• Damage@feddit.it
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    23 days ago

    If their energy consumption actually was so small, why are they seeking to use nuclear reactors to power data centres now?

    • null@lemmy.nullspace.lol
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      23 days ago

      Because demand for data centers is rising, with AI as just one of many reasons.

      But that’s not as flashy as telling people it takes the energy of a small country to make a picture of a cat.

      Also interesting that we’re ignoring something here – big tech is chasing cheap sources of clean energy. Don’t we want cheap, clean energy?

      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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        22 days ago

        Didn’t xitter just install a gas powered data center that’s breaking EPA rules for emissions?

      • Leon@pawb.social
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        22 days ago

        Sure we do. Do we want the big tech corporations to hold the reins of that though?

        • Valmond
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          21 days ago

          If cheap(er/better) energy is invented then that’s good, why would tech corpos be able to “hold the reins” of it exclusively?

          • Leon@pawb.social
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            21 days ago

            Well, patents and what have you are a thing. I’m mostly thinking that I wouldn’t want e.g. Facebook to run any nuclear reactors or energy grids. That’s something I prefer the government does.

            • Valmond
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              20 days ago

              Nuclear reactors already exist, that’s not new tech.

              • Leon@pawb.social
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                19 days ago

                I’m not saying it is. I’m saying that predatory companies shouldn’t run critical infrastructure.

                • Valmond
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                  18 days ago

                  We were talking about inventing, not running though.

                  • Leon@pawb.social
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                    17 days ago

                    My comment is in the context of this

                    Also interesting that we’re ignoring something here – big tech is chasing cheap sources of clean energy. Don’t we want cheap, clean energy?

      • boor
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        19 days ago

        AI is the driver of the parabolic spike in global data center buildouts. No other use case comes close in terms of driving new YoY growth in tech infra capex spend.

    • Imacat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      23 days ago

      To be fair, nuclear power is cool as fuck and would reduce the carbon footprint of all sorts of bullshit.

    • Armok_the_bunny
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      23 days ago

      Volume of requests and power consumption requirements unrelated to requests made, at least I have to assume. Certainly doesn’t help that google has forced me to make a request to their ai every time I run a standard search.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        23 days ago

        Seriously. I’d be somewhat less concerned about the impact if it was only voluntarily used. Instead, AI is compulsively shoved in every nook and cranny of digital product simply to justify its own existence.

        The power requirement for training is ongoing, since mere days after Sam Altman released a very underehelming GPT-5, he begins hyping up the next one.

        • zlatko@programming.dev
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          22 days ago

          I also never saw a calculation that took into amount my VPS costs. The fckers scrape half the internet, warming up every server in the world connected to the internet. How much energy is that?

    • finitebanjo@piefed.world
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      23 days ago

      Because the training has diminishing returns, meaning the small improvements between (for example purposes) GPT 3 and 4 will need exponentially more power to have the same effect on GPT 5. In 2022 and 2023 OpenAI and DeepMind both predicted that reaching human accuracy could never be done, the latter concluding even with infinite power.

      So in order to get as close as possible then in the future they will need to get as much power as possible. Academic papers outline it as the one true bottleneck.

      • Valmond
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        21 days ago

        And academia will work on that problem. It reminds me of intel processors “projected” to use kilowatts of energy, then smart people made other types of chips and they don’t need 2000 watts.

        • finitebanjo@piefed.world
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          21 days ago

          Academia literally got cut by more than a third and Microsoft is planning to revive breeder reactors.

          You might think academia will work on the problem but the people running these things absolutely do not.

            • finitebanjo@piefed.world
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              20 days ago

              Did the EU suddenly develop a tech industry overnight or are you unaware where all the major AI companies are located?

    • douglasg14b
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      22 days ago

      That’s not small…

      100’s of Gigawatts is how much energy that is. Fuel is pretty damn energy dense.

      A Boeing 777 might burn 45k Kg of fuel, at a density of 47Mj/kg. Which comes out to… 600 Megawatts

      Or about 60 houses energy usage for a year in the U.S.


      It’s an asinine way to measure it to be fair, not only is it incredibly ambiguous, but almost no one has any reference as to how much energy that actually is.

      • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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        22 days ago

        That’s not ~600 Megawatts, it’s 587 Megawatt-hours.

        Or in other terms that are maybe easier to understand: 5875 fully charged 100kWh Tesla batteries.