The only data in the article that helps to understand the scale in context is this:
> It found data centers will account for 8 percent of total electricity use in the United States by 2030, a near tripling of their share today. New solar and wind energy will meet about 40 percent of that new power demand from data centers, the forecast said, while the rest will come from a vast expansion in the burning of natural gas. The new emissions created would be comparable to that of putting 15.7 million additional gas-powered cars on the road.
So all data center power (not just "AI") is currently 3-4% of US electricity consumption, and is expected to grow to 8% in 6 years.
I think we so have upcoming energy crunches between data center buildouts, EVs, heat pumps etc. I am not sure why the current news cycle is about AI. But I guess I don’t fully understand the amount of disdain AI gets as seen in the comments here.
In my opinion forcing the grid to modernize is a good thing.
One reason AI gets extra criticism might be that all the things you mention displace usage of fossil fuels. EVs may be powered partially by natural gas, for example, but that is still better than inefficiently burning gasoline. Heat pumps displace natural gas heaters or fuel oil heaters.
Because GPUs are so power hungry that in a conventional data center, a fully loaded HPE Apollo 6500 (which has 8x H100 cards) uses more power than a rack’s total power budget.
Running an LLM just for fun requires tremendous amount of energy. Training one from scratch is even more energy intensive.
Real AI applications are not much behind either. If you are processing any serious amount of data with AI, you use a lot of energy, again.
A smallish water cooled “super computer” class CPU cluster needs “half a megawatt” to operate.
As I said elsewhere, you can’t build a multi-megawatt data center “just like that”. Making the power you need available there is a multi-year, multi-institution endeavor on many cases.
Similarly, you can’t “just force” the power grid to modernize, because live infrastructure servicing millions moves very slowly for good reasons (like multi-day boot up sequences if it shuts down).
This still doesn't help me understand, because we don't know what non-DC electricity usage will be in 2030. That could vary wildly depending on the adoption of electric cars, HVAC systems, water heaters, clothes dryers, et cetera.
As I said in comments on that one: This article claiming that "AI is exhausting the power grid" is surprisingly light on evidence that AI is exhausting the power grid. (In fact, I think it contains no such evidence, though it does contain evidence that tech companies have datacentres that use electricity and seems to think that that is an exciting and damning discovery.)
Energy would be a non-issue if we'd have went full-in on nuclear. It would be so cheap we would all be heating our houses with resistive heaters and running all the AI farms we want in our basements without a second thought. Instead we let stupidity win.
Tell that to the Navajo Nation. They're sitting on and around the 2nd largest source of uranium in the country. Between all the miners getting lung cancer and the high rates of blood cancer in everyone else due to the environmental neglect from the mining companies they eventually declared a moratorium on mining within their land.
I had a brief teaching stint out there on Shiprock. One of the first peculiar things I noticed was a clinic that I first thought offered some kind of radiation therapy, like an oncology clinic or what have you. Upon closer inspection I realized it was a clinic for those affected by radiation-related illnesses.
Meanwhile, given all the oil and gas activity, it certainly seems like that has given them far fewer problems.
You have to compare nuclear to other actually possible power sources, not some idealized hypothetical. How many coal miner get black lung, for instance? How many excess deaths from burning fossil fuels are there? Without that comparison, it’s a bad argument.
> It would be so cheap we would all be heating our houses with resistive heaters
"Too cheap to meter" was a promise in the 50's regarding nuclear power. Since then it turned out to be one of the most expensive ways to produce electricity if not the most expensive.
Lots of anti nuclear movements, managed to reduce investment into the nuclear power, and increase cost.
We have not opened a plant in 25 years.
Research plants have been closed down by anti nuclear activists.
Some of this movement is funded by Germany Governement.
This and all other articles misrepresent current energy consumption, then wildly predict the future from that baseline. The overwhelming trend is towards efficiency as comically inefficient corporate facilities are shut down in favor of cloud computing. Furthermore, half of current "data center power usage" is actually due to cellular radio networks, and that isn't growing due to AI.
I found a DGX H100 for $300k. The internet tells me such a server uses 10kw. I found a 30kw solar system with 90kw of lithium battery storage for $70k. At utility scale I don't think there's any risk of AI causing a problem to the grid when a dedicated supply of power for an AI server can clearly be purchased for less than 20% of the system cost. (Realistically I expect the lifespan of solar panels and the batteries is easily 2x-4x the lifespan of the server, so it's probably closer to 5% or even lower.)
Solar and batteries make power basically a solved problem. Relative to GPUs it's cheap and scalable.
Does that bump it up to 20kW? I'm not sure it really matters that much (nor does what the power generation method you use is.) I used solar and batteries because you can get them off-the-shelf in small quantities, but my main point was just to demonstrate that buying GPUs requires an incredible amount of capital. Powering them and cooling them requires some capital, but it's a fraction of the cost of the GPUs.
So, your battery is good for 9 hours of compute time. What happens if you have a couple of cloudy days in a row? And what's the insolation during the winter (in many places, it's 1/10th of the amount of summer sunlight)
“If we work together, we can unlock AI’s game-changing abilities to help create the net zero, climate resilient and nature positive works that we so urgently need,” Microsoft said in a statement.
Microsoft choosing to have Windows 11 obsolete hundreds of millions of perfectly functional computers tells you all you need to know about their actual commitment to the environment.
let the irony sink in - well done. Meanwhile, an early research paper on using fundamental ML/AI to measure and improve energy use in commercial buildings -- a public research paper from the USA -- has a "Cloudfront Identity Check" before you can actually download it.. or alternatively purchase it from Elsivier, using acceptable payment credentials you see..
Make the usage of fossil fuels a crime against humanity / all sentient life, and use nuclear reactors for base load with renewables for variable load.
Modernize the power grid by including excess energy storage mechanisms (batteries, water pumps, etc), harden it against solar flares, and create a profitable energy sink to keep reactors running (crypto mining) to further stabilize the grid.
Heavily subsidize electric vehicles to the point of gas trade-ins being a net profit for anyone with a car, and mandate conversion to electric vehicles.
Make all fossil fuels shipping barges illegal. Subsidize the usage of nuclear reactors on shipping barges. This can be done in several ways, such as expanding an agency like the NRC to manage reactors in consumer usages.
Those don't require a miracle. They require a sensible population to wake up and make the world better without compromises.
In order to replace the world's current energy mix with nuclear, we'd have to switch on a new nuclear plant every day for the next several decades. All of that new infrastructure would also require massive amounts of fossil fuels to build (which you've magically made illegal) and would only last a few decades before having to be replaced (presumably without requiring any fossil fuels by then).
There isn't even enough copper on earth to electrify everything.
What you are suggesting would require coordination on a scale that's almost unimaginable. The effort and coordination required would be similar to wartime mobilization.
>Make the usage of fossil fuels a crime against humanity
Delusional.
Fossil fuels have been unbelievably beneficial to humanity and are absolutely vital for modern society.
If a theoretical global ruler immediately outlawed fossil fuels they would be remembered as the greatest villain in world history, killing hundreds of millions and plunging us into chaos.
>They require a sensible population to wake up and make the world better without compromises.
No compromises? Sounds like utopian thinking. Tradeoffs exist everywhere.
Readit News
> It found data centers will account for 8 percent of total electricity use in the United States by 2030, a near tripling of their share today. New solar and wind energy will meet about 40 percent of that new power demand from data centers, the forecast said, while the rest will come from a vast expansion in the burning of natural gas. The new emissions created would be comparable to that of putting 15.7 million additional gas-powered cars on the road.
So all data center power (not just "AI") is currently 3-4% of US electricity consumption, and is expected to grow to 8% in 6 years.
In my opinion forcing the grid to modernize is a good thing.
Running an LLM just for fun requires tremendous amount of energy. Training one from scratch is even more energy intensive.
Real AI applications are not much behind either. If you are processing any serious amount of data with AI, you use a lot of energy, again.
A smallish water cooled “super computer” class CPU cluster needs “half a megawatt” to operate.
As I said elsewhere, you can’t build a multi-megawatt data center “just like that”. Making the power you need available there is a multi-year, multi-institution endeavor on many cases.
Similarly, you can’t “just force” the power grid to modernize, because live infrastructure servicing millions moves very slowly for good reasons (like multi-day boot up sequences if it shuts down).
AI is the current hype trend so things tend to be either breathlessly pro or anti AI.
As I said in comments on that one: This article claiming that "AI is exhausting the power grid" is surprisingly light on evidence that AI is exhausting the power grid. (In fact, I think it contains no such evidence, though it does contain evidence that tech companies have datacentres that use electricity and seems to think that that is an exciting and damning discovery.)
I had a brief teaching stint out there on Shiprock. One of the first peculiar things I noticed was a clinic that I first thought offered some kind of radiation therapy, like an oncology clinic or what have you. Upon closer inspection I realized it was a clinic for those affected by radiation-related illnesses.
Meanwhile, given all the oil and gas activity, it certainly seems like that has given them far fewer problems.
Deleted Comment
"Too cheap to meter" was a promise in the 50's regarding nuclear power. Since then it turned out to be one of the most expensive ways to produce electricity if not the most expensive.
Edit: looks like something different is happening:
French Power Slumps as Surging Renewables Push Out Atomic Plants https://tildes.net/~enviro/1h6r/french_power_slumps_as_surgi...
> France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
> France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over €3 billion per year from this.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
Some of this movement is funded by Germany Governement.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-shape-of-nuclear-...
Solar and batteries make power basically a solved problem. Relative to GPUs it's cheap and scalable.
Make the usage of fossil fuels a crime against humanity / all sentient life, and use nuclear reactors for base load with renewables for variable load.
Modernize the power grid by including excess energy storage mechanisms (batteries, water pumps, etc), harden it against solar flares, and create a profitable energy sink to keep reactors running (crypto mining) to further stabilize the grid.
Heavily subsidize electric vehicles to the point of gas trade-ins being a net profit for anyone with a car, and mandate conversion to electric vehicles.
Make all fossil fuels shipping barges illegal. Subsidize the usage of nuclear reactors on shipping barges. This can be done in several ways, such as expanding an agency like the NRC to manage reactors in consumer usages.
Those don't require a miracle. They require a sensible population to wake up and make the world better without compromises.
There isn't even enough copper on earth to electrify everything.
Your scenario isn't a miracle; it's a pipe-dream.
Delusional.
Fossil fuels have been unbelievably beneficial to humanity and are absolutely vital for modern society.
If a theoretical global ruler immediately outlawed fossil fuels they would be remembered as the greatest villain in world history, killing hundreds of millions and plunging us into chaos.
>They require a sensible population to wake up and make the world better without compromises.
No compromises? Sounds like utopian thinking. Tradeoffs exist everywhere.
https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/brain-inspired-com...