Many journalists have written extensively about those externalities. When these massive data centers come to town, they distort power supplies (per @bloomberg.com’s @leonardonclt.bsky.social, @naurtorious.bsky.social, @andretartar.bsky.social)… 7/ www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202... - ThreadSky

karenhao.bsky.social • 27 days ago

Many journalists have written extensively about those externalities.

When these massive data centers come to town, they distort power supplies (per @bloomberg.com’s @leonardonclt.bsky.social, @naurtorious.bsky.social,
@andretartar.bsky.social)… 7/

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ai-power-home-appliances/

Comments

karenhao.bsky.social•27 days ago

…they take up drinking water - yes, drinking water, because of the water quality required to cool these facilities - which threatens to hike water prices for families… 8/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/ai-water-climate-microsoft/677602/

gobearcats.bsky.social•26 days ago

Data centers and crypto mining are going to drain us of valuable drinking water and increase their associated costs.

karenhao.bsky.social•27 days ago

…they extend the lives of gas & coal plants, worsening air quality (per @washingtonpost.com’s @evanhalper.bsky.social) - not just bc fossil fuels are the fastest way to surge energy supply but bc 24/7 facilities can't run solely on intermittent renewables. 9/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/08/google-meta-omaha-data-centers/

karenhao.bsky.social•27 days ago

Then there are the global impacts. More coal & gas means more carbon emissions, accelerating our climate crisis. Hence why Google & MSFT saw a ~50% & 30% jump in emissions since 2019 & 2020 respectively (from @darakerr.bsky.social at @npr.org). 10/

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/g-s1-9545/ai-brings-soaring-emissions-for-google-and-microsoft-a-major-contributor-to-climate-change

karenhao.bsky.social•27 days ago

OpenAI & co have come up with a funny argument for why to accept these externalities: Yes unfortunately there are trade-offs in the short term, they say, but they're necessary to reach so-called AGI; AGI will then help us solve all these problems! So trade offs = worth it. 11/

kesalisbury.bsky.social•26 days ago

@skyview.social unroll 🙂

karenhao.bsky.social•27 days ago

This line of thinking has been so effective in capturing the mindshare of powerful decision makers that president Trump just last week announced the Stargate Project, a $500B private investment into data centers & other computing infrastructure for OpenAI. 12/

karenhao.bsky.social•27 days ago

Should Stargate follow through with $500B, it'll be the largest infrastructure spend in history and significantly accelerate the already startling pace of data center development post-ChatGPT. In turn that will significantly accelerate the aforementioned consequences. 13/

kayzy.bsky.social•26 days ago

☹️

rjnerddad.bsky.social•26 days ago

Imagine what we could do if they invested this much money in something useful.

sheilahayman.bsky.social•26 days ago

'More Compute' is NEVER going to get to 'AGI' (whatever that means) - but it will fry us all first.

sheilahayman.bsky.social•26 days ago

As Yann LeCun himself admits, a cat or a spider has a basic understanding that the biggest LLM can never have. And it makes us massively more energy efficient (think 1,000,00x - on totally renewable energy, plus we don't need two breakfasts to learn new things)

sheilahayman.bsky.social•26 days ago

I've been making films and writing about humans and tech for decades, and seven years ago while at the MIT Media Lab I began 'Senseless', a project with the basic but fundamental idea that our intelligence is inseparable from biology, evolution, adaptation and life in the world.

bluetrue2024.bsky.social•24 days ago

Better or worse with quantum computing?

drewsolo.bsky.social•26 days ago

So like the big thinking computer in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

fiercefern.bsky.social•26 days ago

And how, pray tell, can AI reduce carbon emissions? Is it going to create and enforce regulations? Clearly corporates have abandoned any efforts to respond to climate change in favor of gaslighting us with "technology will solve this" propaganda.
#climatecrisis

mmfdt20.bsky.social•26 days ago

It will suggest new and innovative solutions. Like, "Plant Trees" and "Stop Building Data Centres"

karinalutz.bsky.social•26 days ago

Just like we've been hearing for 70 years that new technology will solve the nuclear waste problem. Still waiting....

rowyourbot.bsky.social•19 days ago

📌

lockdownyourlife.com•26 days ago

📌

gaylord.pink•25 days ago

Then there's the problem that GPU chips aren't designed for NLP, they're designed for graphics. New AI-specific designed chips won't scale until 2030 best case, probably more like 2035++ with the impending China implosion. So doing more with less chips is a requirement. Chips are a big constraint.

melle.ca•26 days ago

@skyview.social unroll

kurtbassuener.bsky.social•26 days ago

Supply side AI

fru-fru-brigade.bsky.social•25 days ago

Feel like any AGI these goofuses will fix them the way NOAH did in Metal Max.

smolsen.bsky.social•25 days ago

In other words, magical thinking

shenannigans.bsky.social•25 days ago

They really expect us to think they're going to use something like that to solve problems. Theyre just gonna try to build shelter up in space and then solve us.

frauwise.bsky.social•27 days ago

📌

kevincarson1.bsky.social•25 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGVtVoKh94I

yrotitna.bsky.social•25 days ago

At which point (hopefully for humanity) AGI says “stop being so stupid, don’t do this!”

pndrp.bsky.social•26 days ago

What if they reach AGI and the answer they get back is “you are so fucked bro” ?

queencynethryth.bsky.social•26 days ago

What if it's just, "42"

justhere4coffee.bsky.social•26 days ago

They'll claim it's hallucinating and reprogram it to say what they want, same as always.

goodbones.bsky.social•26 days ago

You gotta burn all of the fossil fuels to get the AI super mind to call you a dumbass and tell you to turn the AI super mind off because it's burning all the fossil fuels you absolute morons.

jennvg.bsky.social•26 days ago

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

willoughby12.bsky.social•26 days ago

They’re making problems so they can have the monster they have created “fix it.” Sounds like our current president, doesn’t it?

socinvestigator.bsky.social•26 days ago

What's AGI?

rettopnoj.bsky.social•26 days ago

The G stands for General, basically a hypothetical model that is "actually" intelligent rather than pretending to be. In reality it's just more marketing spiel to fool the rubes who are funding this.

darakerr.bsky.social•26 days ago

🙏

belcuore.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

wexleresq.bsky.social•25 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/larry.earth/post/3lfzqqizkgk25

aireluxx.bsky.social•26 days ago

Whoa. What the-

pennyhorwood3.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

wexleresq.bsky.social•25 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/larry.earth/post/3lfzqqizkgk25

negativeev.bsky.social•24 days ago

This is amazing. Thank you.

suntoadcowboy.bsky.social•25 days ago

📌

wexleresq.bsky.social•25 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/larry.earth/post/3lfzqqizkgk25

annassair.bsky.social•25 days ago

📌

justafrenchcat.bsky.social•25 days ago

As I understand it, these externalities are the same for crypto "mining". They even have "right to mine" laws 🤦🏻🤬.

gardener68.bsky.social•24 days ago

This makes me sick. Literally. I am currently reading Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and reading this I can see how we could get there in my lifetime.

tlas-hugged.bsky.social•25 days ago

MS bought 3-Mile. Not perfect but...

mementomori4950.bsky.social•26 days ago

More jobs will disappear and the working class will be killing each other for the few that are available. Uber wealthy Oligarchs will get even more richer 😏 they can never have enough.

yrotitna.bsky.social•25 days ago

Or alternatively they could do what the French & Bolsheviks did and rise up against the oligarchs.

iancoutts.bsky.social•25 days ago

That worked well.

grannydegrotbag.bsky.social•26 days ago

48%
Maybe now we have the Chinese one they will just wrap up Google's, etc?
It's a bit like a boy's pissing contest
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51yvz51k2xo

thommyla.bsky.social•26 days ago

This explains the Trump admin early investment

belcuore.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

belcuore.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

chemeng.bsky.social•26 days ago

The answer is wind and solar in conjunction with battery storage. Such systems are now being implemented.

suntoadcowboy.bsky.social•25 days ago

📌

gubergerh.bsky.social•26 days ago

The last sentence is not correct in big grids. The central limit theorem causes that variable renewables (nuclear stations produce intermittend power) produce more and more constantly the bigger the grid is in which they are distributed. If grid is big enough they are more reliable than fossils

dove333.bsky.social•25 days ago

https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-energy-and-the-grid-debunked

thegrovedigger.bsky.social•26 days ago

This happened in Tennessee too. TVA intentionally ignored Infrastructure Act incentives in their calculations and used other shifty ways to undervalue solar so that they could install a natural gas plant instead of green energy to replace the Kingston coal plant.

botswana-frog.bsky.social•26 days ago

Not a gift article,requires a subscription. Thanks for nuttin’

isittimetogetup.bsky.social•26 days ago

only just noticed, after reading this thread, that google had changed "carbon neutral since 2007" to "our third decade of climate action: join us". sneakily the same image next to it though.

jeffreyschmeffrey.bsky.social•25 days ago

Data centers should be forced to be water and energy neutral. If they can afford $100s billions for AI they can afford desalination and energy production

belcuore.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

aireluxx.bsky.social•26 days ago

Whoa.

smcgee.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

yellowbirdcjk.bsky.social•26 days ago

Just assume a ❤️ for each post.

suntoadcowboy.bsky.social•25 days ago

📌

rcdavies.bsky.social•26 days ago

This is a genuine question, but can someone give me an explanation of why data centres use up water for cooling. I keep seeing this, so I'm not disputing it, I'm just puzzled. Why would they not recycle it? Like a mega fridge?

keith1275.bsky.social•26 days ago

I’m assuming it’s cheaper to just open the taps on fresh, cool drinking water and dump the hot, polluted effluent.

rcdavies.bsky.social•26 days ago

This was my assumption, too. But it seems one of the easiest problems to solve by creating cooling systems. Might use more electricity though.

keith1275.bsky.social•26 days ago

And you have to build, power and maintain a cooling plant.

rcdavies.bsky.social•26 days ago

True, but given the scale of the investment, we can only hope that this becomes a part of the capex.

completelyblack.bsky.social•26 days ago

I believe that many datacentres recirculate the cooling water, and chill it down again, and recycle.

However, the systems to chill that water often use cooling towers or evaporative condensers to reject the heat to the ambient air.

1/

completelyblack.bsky.social•26 days ago

Essentially, the heat is rejected by evaporating (some different) water into the ambient air. This is more energy efficient than just rejecting the heat directly into the ambient air (which is what your fridge or AC does).

2/

completelyblack.bsky.social•26 days ago

And some systems do just use once through cooling systems. I think largely because they are built in places that don't prohibit them from doing so.

But that water should still be available (perhaps it is back in the river).

It is just warmer.

3/end

rcdavies.bsky.social•26 days ago

I didn't realise that evaporative cooling was so common in the industry, but that finally explains it for me. Thank you.

completelyblack.bsky.social•26 days ago

Allows the hot side of the refrigeration plant to be ~5oC colder (depending on local ambient). Which means 10% or more saving on the electricity cost to run the refrigeration plant. Makes economic sense if you have the capital for the extra complexity.

Very common in large refrigeration plant.

natanael.bsky.social•26 days ago

Instead of using regular water cooling with a closed loop, these datacenters often use evaporative cooling and release the vapor. That makes the recycling much slower

sannevroom.bsky.social•26 days ago

This part, that it ruins the environnement and world by a speed force, is so unknown by all happy users, this lack of knowledge: its very worrying.

tooze.bsky.social•26 days ago

And America is looking thirstily at the Canadian well 💦

tinmanbs.bsky.social•26 days ago

Deepseek will fix this, right?

robinsmartinez.bsky.social•26 days ago

It's going to be interesting to see how the AI model developed by DeepSeek, which allegedly uses significantly less processing power than the models from US tech platforms such as OpenAI and Google, will change calculations. Jury's still out on that, but it's a distinct possibility.

belcuore.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

aireluxx.bsky.social•26 days ago

Whoa.

getno.bsky.social•24 days ago

@skyview.social unroll please

suntoadcowboy.bsky.social•25 days ago

📌

larry4334.bsky.social•19 days ago

We have never priced externalities into the prices of products. We are subsidizing corps by them passing those costs onto us. Now that musk is president & looking to get rid of regulations that cost him profit by forcing him to not pollute, we can expect all the issues you raise to get much worse.

triniliz22.bsky.social•26 days ago

📌

karinalutz.bsky.social•26 days ago

See https://www.techzine.eu/news/data-management/127528/schneider-electric-warns-of-ais-impact-on-energy-use/

kanelawless420.bsky.social•26 days ago

Thank you Mr. Turing.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply