This is the best summary I could come up with:
Generative AI is taking the world by storm, and its impact is evident across all sectors, including medicine, education, music, computing, and more.
According to a detailed analysis by Michael Thomas, this surpasses the power consumption of over 100 nations, including Ghana, Tunisia, and more (via Tom’s Hardware).
Some of the downsides to advancements in the AI landscape include the degradation of the environment, however, Google and Microsoft are big on renewable energy and have been championing the campaign while seeking alternative power sources.
Elon Musk claimed we’re on the verge of the biggest technology breakthrough with AI, but there won’t be enough power by 2025.
Sam Altman has been exploring a potential alternative power source for OpenAI’s AI efforts, with nuclear fusion at the top of his list.
While nuclear fusion seems like the perfect solution for AI’s power needs due to its non-existent impact on the environment, scientists and researchers say it’s “too late to deal with the climate crisis” and view fission and renewable energy as better options.
The original article contains 449 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
They want to become carbon neutralbut climate crisis is already running.
Feels like build „don’t smoke here“ - signs in our forests while they are burning.
But we will soon have AGI, and then you can have your very own JARVIS! Don’t you like Iron Man? Don’t you like super heroes? Don’t you like sci-fi? /s
Wake me up when AI can simulate my brain. Literally, run me.exe and let me know.
All fun and games until a moth ends up in your transistors.
What if the moth is just their fursona?
Moths have fur?
I think all moths have some amount of fur, it’s easy to notice on the base of their wings, just “behind” (below?) the head. Some, like the rosy moth, are almost entirely covered in furs
“While nuclear fusion seems like the perfect solution for AI’s power needs due to its non-existent impact on the environment…”
nonexistent is key here.
Second law of thermodynamics would like to chime in, even with such a perfect nonexistent power source, waste heat is still an issue… which you can radiate to space, which would take tremendous land use to facilitate…
Or we use that land and capital and effort for solar power, which exists and could power practically everything in our lives, minus AI. Sounds like a win to me.
(Also not to mention the necessity to fire up more fossils for this shit to compensate for the current lack of miracle power for their pipe dreams)
Non-existent power source for a non-existent tech, a match made in heaven
(meaning what they hype as AI is actually mostly just LLM)
Are we talking consumed for their own use? Or consumed as part of delivering cloud services to their customers?
These are very different things. The former would be horrifying the latter would be misleading in the extreme.
Many countries don’t use a lot of electricity, especially those where the grids are spotty or in poor repair, or the overall population is small. Even without the AI garbage, I’d expect large tech-sector companies to use more energy than many countries.
(In other words, the headline for this was really poorly chosen. “Microsoft and Google pour more electricity into AI than 100+ countries use” might have gotten a bit closer to the actuall point, if it’s actually true.)
Microsoft and Google pour more electricity into AI than 100+ countries use" might have gotten a bit closer to the actuall point, if it’s actually true
From what I can tell, the article is talking about total electrical use, not just AI.
Also probably ignoring the fact that some of their data centers have practically the entire roof covered in solar panels, Microsoft is investing in nuclear energy, etc.
That is a big probably.
