AI GPU Bottleneck Has Eased, but Now Power Will Constrain AI Growth

Even if you tax all datacentres you'll leave 96% of emissions untaxed. All emissions need to be taxed if you want to have a real chance against climate change.

AI energy consumption may be solved by the market. The sources I've been able to find indicate that AI along with crypto are driving much of the growth in data center power consumption. [0] AI expansion in turn is funded by huge investments whose ultimate value is very unclear. Investments like the US broadband buildout in the late 1990s/early 2000s also came to an end in due time.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/24/24049047/data-center-ai-c...

When compute was precious we had Big O Notation. Now I think the time has come for Big CO2 Notation.

There's also a strong case for banning/taxing out of existence things like coal, oil, and natural gas power sources.

who gets to decide what use of energy is providing sufficient value?

Just sticking to GPUs.. you see PoW block chains and LLMs as a waste, but is it any less wasteful to use the same GPUs at the same power draw to run a game at uncapped fps? or at whatever absurd resolution it takes to max it out?

Id rather we just charge for the energy usage, probably with some kind of tiering, and let people decide if their output is worth it.

who gets to decide what use of energy is providing sufficient value?

Just sticking to GPUs.. you see PoW block chains and LLMs as a waste, but is it any less wasteful to use the same GPUs at the same power draw to run a game at uncapped fps? or at whatever absurd resolution it takes to max it out?

Id rather we just charge for the energy usage, probably with some kind of tiering, and let people decide if their output is worth it.