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But the article says that energy use by AI is 48% more carbon intensive than the US average. So talk of solar power is a red herring -- that's not what it is ru

But the article says that energy use by AI is 48% more carbon intensive than the US average. So talk of solar power is a red herring -- that's not what it is running on now.

mg 1y ago
I am thinking about the future here. I don't think there will be much carbon intensive energy creation in a few decades from now. It does not make sense economically.
- Scarblac 1y ago
  You said "for the foreseeable future", which I interpret as being about now. Anyway I hope you're right, but so far global CO2 output is still growing. All the other energy has only come on top of carbon intensive energy, it hasn't replaced any of it. Every time we build more, we find new ways of spending that much energy and more.
  - mg 1y ago
    Seeing 20 years into the future is quite possible in some aspects. I remember how me and my friends discovered email in 1999 and were like "Yay, in the future we'll all do this instead of sending letters!". And it took about 20 years until letters were largely replaced by email and the web. And when the first videos appeared on the web, it was quite clear to us that they would replace DVDs. Similar with the advent of self driving cars and solar energy I think.
newtonsmethod 1y ago
The energy use by AI probably is just as, if not more, carbon intensive, but the article never says that. It talks about the energy use of the general data center. > The carbon intensity of electricity used by data centers was 48% higher than the US average.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  In case anyone is wondering why that is, it's because they put data centers in the places with the cheapest electricity. Which, in the US, is in places like Virginia and Ohio, where they burn fossil fuels. If the people always talking about how cheap solar is want to fix this, find a way to make that cheapness actually make it into the customer's electric bill.
  - ipdashc 1y ago
    I've always wondered why data centers aren't taking off more in places like Iceland (cheap geothermal) or Quebec (cheap hydro). Both of these places are also pretty cold and one would think this benefits cooling. There are periodically news articles and such about data centers in Iceland, of course, but I get the impression it's mostly a fad, and the real build-outs are still in Northern Virginia as they've always been. The typical answer I've seen is that Internet access and low latency matter more than cooling and power, but LLMs seem like they wouldn't care about that. I mean, you're literally interacting with them over text, and there's already plenty of latency - a few extra ms shouldn't matter? I'd assume construction costs and costs of shipping in equipment also play a role, but Iceland and Canada aren't that far away.
    - fallingknife 1y ago
      How much bandwidth is there in Iceland? I suspect not much because the population is only 400K. You will need to lay new undersea fiber. And how are you going to build them? The construction alone would take a massive amount of resources and manpower not feasibly available there. And what about the power supply? In data center heavy areas like Virginia, data center power consumption is already 25% of the entire state power consumption, and VA has 22x more people than Iceland. So if you build even 1/5th the number of data centers in just Virginia, that will consume the entire power grid of Iceland. Therefore, in addition to the data centers themselves, you are also going to have to build an entirely new grid and distribution system.
      - 1y ago

But the article says that energy use by AI is 48% more carbon intensive than the US average. So talk of solar power is a red herring -- that's not what it is running on now.

mg 1y ago

I am thinking about the future here. I don't think there will be much carbon intensive energy creation in a few decades from now. It does not make sense economically.

Scarblac 1y ago
You said "for the foreseeable future", which I interpret as being about now. Anyway I hope you're right, but so far global CO2 output is still growing. All the other energy has only come on top of carbon intensive energy, it hasn't replaced any of it. Every time we build more, we find new ways of spending that much energy and more.
- mg 1y ago
  Seeing 20 years into the future is quite possible in some aspects. I remember how me and my friends discovered email in 1999 and were like "Yay, in the future we'll all do this instead of sending letters!". And it took about 20 years until letters were largely replaced by email and the web. And when the first videos appeared on the web, it was quite clear to us that they would replace DVDs. Similar with the advent of self driving cars and solar energy I think.

newtonsmethod 1y ago

The energy use by AI probably is just as, if not more, carbon intensive, but the article never says that. It talks about the energy use of the general data center. > The carbon intensity of electricity used by data centers was 48% higher than the US average.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
In case anyone is wondering why that is, it's because they put data centers in the places with the cheapest electricity. Which, in the US, is in places like Virginia and Ohio, where they burn fossil fuels. If the people always talking about how cheap solar is want to fix this, find a way to make that cheapness actually make it into the customer's electric bill.
- ipdashc 1y ago
  I've always wondered why data centers aren't taking off more in places like Iceland (cheap geothermal) or Quebec (cheap hydro). Both of these places are also pretty cold and one would think this benefits cooling. There are periodically news articles and such about data centers in Iceland, of course, but I get the impression it's mostly a fad, and the real build-outs are still in Northern Virginia as they've always been. The typical answer I've seen is that Internet access and low latency matter more than cooling and power, but LLMs seem like they wouldn't care about that. I mean, you're literally interacting with them over text, and there's already plenty of latency - a few extra ms shouldn't matter? I'd assume construction costs and costs of shipping in equipment also play a role, but Iceland and Canada aren't that far away.
  - fallingknife 1y ago
    How much bandwidth is there in Iceland? I suspect not much because the population is only 400K. You will need to lay new undersea fiber. And how are you going to build them? The construction alone would take a massive amount of resources and manpower not feasibly available there. And what about the power supply? In data center heavy areas like Virginia, data center power consumption is already 25% of the entire state power consumption, and VA has 22x more people than Iceland. So if you build even 1/5th the number of data centers in just Virginia, that will consume the entire power grid of Iceland. Therefore, in addition to the data centers themselves, you are also going to have to build an entirely new grid and distribution system.
    - 1y ago