 which is a global and not local issue). Every building here (except for those connected to dist…

Check the map. There's an operational industrial scale natural gas power plant next door to xAI facility. And it was there for what, a decade already? Before it, there was a coal power plant there too. Basically, it looks like the whole "xAI poisoning black neighborhoods" thing is the usual FUD by the usual agenda pushers.

That plant is subject to regulation and the xAI turbines evade regulations by claiming they are "portable".

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#196

Post by ladidahh »

mhb wrote: post #112
ladidahh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, we have a living history of discriminatory policies based on race https://www.thesidewalksymposium.com/blog/the-enduring-shado... , here is a quick overview of redlining in Memphis

Yeah. I've heard about it. So this wouldn't be a problem if it affected a different group of people?

It would be the exact same problem, and equally bad.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#197

Post by jLaForest »

mucle6 wrote: post #125
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…

The phrasing 'historically black neighborhoods' feels like it pushes a specific agenda rather than just addressing the pollution. It implies that if this were happening near a non black neighborhood, it wouldn’t be as egregious, which is a strange moral stance. Also 'historically' is irrelevant. Pollution hurts the people living there now.

That's a misreading of the term in the same way saying that the phrase 'black lives matter' imply white lives don't matter

The point is that this type of environmental pollution only is allowed to happen in poor areas that are disproportionately black because of decades of systemic racism like red lining.

If that concept makes you uncomfortable, that's a good thing, it should. But you should resist the urge to deny the existence of ideas that are inconvenient

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#198

Post by mhb »

ladidahh wrote: post #196
mhb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I've heard about it. So this wouldn't be a problem if it affected a different group of people?

It would be the exact same problem, and equally bad.

I agree. Which is why I think that detail is not relevant and just a distraction.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#199

Post by badc0ffee »

ACCount37 wrote: post #172
badc0ffee wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit skeptical about this. I know diesel generators make these kind of pollutants, but I haven't heard the same about natural gas. My city has a big NG facility downtown that pipes heated water to a bunch of buildings, and it is surrounded by condos. I've never heard anything about it impacting the air (other than CO2 which is a global and not local issue). Every building here (except for those connected to dist…

Check the map. There's an operational industrial scale natural gas power plant next door to xAI facility. And it was there for what, a decade already? Before it, there was a coal power plant there too. Basically, it looks like the whole "xAI poisoning black neighborhoods" thing is the usual FUD by the usual agenda pushers.

I just looked, and you're right. It's in an industrial area several km from homes, and near existing NG facilities, including one where they flare gas.

https://www.facebook.com/abacustrategic/posts/pfbid02rrUwoWM...

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fYwcSi8vfPBnsYeK7

I don't doubt that it is a source of pollution, but I agree that this is overblown in the same was as the claims that datacentres are using up all the fresh water.

Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem

#200

Post by dale_glass »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #154
discreteevent wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's a Framework Desktop motherboard. I believe the CPU on that maxes out somewhere around 150W.
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