Kinda proving that these are a bad deal for communities - very few jobs and tax revenues, but enjoy the increased asthma and cancer we all get to pay for.
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How AI labs are solving the power problem
201–210 of 270 posts
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#202>>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.
It's because it's part of a more general pattern where bad things like this are preferentially done to black people. It's the same with highway locations. For some reason, when choosing where to demolish to build a highway, they prefer to demolish neighbourhoods with mostly black people.
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
What's uncomfortable is not the racism claim, but that the argument is merely a conjecture. It's lazy and dishonest. More importantly, this line of argument tends to shut down intelligent conversation, which this forum is about.
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Battery capacity is still better at short duration shifting- milliseconds, minutes- all night is tough. The xAI mega pack can only do 4 hours according to the article.
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's because in the US historically black neighborhoods have a unique history of racism and disinvestment. Here's an article about what happened literally where I'm sitting: https://kingneighborhood.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BLEE... Stories like this played all all over the US. Read up on Robert Moses for example. Not that you intended it, but your comment veers close to the sort of "why do black people always t…
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but the flip side of that argument is that whenever you do see higher investment and better amenities in a historically marginalized neighborhood, that gets loudly deplored by faux-progressive activists as harmful "gentrification" and "changing the character" of the neighborhood. Y'all should pick one stance or the other; you can't have it both ways!
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because in the US historically black neighborhoods have a unique history of racism and disinvestment. Here's an article about what happened literally where I'm sitting: https://kingneighborhood.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BLEE... Stories like this played all all over the US. Read up on Robert Moses for example. Not that you intended it, but your comment veers close to the sort of "why do black people always t…
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but the flip side of that argument is that whenever you do see higher investment and better amenities in a historically marginalized neighborhood, that gets loudly deplored by faux-progressive activists as harmful "gentrification" and "changing the character" of the neighborhood. Y'all should pick one stance or the other; you can't have it both ways!
So the thing about "Ya'll should ..." is that it's often mistaking "Group A and Group B hold conflicting beliefs but share a characteristic" with "Group C, all the people with this characteristic, all exhibit an incoherent belief structure".
For example suppose you apply this to the US Senate. So instead of Group A (Democrats and a those who caucus with them) and Group B (Republicans) we instead think there's a single Group C, Senators. Now their behaviour seems incoherent, this Group C seems to hold contradictory opinions and behaves irrationally, why can't they get their act together? The actual answer is that we misunderstood and they're not a single coherent group so that's why they don't act that way.
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#207So all the predictable arguments aside...
Why is no one talking about the "other grid" capacity here?
Natural gas at this scale cannot be delivered by truck. It's piped in direct from fields, typically.
When do we run out of natural gas "grid" capacity in these locations? I can't imagine we're that overbuilt compared to the electrical grid itself?
The big freeze in Texas is a recent example of the natural gas grid having localized "brownouts" due to a few factors - one of which being the demand of all the natural gas peakers trying to fire at once.
Seems like this is the next infrastructure piece to have a supply crunch to me? There are places (North Dakota) so contranstrained by capacity to deliver gas to the "grid" that they simply flare it off because it's cheaper to pay the government to do that vs. lay pipe. This implies to me that natural gas is about to become more valuable.
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because in the US historically black neighborhoods have a unique history of racism and disinvestment. Here's an article about what happened literally where I'm sitting: https://kingneighborhood.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BLEE... Stories like this played all all over the US. Read up on Robert Moses for example. Not that you intended it, but your comment veers close to the sort of "why do black people always t…
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but the flip side of that argument is that whenever you do see higher investment and better amenities in a historically marginalized neighborhood, that gets loudly deplored by faux-progressive activists as harmful "gentrification" and "changing the character" of the neighborhood. Y'all should pick one stance or the other; you can't have it both ways!
You're attributing views to me I do not hold.
And frankly, you characterization of those views makes clear you're not interested in actual answers.
The primary issue with gentrification in historically black neighborhoods is that owners face the dilemma of having to leave their community to capture the increased property values.
For example, I live near the oldest black church in the PNW. Many of the older congregation members live in the area, and have low mobility. If we don't build a mix of housing that addresses their needs in downsizing, they end up having to effectively exile themselves from the community they've lived within for decades. They can't simply "move somewhere lower cost" without dramatic changes to their entire social world, just at an age where keeping those social ties takes a lot of effort.
Re: How AI labs are solving the power problem
#209>>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.
i’m curious, are you skeptical xai would wiggle around regulations and pollute a city?
by “agenda pushing” do you mean those who have an agenda to have breathable air? because that seems like an entirely reasonable agenda to me.