I wonder if AI will be the thing that gets Texas to finally connect to the rest of the country’s regional power grids rather than being isolated to one state.
Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
201–210 of 210 posts
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#202Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys? I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is ben…
I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each takin…
Well, there's an admin killing clean energy so I think we know where that anger belongs. Dems suck too, but what can you do. One is worse, clearly.
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#203I wonder if AI will be the thing that gets Texas to finally connect to the rest of the country’s regional power grids rather than being isolated to one state.
I dunno. Everything's Bigger, Better, Whatever. I don't wish for anyone to suffer, but I did think it was funny when they lost power in a winter storm and I did think it was funny when Ted Cruz tried to abandon them and was caught.
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is opposing data center construction bad? People need housing, if there isn't enough affordable housing around, then opposing it can be bad. But also people who live there should have a say in what gets built near them, since they have to live with it.
People need infrastructure. Data centers are infrastructure.
AI companies need infrastructure. Most people don't care.
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#205Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys? I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is ben…
I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each takin…
People like Zuckerberg, Brin, Page and Musk have majority voting control of these companies.
They have amassed incredible power and vast fortunes in a time and era when doing so could only be done with great damage to the environment. Despite years of talk and superficial motions towards these people have completely pivoted that signaling and have doubled down on endeavours that cause even more ecological destruction.
They have the power and means to do the right thing.
They chose not to.
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each takin…
Well, there's an admin killing clean energy so I think we know where that anger belongs. Dems suck too, but what can you do. One is worse, clearly.
As much as I wish it were different I think this would be the outcome under any administration. Natural gas in the USA is just stupidly cheap inflation adjusted, is energy dense, power plants require few land resources, pipeline infrastructure exists, robust and deep supply chain, etc. I don't hold much hope of the USA kicking the habit as it is such a competitive advantage. If we don't burn it locally it will be exported at a huge margin for geopolitical advantage. 1/3 of the CO2 reductions in the US power sector are due to renewables, 2/3 are from natural gas. Renewables would need to be backed up by additional gas capacity, although the average capacity factor would be reduced with a more robust renewable build out.
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building stuff is good stewardship. We complain about NIMBYs. But with a few relatively modest regulations data centers can be quite friendly. They don’t generate traffic, congestion, etc. They don’t strain school or police infrastructure. Basically need some noise regulations. But the NIMBYs will kill it.
Data centers would be a benefit if my power bill and property taxes didn’t jump to subsidize the tax breaks my city gave them. I don’t want to pay for infrastructure multi-billion dollar companies should be funding.
Can you name any place where property tax rates on other residents were increased as a result of a tax break to a data center compared to the baseline of the data center not being there?
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#208Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys? I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is ben…
I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each takin…
Are these companies expending any of their lobbying efforts or funds on this problem? Or are they just going to the easiest option? I'm not shedding any tears for the AI companies and their infra challenges. They're the ones driving a huge delta increase in energy use and emissions this coming decade, so their actions merit scrutiny and they are responsible for their actions and the resulting emissions that we will all suffer from. If I had my way, we'd stack an enormous carbon tax on all of them to force their hand.
Look, these companies are the ones selling a story of being benevolent (notwithstanding AI killing us all or putting everyone out of a job). And Anthropic is explicitly a B-corp. How does any of that square with taking any compute they can at any environmental cost?
The Memphis case to me is very illuminating: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260811-memphis-ai-da...
But it's ok, they're EAs and gave $1M to a Memphis nonprofit on 'AI education', while spending a $1B/ month renting Colossus:
https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/anthropic-gifts-memphis-no...
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building stuff is good stewardship. We complain about NIMBYs. But with a few relatively modest regulations data centers can be quite friendly. They don’t generate traffic, congestion, etc. They don’t strain school or police infrastructure. Basically need some noise regulations. But the NIMBYs will kill it.
This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so. Building a data center near homes and running your incredibly loud gas turbine generators 24/7 for months, destroying the property values and quality of life for the people living there, is a giant middle finger to the community they've…
> This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so.
The vast, overwhelming majority of data centers source power from the grid rather than continuously operating gas turbines, and the obvious response to the ones that do is to have a moratorium on gas turbines rather than data centers.
Re: Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citizens having a say in what is going on in their neighborhood is why housing in the bay area isn't expensive, they use that say to prevent the construction of new housing.
Prop 13 is why housing is expensive in California. Full stop. It was a bandaid over a wound and now the body has sepsis.
If that's supposed to explain it then why is housing also expensive in Massachusetts or Colorado?
It's ~18% more in California than Massachusetts but ~313% more in Massachusetts than Oklahoma.