[namaria]

> Those data centers are easily converted to green energy.

Energy is fungible. Exploding marginal energy requirements put enormous pressure on the grid tho. In the US several gas burning plants are being planned in the last few months given AI data center growth projections. This will have a definite impact in total emissions and push back any goals of holding on to the current 2C increase in global temperature.

[MrSkyNet]

I disagree.

The percentage of datacenters around the globe is very small (like 1%). In contrast this saves us a tremendes amount of co2 due to optimization of logistics, doing your bank business at home, calling someone instead of meeting them etc.

Datacenters are in my opinion the biggest net positives for co2, are easy to make green, have the most money behind them (which means faster and better investments) and are ooperated by our leading tech companies, who will use this to push further the industry of green energy.

Those datacenters and especially AI energy investments are also the biggest research advantage we have. Optimizing solar energy gains and storage capacity. We need them for simulating/generating new materials, production processies, etc.

We need to do a LOT in regards of heating. Heating is critical.

[namaria]

You disagree with the widely publicized fact that several new gas burning plants are being planned for the near future in great part due to high profile plans for AI data centers that use 10x as much energy as traditional ones? Or with the fact that these plants will emit great quantities of CO2 that wouldn't be emitted had these plants not been planned for sustaining the growth in AI?

[MrSkyNet]

I disagree that, whatever energy those DC needs (additionally) is a waste.

I think its critical for our society to put more into R&D of materials and others for more and faster optimization of solar and batteries.

Nvidia for example does a lot now in omniverse, simulating the real world. Its also potentially co2 saving if you simulate your full car, warehouse etc. digital and iterate over it super fast and opitmize it before it ever creates any co2 in real life.

[namaria]

I never called anything a waste. I merely doubt the net gain in the rate of acceleration of energy demand for AI purposes.

You make a fair point. To the extent these AI tools enable better, more efficient production systems in the real world there is a case to be made it could be a net gain for society. Arguably it could also increase the carbon intensity of the economy in the short term. While renewable sources are gaining ground, most of the bulk and marginal energy demand is met by carbon heavy sources now and in the foreseeable future, and deployment of renewables also requires a lot of energy and by extension, for now, carbon emissions.

[MrSkyNet]

Yes and a lot of better technology has this issue.

The EV consumes more energy at the beginning, solar panels and wind turbines too. Unfortunate its hard for people to get 'economy of scale' and its super frustrating that we have the investment<>expensive<>benefit hen<>egg issue.

Heat-pumps, EVs, solar and batteries could become even cheaper even faster if we would invest faster and more. In 10 years those have eclipsed every current alternative.

What i think is a good example is Alpha Fold: The graph on this page https://www.moltenventures.com/insights/a-breakthrough-in-pr... shows the jump alphafold provided.

Now tx to alphafold2 a huge library exists for all researchers. And i have seen many other breakthroughs.

Segment anything from facebook is a LOT better in image segmentation than what we had before. This makes it much faster for everyone having segmentation tasks to segment faster.

Wispher is really good in speech to text. It basically beats a lot of old school software on the market.

[namaria]

> Unfortunate its hard for people to get 'economy of scale'

> we have the investment<>expensive<>benefit hen<>egg issue.

Maybe it's easy for people to get economies of scale AND path dependence. Unfortunately society has been put in a trajectory that maximized the profits of minerals rights holders in the industrializing US.

And yes, we are in a sub optimal local minimum in terms of efficiency and need to go over a hump to get to better minimums and going over that hump may mean increasing carbon intensity of the economy for a while.

Do we have time to do that though? Should we carbon de-intensify the economy and aim for a trajectory that minimizes climate related shocks or should we go all out on an accelerationist hope that we can bootstrap a better system by running the current one red hot? These seem to be the two sides of the debate we're in.

[wizzwizz4]

Not disagreeing with you, but if you're saying "widely publicized fact", it might be good to provide a source. (Here's one from October 2023: https://www.businessinsider.com/phoenix-expanding-its-natura...)

[namaria]

You're right but this is such a prominent, ongoing conversation that I feel the burden is on the dissenter to show the very obvious and widely publicized facts are not accurate. We have a huge emissions problem and the tech industry is currently heavily promoting technologies with doubtful value propositions and very real and very significant increase in energy demands.

[wizzwizz4]

Unless we're going around in circles for the sheer joy of being argumentative, https://xkcd.com/1053/ applies.