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> 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 p

by ericmay 19d 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 19d 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 19d 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
        ericmay 19d ago
        There aren't any tropes, you're making them up because you have a pre-set axe that you're trying to grind that I'm not even arguing with you about. I'd recommend reading what someone is writing and engaging with that. It's a good thing to do.
        verdverm 19d ago
        we are typically not in the position to judge our own tropes, like a racist doesn't think they are racist, it's very hard to recognize our own biases and gaps you are missing important facts and say the things about China that are common to say but untrue, i.e. a trope
        ericmay 19d ago
        > like a racist doesn't think they are racist Bad example and not at all relevant here in any context, let's set that aside. > we are typically not in the position to judge our own tropes In that case you can't recognize these tropes because you yourself would be entrenched in your own trope of recognizing tropes where they don't exist. If you don't want to talk about this topic that's totally fine, but this other stuff is super boring.

by ericmay 19d ago

verdverm 19d 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 19d 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
      - ericmay 19d ago
        There aren't any tropes, you're making them up because you have a pre-set axe that you're trying to grind that I'm not even arguing with you about. I'd recommend reading what someone is writing and engaging with that. It's a good thing to do.
        verdverm 19d ago
        we are typically not in the position to judge our own tropes, like a racist doesn't think they are racist, it's very hard to recognize our own biases and gaps you are missing important facts and say the things about China that are common to say but untrue, i.e. a trope
        ericmay 19d ago
        > like a racist doesn't think they are racist Bad example and not at all relevant here in any context, let's set that aside. > we are typically not in the position to judge our own tropes In that case you can't recognize these tropes because you yourself would be entrenched in your own trope of recognizing tropes where they don't exist. If you don't want to talk about this topic that's totally fine, but this other stuff is super boring.