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Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

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Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#61

Post by anonylizard »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #25
listless wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting if one of the major benefits of AI is it pushing us to clean energy

Amazon already have a datacenter with an attached nuclear power plant, and Microsoft have contracted with Helion for future delivery of a fusion power plant (assuming it materializes). https://www.ans.org/news/article-5842/amazon-buys-nuclearpow... Zuckerberg says part of the problem is not just the amount of power needed for a SOTA AI-training datacenter (~1GW), but the fact that you need the power at that particula…

The huge solar power plants in China are in western China, aka deserts and frozen desert mountains, aka you can't build data centers there either. And shipping that power across thousands of KMs is as hard for China as it is for the US.

Hence China is still building coal plants, and won't really stop. Especially if it means the future of AI is being bottlenecked by it.

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#62

Post by Rodeoclash »

bastard_op wrote: post #11

They'll just buy some more fake carbon credits, tell everyone it'll be alright and the planet won't overheat now. Nothing to see here, move along.

What's going to get us first? The climate change or the AGI with all the safe guards removed. Tune in over the next few decades (years?) to find out!

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#63

Post by highwaylights »

jonas21 wrote: post #47
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #28

The energy consumption would not be a problem if it was renewable energy . Ironically, we already have plenty of renewable energy in the US, it’s just there, sitting, waiting to be hooked up to the grid and not being used productively. The US currently has 947 GW of renewable generation capacity that is not hooked up to the grid [1]. To put that number into perspective, the US currently has 1160 GW of generation capa…

> Ironically, we already have plenty of renewable energy in the US, it’s just there, sitting, waiting to be hooked up to the grid and not being used productively. The 947 GW is the total proposed capacity for solar projects that are in various planning stages. They have not been built yet, and most of them will never be built -- historically only about 14% of proposed capacity ends up entering service [1]. This isn't…

I know nothing about this topic, but it seems like maybe this comment and the parent don't disagree.

If most power generation is blocked by a lack of connectivity to the grid then it would stand to reason that most projects are abandoned or fail as they've no path to entering service (unless I've misunderstood).

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#64

Post by IggleSniggle »

Syonyk wrote: post #33
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon already have a datacenter with an attached nuclear power plant, and Microsoft have contracted with Helion for future delivery of a fusion power plant (assuming it materializes). https://www.ans.org/news/article-5842/amazon-buys-nuclearpow... Zuckerberg says part of the problem is not just the amount of power needed for a SOTA AI-training datacenter (~1GW), but the fact that you need the power at that particula…

Where are you getting your information? There are many solar plants in US well in excess of 58MW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Mountain_Solar_Facility is one, at 800MW. It was at 58MW in 2010... which might confuse a LLM, though.

Thank god for comments like this. I find it truly disturbing how much people are treating LLMs like fact-machines. They are pattern matching machines that match using whatever information they have that matches best.

It's closer to improv jazz than to factual authority; still super wonderful, and worthwhile listening to, but not really for the purpose of learning how the original sounded when it was first recorded. Sure, you might get a sense of the original, but that's all it is: an impression. When you ask for facts, you get an impressionist render of facts, which sometimes, maybe even often times, accurately depict the Truth. But sometimes they depict the Truth the way an artist depicts the truth: if it feels right, it's right.

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#65

Post by cesarb »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #28

The energy consumption would not be a problem if it was renewable energy . Ironically, we already have plenty of renewable energy in the US, it’s just there, sitting, waiting to be hooked up to the grid and not being used productively. The US currently has 947 GW of renewable generation capacity that is not hooked up to the grid [1]. To put that number into perspective, the US currently has 1160 GW of generation capa…

> The energy consumption would not be a problem if it was renewable energy.

That would only mean that this renewable energy would no longer be available for other uses. Like, for instance, replacing or reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#66

Post by bravura »

muglug wrote: post #10
bravura wrote: post #3

I mean, cool? Really? Remind me how much carbon is emitted by workers being forced to commute to serve coffee to social media managers who are selling fast fashion to influencers?

1. This is whataboutism 2. According to the EPA's greenhouse gas calculator, this year's increase is equivalent to an extra 800,000 gas-powered cars on the road.

No, it's not really whataboutism at all.

Whataboutism is when two entities are doing shitty stuff with roughly commensurate negative impact.

Versus dinging an endeavor that might have net positive impact (AI might REDUCE environmental impact) against forces that 100x larger and have no positive direction, it's actually just: pointing out when journalism uses a relative value to make a tempest in a teapot and distract from the big picture.

We can't just zoom in on 1% stuff that's working for the common good (at least in principle, if not, let's make THAT issue the article) as a scare story, and not talk about how it's a fraction of what is really up.

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#67

Post by bruce511 »

tibbar wrote: post #36
caseyy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI isn't the most efficient way to retrieve accurate information or to generate quality content, it's the most efficient way to retrieve plausible information and generate poor quality art and code. And that's really interesting. There is a group of people that trust LLMs for all searches but most tech-literate people know they hallucinate, and understand roughly how an LLM works and that hallucinations are indisting…

I see people frame generative AI this way a lot, as if they're strictly worse than alternatives in all dimensions ( in accurate, low quality). But I think there's several important dimension where they're strictly better, including flexibility, interactivity, and accessibility. I can ask an LLM a very specific question about my specific development environment, codebase, and tools and get a specific answer back that…

I concur. I'm notca huge user of AI, but it does make a good search tool when my search term is verbose.

For example I was looking for the name of a windows API command. I "knew" the command must exist, but didn't gave a clue what it was called. Asked Cgpt for an example program, and there's the name of the API. (Which I can then Google for docs.)

I also had a complicated-to-ask question about sun movement which it explained to me, along with site links to actual data.

I'm not using it as a Google replacement, but more of a Google supplement when the question is long-winded to write.

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#68

Post by Andrex »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #28

The energy consumption would not be a problem if it was renewable energy . Ironically, we already have plenty of renewable energy in the US, it’s just there, sitting, waiting to be hooked up to the grid and not being used productively. The US currently has 947 GW of renewable generation capacity that is not hooked up to the grid [1]. To put that number into perspective, the US currently has 1160 GW of generation capa…

Sounds easy, but thinking about it seems to make it out to be a "last mile" problem. Broadband adoption in the US is still, relatively, extremely horrible.

Re: Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

#70

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

cesarb wrote: post #65
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #28

The energy consumption would not be a problem if it was renewable energy . Ironically, we already have plenty of renewable energy in the US, it’s just there, sitting, waiting to be hooked up to the grid and not being used productively. The US currently has 947 GW of renewable generation capacity that is not hooked up to the grid [1]. To put that number into perspective, the US currently has 1160 GW of generation capa…

> The energy consumption would not be a problem if it was renewable energy. That would only mean that this renewable energy would no longer be available for other uses. Like, for instance, replacing or reducing the use of fossil fuels.

The sun has more energy than that, really. Which reinforces the commenter’s point: Congress should act on making it available, fast
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