Power-hungry AI is putting the hurt on global electricity supply | Hacker News Reader

Power-hungry AI is putting the hurt on global electricity supply

arstechnica.com

21 pointsBrajeshwar15 comments

What I don't think comes out of the article, or is more of a side note, is the carbon footprint and unnecessary resource consumption that results from the increased use of AI alone. Not all data centers are powered by renewable energy, and I don't see how Generative AI, the main consumer of electricity, is going to give us any meaningful suggestions on how to combat global warming instead of churning out regurgitated text, audio, and video. So if you're going to spend so much money developing AI, make sure that AI helps solve our most pressing man-made problem, not just makes it worse.

All I seem to hear is crickets from the many people who endlessly wailed about the need to kill crypto because "energy waste". It doesn't apply when it comes to the pumping out of reams of AI-rendered sludge while rampantly scraping and copying every possible digitally connected human being's text and visual and now video creations from the web to generate said sludge, spam and other assorted garbage?

I'll bite: because after all is said and done, I believe we're more likely to have something of value left over from the AI craze than from the blockchain craze. The energy that goes into training a model gives you something that you can use afterwards; The energy consumption of Bitcoin is continuous (while still producing nothing of real use to anyone). Also, we can optimize the power used by machine learning, whereas optimizations in Bitcoin mining just mean everyone adopts it and the power goes back up (the nature of proof of work). So Bitcoin is hopeless, but to me the jury is still out on AI.

There's a separate question of whether the things we develop with 2020s-era "AI" will be good for us or worth all of the resources we put into it, but there are actual, valuable uses of things like image recognition and translation.

Is there a site that regularly analyzes the state of the AI market like this? Is there a standardized approach to assessment of energy costs of AI?

It's better than wasting that electricity on Bitcoin mining

That's the pot calling the kettle black.

Power-hungry humans are putting the hurt on global electricity supply for AI growth.

What's the big deal, just build more nuclear. We'll need the power anyway as we move away from fossil fuels for transport so may as well start building them now.

we've lost the ability to build things quickly in western society. if you want to build nuclear in under 20 years, you'll need to either hire a chinese company to do everything, or turn it into a military-driven Manhattan project.

Plant Vogtle's reactor 3 took 14 years to build. Reactor 4 is finishing up this year (15 years).

China has successfully built many reactors in as little as 5 years[0] though construction times vary for others. Historically, other countries have been able to rapidly build out nuclear capacity with similar or better construction times. We're just dragging our feet and getting in our own way. Even if it must take 15 years the right choice is to begin new construction now and to plan new projects to start on a regular schedule so that they continue to come online in rapid succession.

[0] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

Better get to work then or ask ourselves why that is… and like really ask like think at least one step below the surface.

Agree. It's bizarre how everyone jumps to the conclusion that increased demand for electricity is a bad thing and can only be solved by limiting its use. The amount of electricity available is determined by how much we choose to produce and we're far from the theoretical limit on production. The obvious answer should always be to build more generating capacity whether that's nuclear, solar, hydro or anything else. It seems to be a uniquely Western perspective as well since everyone else in the world is busy increasing their generating capacity as a matter of course. We should be doing the same and laying the legislative groundwork to make it easy to build more power plants instead of trying to shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again.

In economics there's supposedly something called "induced demand" that also applies to a lot of human behavior in general. Basically, give more resources and capacity to someone, and they'll just fill the space, and not necessarily more efficiently.

AI-assisted answer:

Busy roads, so we build more roads, right? Except no, it just makes more traffic.

Give more time for people to complete a project, and they'll still just end up with a crunch time at the end anyways. "Work expands to fill the time available."

People make more money, then they just spend more money. Buy a bigger house, and it gets filled with more dubious value stuff (conversely, move into a smaller home and realize how much pointless junk you bought) "lifestyle inflation" or "consumption smoothing"

Project behind schedule? Throw more money and people at it, right? But does it help much?

A lot of modern software is arguably suffering from major inefficiency bloat, both in file size and hardware requirements.

So it's probably not quite as "obvious" of a solution to just build more power -- there has to be some incentives to encourage efficient usage instead of just throwing more resources at a problem, otherwise it encourages a long-term build-up of inefficiency.

Here's the other side of that, which is equally as somewhat counter-intuitive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Reduced_demand_...

There's also the matter of the potential inefficiencies of a plant that produces way more than is actually being produced, in which case it's a very expensive waste -- afaik most power plants can't just dial up/down their output to a large degree. Then there are environmental, social, and civic problems, which I guess are easier to bulldoze over in countries that might give less consideration to its citizens. I'm sure there are plenty of other considerations, which you can probably get a good critique on from your favorite AI service.

This assumes we've already achieved, or can achieve through efficiency gains that can be developed faster than generating capacity can be built, an optimal amount and cost for electricity. I'd like to see anyone argue that.

If electricity were more abundant and cheaper we could achieve some incredible things that would drastically improve everyone's lives.

If you're concerned about CO2 then cheap carbon free energy can pull it out of the air or recycle chemical compounds that can. Same for steel and concrete production which are big carbon producers, cheap electricity means no more coal burning to melt steel or produce cement. If it's cheap enough then the price of those commodities would drop making construction less expensive and stainless steel an even better replacement for many plastic products.

Concerned about agricultural pollution, land use, water use or cost of food? Cheap power means cheap glass, aluminum, lighting and heating allowing for expanded use of very large greenhouses to grow commercial crops with near zero wasted water and fertilizer while massively increasing yields by removing seasonal limits, supplementing daylight hours and drastically reducing the need for pesticides and herbicides and they could be built almost anywhere.

The largest cost of desalinization is energy, drive the cost down and anywhere with a coastline has an infinite supply of water for people, industry and agriculture.

The list goes on but even things that now would seem excessively wasteful like using embedded nichrome wire or hydronic pipes or even plain radiant heat to melt ice and snow on roads and sidewalks could have huge benefits by reducing injuries, car accidents, and just generally improving quality of life for everyone in cold climates. Similarly, AC could be even more widely employed than it is now. No one would have to risk their health due to concerns about the electricity bill.

Everything uses electricity or heat produced by fossil fuels in some way. Manufacturing obviously but also construction materials like wood which must be dried in kilns or fresh food that is transported in refrigerated trailers and stored in climate controlled warehouses and supermarket freezers. Everything would be less expensive and that would mean everyone would be richer for it both in cash and in the availability of those goods.

Life without or with too little electricity is miserable, cold, exhausting and dangerous. You might feel comfortable with what you have now but there are many people who do not have access to that comfort or even to the basics. We would all be better off with more.

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