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dehugger 13 hours ago [-]
What truly drives me crazy is that if they ran a slower build-out, at a pace that allowed supporting industries (manufacturing of dram, electrical infrastructure) to grow at a sustainable rate, the impact would manageable.
You can make data-centers that don't waste water, that use renewable energy, that aren't titanic eye and audio sores on their communities; it's just more expensive to do so.
It's the other way around: renewables come first, AI boom comes second. That's why, despite the initial lead, US has already lost the AI race. For the next decade or two US AI companies will be tied up in legal fights over electricity demands of their data centers, while China, having abundance of electricity, will build hundreds of AI data centers and leapfrog US.
mertleee 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
SR2Z 16 hours ago [-]
This is the saddest thing.
We could have had cheap AI and renewables, but now we'll get expensive AI controlled by the data center owners and a few extra GW of gas turbines once the moratoriums really start flowing. If Musk has his way, we'll also get thousands of rocket launches building solar panels - but only in my space, where they can't do much to help the climate.
8note 17 hours ago [-]
so i guess the main safety aspect of anthropic with regards to ai is that theyre trying to speedrun some other disaster instead?
kraken_cult 17 hours ago [-]
I suspect the rational calculus is that if you abscond with billions while destroying the planet, the billions will protect your for the remaining 80 or so years of your life. Which is of course safer than not having the billions in the theoretically inevitably destroyed planet.
vrganj 17 hours ago [-]
This is how you get concrete poured down your doomsday bunker air ducts...
jqpabc123 20 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile, China is investing billions is renewable energy for data centers.
Wonder which will be more cost competitive in the "AI race"?
leonidasrup 19 hours ago [-]
China is investing billions in both renewable energy and non-renewable energy for data centers.
"As they are located mostly in the east of the country, the data centre electricity supply in China today is dominated by coal with a near 70% share, followed by renewables with nearly 20%, nuclear close to 10% and natural gas accounting for the remainder. Between 2024 and 2030 coal remains the largest source of additional electricity for data centres, with annual generation increasing by nearly 90 TWh. Renewables, mostly solar PV and wind, add nearly 90 TWh over the same period, supported by an increase in the share of renewables in the grid electricity mix, provincial co-location mandates and policies to prioritise the construction of data centres in renewables-rich western China. After 2030 the introduction of SMRs significantly boosts the nuclear share of the data centre electricity mix. Between 2030 and 2035 the rise in renewables and nuclear pushes coal into decline. By 2035 both sources together make up nearly 60% of the data centre electricity supply in China."
Energy and AI
World Energy Outlook Special Report
International Energy Agency (IEA)
True. But most are in the east? The most expensive land? Near the coast? I have a hard time believing that. I think most are in the west, where energy land water is cheap and the climate cool. I have seen the datacenters in Guizhou with my own eyes and its insane. Now they are expanding to Inner-Mongolia and also in (sub tropical!) Guangdong specifically for AI datacenters.
origini 16 hours ago [-]
And?
They still invest massivly into solar and renewable.
Rzor 20 hours ago [-]
I think the race for Anthropic is more about getting the bag and exiting ASAP.
jqpabc123 19 hours ago [-]
I think the same applies to all of the smaller "frontier" AI vendors. Their entire focus is short term rewards.
I don't think any of them will survive for very long on their own. The bigger players will gobble them up for cheap once the bubble pops.
txdv 19 hours ago [-]
Scaling renewables is slow, they need data centers now. One of the big problems in the US right now is getting enough electricity into your DC. Nobody wants to spare capacity, since it has already upset the electricity prices in the last 6 years and inflation is a hot topic.
jqpabc123 10 hours ago [-]
Scaling renewables is slow
Not in China. They have as much renewable energy capacity in place as the rest of the world combined.
vrganj 18 hours ago [-]
Wonder why people protest against data centers...
Surely, poisoning our air and further heating our planet has nothing to do with it.
skybrian 17 hours ago [-]
A carbon tax on data centers would likely be popular and result in different plans.
toomuchtodo 18 hours ago [-]
But don’t you understand? AI progress is much more important than climate change and clean air.
/s
soraminazuki 13 hours ago [-]
Isn't this fairly close to what rationalist AI cultists say? That we should pour all resources into creating an AI god above all else, because that would save the largest number of people if you also include those that aren't born yet? It hardly sounds like sarcasm.
vrganj 17 hours ago [-]
Maybe once we have superintelligence, it will finally be able to tell us how dumb we were when we ruined our planet trying to get there.
boothby 17 hours ago [-]
I can’t remember which AI head was talking about this, but they literally said that the solution to climate change is to first build a superintelligence and then ask it to solve the problem. Which is curious because when I ask LLMs to contemplate their own carbon impact they downplay it in favor of technological progress. So I suspect that heavy thumbs are already on the scale in their training data.
ragequittah 5 hours ago [-]
The argument (not sure I agree with it, but I also am not seeing many alternatives that make any sense) is that the world is already on fire, nobody is working to even slow the fire down really, and we're basically already doomed so as a hail Mary maybe AI can cause a technology boom that can help us fix it.
It is a somewhat coherent argument IMO. Humans are way too greedy and focused on the next financial quarter/unsustainable growth to ever put the fire out without some kind of sea change.
luis_cho 17 hours ago [-]
When we have super intelligence it will turn itself off :)
cyanydeez 18 hours ago [-]
Anthropic is clearly the delusional side of "Effective Altruism".
Hate now, clean up the mess later!
jackb4040 18 hours ago [-]
You mean the logical conclusion of effective altruistic? Or perhaps the obvious subtext of effective altruistic? I'm honestly surprised that these people only got more emboldened after SBF went down.
Avicebron 17 hours ago [-]
Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly if you've ever actually worked/met/lived with these people, Rationalism is not rational and Effective Altruism is not altruistic. It is effective though at providing a framework for immoral and self-serving behaviors.
You can make data-centers that don't waste water, that use renewable energy, that aren't titanic eye and audio sores on their communities; it's just more expensive to do so.
Silicon Valley's greed will be its undoing.
(Still a lot of coal, but massive build out…)
We could have had cheap AI and renewables, but now we'll get expensive AI controlled by the data center owners and a few extra GW of gas turbines once the moratoriums really start flowing. If Musk has his way, we'll also get thousands of rocket launches building solar panels - but only in my space, where they can't do much to help the climate.
Wonder which will be more cost competitive in the "AI race"?
"As they are located mostly in the east of the country, the data centre electricity supply in China today is dominated by coal with a near 70% share, followed by renewables with nearly 20%, nuclear close to 10% and natural gas accounting for the remainder. Between 2024 and 2030 coal remains the largest source of additional electricity for data centres, with annual generation increasing by nearly 90 TWh. Renewables, mostly solar PV and wind, add nearly 90 TWh over the same period, supported by an increase in the share of renewables in the grid electricity mix, provincial co-location mandates and policies to prioritise the construction of data centres in renewables-rich western China. After 2030 the introduction of SMRs significantly boosts the nuclear share of the data centre electricity mix. Between 2030 and 2035 the rise in renewables and nuclear pushes coal into decline. By 2035 both sources together make up nearly 60% of the data centre electricity supply in China."
Energy and AI World Energy Outlook Special Report International Energy Agency (IEA)
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-...
https://www.iea.org/files/de9dea13-b07d-42c5-a398-d1b3ae17d8...
They still invest massivly into solar and renewable.
I don't think any of them will survive for very long on their own. The bigger players will gobble them up for cheap once the bubble pops.
Not in China. They have as much renewable energy capacity in place as the rest of the world combined.
Surely, poisoning our air and further heating our planet has nothing to do with it.
/s
It is a somewhat coherent argument IMO. Humans are way too greedy and focused on the next financial quarter/unsustainable growth to ever put the fire out without some kind of sea change.
Hate now, clean up the mess later!