Comment by carlm42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlm42 | Hacker News Reader

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We don't have enough energy production for massive AI buildouts. New energy capacity will not come online fast. National and regional grids will be stressed contributing to impacts on populations and industries. New energy capacity will be expensive and if carbon-intensive will accelerate climate breakdown. Additionally at current fossil fuel prices, energy prices (will) rise dramatically. Currently planned locations for buildouts are suboptimal at best, horrible at worst and vehemently opposed by local populations. That could be NIMBYISM, but in this case it's probably justified: who would want a noisy, ugly-looking grey cube raising electricity prices near their house? And that's just one angle. There are many more. Nothing to do with "AI will take our jobs", that's a pretty low-effort justification/theory.

We are building more energy now than ever. AI has forced that. If this AI bubble collapses, we will have plenty of cheap electricity.

is it gas turbines energy?

Nuclear has been reinvigorated. HN was extremely pro Nuclear before ChatGPT hit. Now we are finally heavily investing in it again.

Fusion has been given a ton of money since AI.

Do you have any numbers how much fossil energy capacity was installed and how much nuclear?

No. Do you?

I don't, I doubt any nuclear plants could be brought online that fast.

But my point was that type of energy matters in this context.

That on its own would be a good incentive for the AI bubble to pop ;-) As others have pointed out though, I'd be keen to see how much of it is gas turbines. I'm also not convinced that energy buildouts are seeing as much interest and by the time they come online prices will already have skyrocketed (that is, after the current skyrocketing).

We are building more dirty fossil fuel energy to keep up with AI demands. When the solar build out is further along, and the grid is updated, it will be more acceptable to be using so much energy. Spinning up a bunch of new gas powered plants because they want to move too fast is terrible

I'd love to see numbers on dirty fossil fuel energy, how long this is needed until nuclear (and hopefully fusion) take over.

Also, since AI demand is so high, what do you suggest we do? Not do the buildout and just let people fight over tiny capacity?

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