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

johnquigginblog.substack.com

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

#21

Post by taeric »

palata wrote: post #9

> But we have been here before. Predictions of this kind have been made ever since the emergence of the Internet I don't think I live in the same world as the author. Ever since the emergence of the Internet, "stuff related to IT" has been using more and more energy. It's like saying "5G won't use as much electricity as we are told! In fact 5G is more efficient than 4G". Yep, except that 5G enables us to use a lot mo…

Do we use more electricity because of 5G? I confess I'd assume modern phones and repeater networks use less power than older ones. Even at large.

I can easily agree that phones that have internet capabilities use more, as a whole, than those that didn't. The infrastructure needs were very different. But, especially if you are comparing to 4G technology, much of that infrastructure already had to distribute content that was driving the extra use.

I would think this would be like cars. If you had taken the estimates of how much pollution vehicles did 40 years ago and assume that that was going to be constant even as the number of cars went up, you'd probably assume we are living in the worst air imaginable. Instead, even gas cars got far better as time went on.

Doesn't mean the problem went away, of course. And some sources of the polution, like tires, did get worse as total makeup as we scaled up. Hopefully we can find ways to make that better, as well.

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

#22

Post by Majestic121 »

palata wrote: post #9

> But we have been here before. Predictions of this kind have been made ever since the emergence of the Internet I don't think I live in the same world as the author. Ever since the emergence of the Internet, "stuff related to IT" has been using more and more energy. It's like saying "5G won't use as much electricity as we are told! In fact 5G is more efficient than 4G". Yep, except that 5G enables us to use a lot mo…

This is countered in the article.

"Yet throughout this period, the actual share of electricity use accounted for by the IT sector has hovered between 1 and 2 per cent, accounting for less than 1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions."

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

#23

Post by PTOB »

JohnFen wrote: post #3

> By contrast, the unglamorous and largely disregarded business of making cement accounts for around 7 per cent of global emissions. Oh, that's not a good example of the point they're trying to make. The emissions from concrete are a point of major concern and are frequently discussed. A ton of effort is being put into trying to reduce the problem, and there are widespread calls to reduce the use of the material as m…

Has he considered exactly how much concrete is needed to build a datacenter campus?

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

#24

Post by blain »

pwarner wrote: post #11

Hopefully the panic continues and we get a lot of extra electricity, ideally via nuclear, wind, solar - and then if AI is a flop at least we get big progress on global warming.

I thought you will say a cheaper energy but global warming works too.

Also its called climate change now.

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

#26

Post by Kye »

Mistletoe wrote: post #10
dsr_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only useful point that they make is that predictions about unending growth are always wrong in detail. Every actual hockey stick turns into a sigmoid, then falls. Meanwhile, a new hockey stick comes along.

But AI training has been behaving like Bitcoin mining, which constantly increases the difficulty. AI companies so far have been having to release costlier and costlier models to keep up with the Joneses. We don’t want the final iteration to be a Dyson sphere around the sun or the black hole at the center of our galaxy so Gemini 10,000 Pro can tell us “Let there be light.” Or maybe we do, I don’t know.

The previous 9,999 Geminis promised they'd solved entropy and said the words with no real effect so people stopped listening to it. It's very lonely now.

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

#27

Post by maerF0x0 »

AI helped me fix my own car, no new parts, no driving to the stealership, no comfy lobby to light, no extra building to heat, no IT system to book me into...

It's my opinion AI, like many technologies since the 1950s, will lead to more dematerialization of the economy meaning it will net net save electricity and be "greener".

This is an extension of what steven pinker says in Enlightenment now.

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

#28

Post by jerf »

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 this not on the basis of hypothetical speculation, but on the basis of billions of real dollars being spent on real power capacity for real data centers by real people who'd really rather keep the money in question. Previous hypotheses not backed by billions of dollars are not comparable predictions.

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

#29

Post by Arnt »

palata wrote: post #9

> But we have been here before. Predictions of this kind have been made ever since the emergence of the Internet I don't think I live in the same world as the author. Ever since the emergence of the Internet, "stuff related to IT" has been using more and more energy. It's like saying "5G won't use as much electricity as we are told! In fact 5G is more efficient than 4G". Yep, except that 5G enables us to use a lot mo…

Nothing forces the rebound effect to dominate. Computers grow cheaper, we rebound by buying ones with higher capacity, but the overall price still shrinks. I bet the computer you used to post today cost much less than Colossus.

Similarly, nothing forces AI or 5G to use more power than whatever you would have done instead. You can stream films via 5G that you might not have done via 4G, but you might've streamed via WLAN or perhaps cat5 cable instead. The rebound effect doesn't force 5G to use more power than WLAN/GBE. Or more power than driving to a cinema, if you want to compare really widely. The film you stream makes it comparable, not?

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

#30

Post by Diggsey »

PTOB wrote: post #23
JohnFen wrote: post #3

> By contrast, the unglamorous and largely disregarded business of making cement accounts for around 7 per cent of global emissions. Oh, that's not a good example of the point they're trying to make. The emissions from concrete are a point of major concern and are frequently discussed. A ton of effort is being put into trying to reduce the problem, and there are widespread calls to reduce the use of the material as m…

Has he considered exactly how much concrete is needed to build a datacenter campus?

Essentially zero as a fraction of global concrete usage...
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