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by toddmorey 269 days ago
Not a word or whisper about environmental impact, either. I mean at least do some hand waving or something. I feel like a habitable planet is a fundamental right.
3 comments

Not to defend what Altman is saying, but is OpenAI actually using or going to use that much power? This Reuters source the US power budget will be 4,187 TWh in 2025: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-use-reach-r...
The US is the second most energy-hungry country on Earth (the first one being China, a country that accounts for almost 30% of the global manufacturing output), so I think it's better to compare it against the rest of the world:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electri...

Every country bellow the top 40 has a consumption lower than 87.6 TWh per year, that includes developed countries like Finland and Belgium, so yes, 10 gigawatts is a lot of power.

Adding 10GW of power as they plan, is 87TWh. 2%.

That’s huge. The hope is that this can drive renewables or nuclear rollout, but not sure that hope is realistic.

Altman is an investor in OKLO. I'm expecting an announcement with companies like that where they can federal dollars to speed up R&D.
No worries once we have AGI we will ask it how to make up for all the emissions and solve climate change ...
AGI answer: "Individual people must change their habits"
Maybe it'll be "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer".
Duh, you just ask the magical AI "how fix global warming" and it fixes global warming, same way it'll cure cancer magically.