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Unlike banks, grids have an obvious solution to this problem: stop supplying these players with energy when the grid is at significant risk of a black out.
by boricj 2y ago
Unlike banks, grids have an obvious solution to this problem: stop supplying these players with energy when the grid is at significant risk of a black out.
- brookst 2y agoAre you suggesting it should be illegal for these players to buy energy on the open market?
- kazen44 2y agoNo, but we should have a discussion about if it is worth it to expense so much energy for something with very little hard, real use case. Al be it bitcoin or LLM's. there is a lot of money behind AI, but i have yet to see any of them actually get us a use case which work reliably. Not to mention, AI is fun and all, but that energy could be far better spend making the economy less reliant on fossil fuel.
- voidfunc 2y ago> there is a lot of money behind AI, but i have yet to see any of them actually get us a use case which work reliably. Classic HN. You personally can't see the value of X therefore the entire market for X is wrong.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoFor emergencies, there are already methods to shut off power to low priority businesses. And say, keep hospitals open. And, if you want to pay, you can pay a premium to have more 'secure' power. This is an option today, already. No need for any discussion about markets and 'government is holding back the free market'. There is already a market to pay for premium power. And the utilities can charge AI customers more if they want.
- kazen44 2y agothis is actually a major problem in the netherlands at the moment. a part of the energy grid cannot handle the load being generated by all the solar being deployed, and upgrading the grid takes years. In the meantime, bussinesses and even households simply are not getting a new power connection unless they are deemed of enough importance.
- AndrewDucker 2y agoIf upgrading the grid takes years then invest until it doesn't take years. There have been many years of build up to solar power. If the people running the grid haven't done their job then replace them with people who can.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agothe grid gets to choose how it prioritizes power. if they want too much power at a time the grid doesn't have enough to go around, they're likely fairly early on the cutting block
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoSorry hospitals, these AI jerks have more money! /s
- dylan604 2y agoAI jerks will just start putting big red crosses on their buildings, open one 10'x10' space in their facility with some barely passed the exams to get a license type of doctor and claim it to be a medical facility of some sort. Just like other hospitals, they'll have a shortage of beds. I'm only half joking as from what I've seen of those involved, I would not put this type of consideration past them.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoI'm sure they'd then be on here saying such a thing is legal and exactly what law intended. /s
- mattmanser 2y agoThe suggestion is that they can buy it at certain times, but not when the grid is nearing capacity. And yes, that's a perfectly reasonable thing for a society to decide. It's shared infrastructure, mainly paid for by public funds. If a government decides the priority should be the millions over the few, that's what happens in a functioning government. Or they can pay for their own power stations and infrastructure to be built.
- brookst 2y agoThey do contract for capacity in advance, which enables suppliers to plan for demand.
- Aerroon 2y agoThey will just go somewhere else where this isn't a limitation. Somewhere that actually has a functioning power grid. If the power grid regularly can't handle the customers it has them it isn't a functioning power grid.
- notatoad 2y agoyes. there is not and should not be an "open market" for power. the sale of electricity from the power grid is highly regulated, and for good reason. delivery to residential customers and essential services should always be prioritized over industrial bulk purchasers. bulk purchasers already have the opportunity to use power sources that are not connected to the grid, if they want to use grid power they should be prioritized according to their benefit to society, not their cash on hand.
- Dylan16807 2y agoCharge them more until it's worth it. And sure, tell them they get disconnected first when there's a shortage. But a hard block is worse than taking their money and using it for improvements.
- ars 2y agoHow do you decide who "them" is, that should pay more? Usually you do the opposite: In exchange for a lower rate you will be the first disconnected in an emergency.
- Dylan16807 2y agoWhoever you were going to refuse to sell power to for capacity reasons.
- qeternity 2y ago> they should be prioritized according to their benefit to society The fact that they have the capability to pay for and consume this power is the strongest signal that they are indeed providing value to society. The money comes from somewhere. If that turns out not to be the case, they have the strongest incentive to stop. But this sort of rationing at the hands of some regulatory body has historically proven to be a far more deadly cure than whatever the presumptive disease was.
- notatoad 2y ago
- gtvwill 2y agoMarkets are neither open nor free, they are closed and regulated. So yes, block their purchasing, tell them to sort their own. Here's the thing, do you cut off one customer when supply is tight or do you risk political suicide by kicking the bucket to millions of small customers? Power utility companies will kick one customer, if they don't they will lose their social license to operate and get legislated out of business.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Are you suggesting it should be illegal for these players to buy energy on the open market? Part of the problem is the AI companies are unwilling to sign long-term power purchase agreements. That means the utility is on the hook for both the capital cost of the development and the risk of unloading a bunch of excess power if the tech company decides to relocate.
- Terr_ 2y ago> Part of the problem is the AI companies are unwilling to sign long-term power purchase agreements. That may also be circumstantial evidence that they don't quite believe all their own hype.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> may also be circumstantial evidence that they don't quite believe all their own hype No company, particularly one with negative cash flows, wants to saddle itself with long-term liabilities. There might an opportunity for useful financial engineering: instead of a fixed power purchase agreement, one which floats and is married to a no-shop commitment. For example: start-up agrees to purchase 10 units of power at a fixed price for 10 years. It has the option of only purchasing 9 units, but must pay a 20¢ fee on the unpurchased power. In this way, if the start-up hits a rough patch, the burden is shared in a way that is meaningful to the start-up's surival probability. In exchange, the start-up commits to not reducing its power purchase while ramping up usage with someone else, presumably at a lower rate, and, once lowered, commits to ramping up its usage with this provider before ramping it up with anyone else. Now here is the critical part: the utilty doesn't hold that risk. Instead, it pays a fee to a hedge fund or endowment or whatever by which that party agrees to make up the 80¢ (or some fraction of it) on unpurchased power. In summary, the utility winds up with a reliable cash stream in all worlds except the start-up failing. (One could mitigate that risk by requiring some pre-funding.) The start-up gets a long-term, guaranteed-price source of power. The hedge fund gets a weird financial thing to play with. (A natural provider of that guarantee would be one of the tech giants. I like the idea of it going into the market because one can see those contracts being aggregated and thus diversified.)
- 2y ago
- consteval 2y agoEnergy should not be an open market. It has been given unbelievable amounts of public funds and is public infrastructure. We should work out a mutually beneficial agreement - I think it makes no sense to nationalize energy providers off the bat. But, part of that agreement should be ensuring energy for residential areas. And if that requires cutting off energy pigs in the meantime, so be it.
- burningChrome 2y agoI would say the same is true for crypto miners and their increasing need for increasing kilowatt power to solve their algo's.
- fnordpiglet 2y agoBanks have an obvious solution as do grids. Build their reserves and infrastructure and scale to their biggest customers. A stressed scale out system just requires more scaling. It feels weird to say any other solution, especially when the customer is a paying customer.
- atoav 2y agoIt only feels weird if you consider paying customers getting what they want has to be of the highest priority. Others who are regular readers of IPCC publications might value the survival of big parts of earths habitable zones and the most densly populated costal areas higher. But priorities differ.
- fnordpiglet 2y agoThen we should prioritize renewable non destructive production of energy over mediocre stasis?
- EGreg 2y agoThat’s what bitcoin maxis always said when their rigs were overloading the grid. “Build us more capacity, and stop whining!”
- fnordpiglet 2y agoExcept bitcoin had no practical value. I think only the most jaded think AI has no practical value. Most lucid observers recognize there’s immediate value and the future is either “a lot of value” or “mind boggling amounts of value,” or some middle ground. Most lucid observers of crypto realize its primary value is in sanctions evasion, money laundering, and other illegal transactions. Not saying no one finds practical value in that but it’s not broadly useful to society.
- EGreg 2y agoA trillion dollars of market participants disagree with you, now including institutions and banks I happen to agree that Bitcoin has very dubious utility, but I suppose it has nailed the "store of value" use case, whereby you can send it anywhere without any friction, and also if you need to, say, escape the country during war or a natural disaster, it's much easier to remember 12 words than try to sneak gold through customs, while the cash you store in your house might be underwater. Bitcoin for many institutions is a digital commodity to diversify for tail risk etc.
- parsimo2010 2y agoI think many people read my statement and flipped who I thought the banks vs customers are. If you owe the bank $2 billion, that’s their problem- meaning they are exposed and could fail if they don’t negotiate to cover that exposure. If an AI company needs a bunch of power and can’t compute without it, then they are exposed and need to negotiate to make sure the power companies can supply it- they are no longer regular customers. In my thought process, an analogous statement might be, “if you ask for 10 kilowatts from the power company, that’s the power company’s problem. If you ask for 10 megawatts, that’s your problem. If you (an AI company) ask for a historic amount of power and your business fails if you don’t get it, then it’s your responsibility to ensure the grid can supply that much power.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rightbyte 2y agoNot supplying the big datacentre with power wont lead to problems for the rest of the power grid. The analogy with the bank just doesn't hold up.
- exe34 2y agothat's what he's trying to explain - the datacenter is the bank here. the analogy sort of works if you flip a few things around, but it obscures more than it elucidate at this point.
- ginko 2y agoBut what if I want to ask chatgpt how to conserve power during a potential blackout?
- golergka 2y agoHow about just raising prices and using extra revenue to expand production? This is what any business would do.
- lazide 2y agoThe data center is paying the grid’s bills as well. And that single customer is paying more than likely millions of other customers. Notably, if the grid has a good PR/marketing department, those customers are a lot more likely (individually) to take a black out ‘for the greater good’ than the data center. See California’s rolling blackouts, etc. in the past.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fooker 2y agoEvery problem has an ‘obvious’ solution on the surface after thinking for ten seconds. Data centers/supercomputers/similar facilities have agreements to ensure uninterrupted power. The grid would sooner cut off residential power than risk running foul of SLAs. Most developing countries are very familiar with this, the technical term ‘load shedding’ having entered common parlance because of the frequency of power cuts faced by consumers.
- dartos 2y agoKind of off topic, but > Every problem has an ‘obvious’ solution on the surface after thinking for ten seconds. Is kind of a silly statement. What’s the obvious way to automatically detect pictures of birds? Because diffusion and transformers are not it.
- fooker 2y agoGreat point. My cousin just (last year…) tried to do this as some extra credit high school thing. The ‘obvious’ solution was detecting edges with a python library and manually writing up 4-5 functions to identify features. It’s surprising that this even comes close to working.
- dartos 2y agoMaybe subjective, but I don’t think edge detection is “obvious” unless you spent time looking into image processing. Even then, grabbing an existing package is just offloading the solution discovery to someone else.
- grecy 2y agoI assume you would cut power to theses big players so that stuff like A/C, freezers and heart rate monitors keep working for regular folk. While your suggestion is the morally correct thing to do, you’re forgetting the other option makes more money and will always be taken.