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There actually have been a lot of consternation regarding golf, but at least people are out exercising and having fun and stuff. It's not all bad. Personally I

by ericmay 20d ago

There actually have been a lot of consternation regarding golf, but at least people are out exercising and having fun and stuff. It's not all bad. Personally I think the main issue with respect to water is the usage and usage at lower or even at market rates when perhaps they should be charging more. But if you do that, prices go up, less accessibility of the sport and then you get in trouble for being only a rich person sport. Nobody really can win there. But I think a better question is, why aren't the Chinese increasingly alarmed by AI data centers and their impact on the environment? Or are they?

verdverm 20d ago
The Chinese are rebuilding their electric grid to be all renewable. It will take a couple more decades, but they are literally printing energy like we print processors. Some other initiatives that incline me to believe the CCP has an amount of care and concern for their people are the trash incinerator build out and the health care ambitions. Generally speaking though, on average, the non-West countries seem far more optimistic about the future with Ai than we do.
- ericmay 20d ago
  > The Chinese are rebuilding their electric grid to be all renewable. It will take a couple more decades, but they are literally printing energy like we print processors. Sure but decades will leave them very very very very far behind in the AI race so they'll still have to experience price increases before then. Plus even if they do build capacity that has cost that has to be recouped somehow.
  - verdverm 20d ago
    > very very very very far behind in the Ai one "very" for every month? They are deploying renewables on a scale that is hard to fathom, they have plenty of electricity across all sources for Ai, EVs, and Robots. What they aim to be is fully renewable (no fossil fuels) within a couple of decades
    - ericmay 20d ago
      > one "very" for every month? No, you missed the point and you're now conflating AI capability with infrastructure cost.
      - verdverm 19d ago
        I suspect you are missing the data on how much energy infra they already have and are building every year they are already ahead on both fronts as well as have the lower costs and deployment times for new energy creation, transmissions, and battery storage, in short, they are crushing it on energy infra
        ericmay 19d ago
        But there are still costs and environmental impact. If you need water for example for data center cooling no amount of renewable energy is going to change that (I'm speaking generally, of course you could cool more efficiently or use something else), and so as China continues to build more and more as they are today they will also see impacts related to energy cost and environmental impact just like anywhere else in the world. It may manifest slightly differently, but even if Chinese energy production costs were half of what they are in the US it still costs money to build those things and you can't run them at a loss, well you can and China might, but we saw how that turned out in the housing market most recently. My comment about building stuff decades out is that there is an intersection (imagine a graph with two lines trending in the same direction but with different slopes) where you have to increase performance to keep up, America is doing that at high cost as you can see, and so China will have to build more and build more now to keep up with scaling (there are so many underlying assumptions for these conversations it's hard to even talk about it) which will then raise energy prices and have environmental effects now, not later.
        verdverm 19d ago
        so many tropes man... getting a non-american perspective on what's happening (for just about anything) is a good thing to do
seanmcdirmid 20d ago
I think they are, it just doesn't appear as often. They are also limited by the chips they can get (limiting what power they can bring to bear), and also have NO PROBLEM building new power plants or other kinds of infrastructure (unlike the USA). Honestly, the biggest problem is water, since their renewable west lacks it, but even then they can just setup a data center to use more energy to substitute for less water usage.

by ericmay 20d ago

verdverm 20d ago

The Chinese are rebuilding their electric grid to be all renewable. It will take a couple more decades, but they are literally printing energy like we print processors. Some other initiatives that incline me to believe the CCP has an amount of care and concern for their people are the trash incinerator build out and the health care ambitions. Generally speaking though, on average, the non-West countries seem far more optimistic about the future with Ai than we do.

ericmay 20d ago
> The Chinese are rebuilding their electric grid to be all renewable. It will take a couple more decades, but they are literally printing energy like we print processors. Sure but decades will leave them very very very very far behind in the AI race so they'll still have to experience price increases before then. Plus even if they do build capacity that has cost that has to be recouped somehow.
- verdverm 20d ago
  > very very very very far behind in the Ai one "very" for every month? They are deploying renewables on a scale that is hard to fathom, they have plenty of electricity across all sources for Ai, EVs, and Robots. What they aim to be is fully renewable (no fossil fuels) within a couple of decades
  - ericmay 20d ago
    > one "very" for every month? No, you missed the point and you're now conflating AI capability with infrastructure cost.
    - verdverm 19d ago
      I suspect you are missing the data on how much energy infra they already have and are building every year they are already ahead on both fronts as well as have the lower costs and deployment times for new energy creation, transmissions, and battery storage, in short, they are crushing it on energy infra
      - ericmay 19d ago
        But there are still costs and environmental impact. If you need water for example for data center cooling no amount of renewable energy is going to change that (I'm speaking generally, of course you could cool more efficiently or use something else), and so as China continues to build more and more as they are today they will also see impacts related to energy cost and environmental impact just like anywhere else in the world. It may manifest slightly differently, but even if Chinese energy production costs were half of what they are in the US it still costs money to build those things and you can't run them at a loss, well you can and China might, but we saw how that turned out in the housing market most recently. My comment about building stuff decades out is that there is an intersection (imagine a graph with two lines trending in the same direction but with different slopes) where you have to increase performance to keep up, America is doing that at high cost as you can see, and so China will have to build more and build more now to keep up with scaling (there are so many underlying assumptions for these conversations it's hard to even talk about it) which will then raise energy prices and have environmental effects now, not later.
        verdverm 19d ago
        so many tropes man... getting a non-american perspective on what's happening (for just about anything) is a good thing to do

seanmcdirmid 20d ago

I think they are, it just doesn't appear as often. They are also limited by the chips they can get (limiting what power they can bring to bear), and also have NO PROBLEM building new power plants or other kinds of infrastructure (unlike the USA). Honestly, the biggest problem is water, since their renewable west lacks it, but even then they can just setup a data center to use more energy to substitute for less water usage.