[joelthelion]

> it's really the only way forward. seems like a win/win.

There is another way forward, which is not building these data centers, forcing AI companies to use power more efficiently, and use the excess energy production capacity towards the energy transition in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

It's not going to happen, at least not right now, but it's clearly what we ought to do. ChatGPT can wait.

[JumpCrisscross]

> forcing AI companies to use power more efficiently

How? Also, why? Why are datacentres the use to tamp down on versus other industrial and commercial uses?

This reminds me of California rationing residential water use so alfalfa farmers can flood their fields.

[joelthelion]

All good questions, I don't claim to have all the answers. What I'm saying is that using gigawatts of power for "AI" in this day and age is madness.

I do like the market insulation idea you propose in another comment (I would link to it, but apparently HN doesn't allow that).

[JumpCrisscross]

> What I'm saying is that using gigawatts of power for "AI" in this day and age is madness

Why? American datacentres--of all types--use about 250 TWh per year, with another 500 TWh additional capacity expected by 2030 [1]. American paper manufacturing used about that much energy in 2018 [2].

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/industry.p... 2,491tn BTUs ~ 730 TWh

[joelthelion]

If I read the data right (1) the US currently produces roughly 4,000 TWh of electricity every year. 500 TWh is a significant portion of that! The US will need a lot of additional capacity for things like electric cars and heat pumps. Most of the effort should be going towards that, not huge data centers attending to unproven demand (how many people will pay the real price for ChatGPT once the VC subsidy ends remains to be proven).

1: https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/electric...

[pama]

The sources for some of the future data centers will be local and not necessarily influence the US grid. Consider also that cement production uses about 3000 TWh per year worldwide, and aluminium smelting uses about 1000 TWh per year.

[joelthelion]

A lot of that cement production still uses fossil fuels.

In my mind, all the electricity production capacity we can build needs to go to the electrification of the existing economy, not new stuff and especially not the current brand of AI.

[LunaSea]

Yes but American datacenters and industries are actually useful compared to AI.

[nradov]

Why should they be treated differently than any other customer?

[georgemcbay]

If they are treated like every other customer, all of our energy bills go up the more data centers they build

This is not a theoretical concern, it is happening already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN6BEUA4jNU

[nradov]

OK then I guess we should disconnect every large industrial electricity customer from the grid. That way we'll all have lower energy bills, right?

[georgemcbay]

> OK then I guess we should disconnect every large industrial electricity customer from the grid.

No, what we should do is put every "large load" electricity customer (including but not limited to these data centers) into their own rate-payer class like they did in Maryland and Oregon instead of lumping them in with everyone else.

Once they are in their own rate-payer class then their rates can be adjusted to pay for the costs of the increased infrastructure that is only needed because they exist (take away data center build-outs and electricity usage is largely flat or falling pretty much everywhere in the US).

I hope the data center developers are paying you to lobby for their ongoing corporate welfare? Because that's what you're basically doing here.

[nradov]

If they pay the same rates as everyone else then that's not corporate welfare. If the rates are artificially low thus causing shortages then we have a different problem.

[georgemcbay]

> If they pay the same rates as everyone else then that's not corporate welfare.

It is, because the electricity companies don't have magic electricity generating machines that can scale infinitely.

To satisfy the new demand which only exists because the data center was built, they spend a lot of money on new infrastructure. They then raise everyone's prices by an equal percentage to support this new infrastructure even though the infrastructure was not needed until the data center was built.

Not charging the data center developers for that extra build out and expecting everyone to absorb the costs for new infrastructure that never would have been built if the data center wasn't built is absolutely corporate welfare.

[runako]

(I don't know the answer to this,) is it common for a single customer to enters a market with an ask for 10GW to start?

[joelthelion]

Because we live on a finite planet and unregulated capitalism won't end well.

[pureagave]

I think you may be missing the whole national security part of the AI race. This isn't just about asking a computer what recipe you can cook tonight with the items in your fridge. In many ways it is similar to the race to build a nuclear bomb. We may individually not like that, but we might individually be best served to live in the nation that got there first.

[LunaSea]

We can see in Ukraine that AI plays a very very small role in the war. Production of small drones and their control across jammed areas is the current problem space.

[Yizahi]

And I bet that a majority of those LLM usage in Ukraine is via local focused models, good for picking shapes on a grainy images and not much else, but fast and cheap. There is literally zero use for the gigantic general LLMs which can produce human-like output and routinely generate fake numbers, in the army setting.

[joelthelion]

Building gigantic data centers doesn't help in that respect. The data centers are there to do inference at scale, not cutting edge research.

[marmarama]

That's the story the proponents of the AI bubble would have you believe, because they are sucking in all available funding to their enrichment, or because they've been huffing their own hype gas for so long that they have no brain cells of their own left.

It is, however, complete nonsense, and the next few years of failed promises on AGI will eventually bring people to their senses, if a market crash and sustained economic depression doesn't do that first. It would be funny if it wasn't going to cause suffering for millions of people, whether we succeed at AGI or not.

I _like_ AI, I find LLMs and many other aspects of useful, and I am optimistic for the long term prospects of AI. But the rush to try and get to AGI is completely out of control at this point, and the fallout from when the bubble pops will set AI, and our societies, back a long time.

[skybrian]

Colocated power might be more efficient, depending on how it's done. It avoids transmission losses and allows the grid to be used for other purposes.

[theultdev]

That's not a way forward, that's standing still.

I'm all for more efficient usage, and it's in AI companies best interest to do so to minimize costs.

...but it's a growing industry, it will need more power.

[joelthelion]

No, it's not standing still. It's setting the priorities straight.

Completing the energy transition is an enormous undertaking. Building huge data centers is a distraction, not a way forward.