Energy companies told to recharge for AI datacenter surge (www.theregister.com)
from Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2024 09:30
https://lemmy.world/post/20767098

#technology

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nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl on 12 Oct 2024 09:45 next collapse

AI, Apocalypse of Intelligence

Badeendje@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2024 10:53 next collapse

So households will pay higher prices because of this shortage. It’s time to separate markets and prices between vital and non vital stuff and make the non vital market bear the costs of these higher prices. That makes it more fair.

Also why can’t these datacenters be in the desert? Use daytime solar and wind down at night. Follow the sun.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 12 Oct 2024 11:54 next collapse

Also why can't these datacenters be in the desert?

They can be after locals provide tax rebates and feds provide an interest free loan!

Did microshit want to reopen three mile island but only after taxpayers pays for it?

🤡

Womble@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2024 18:14 collapse

The study this cites has data centre (so not just AI but all internet stuff) rising to 300TWh by 2030. Two years ago the USA’s power usage was 4000TWh a year. So in about 6 years time they estimate that data centres will be using about 8% of 2022’s electricity usage, up from currently about 4%. An increase sure, but hardly one that’s going to move electricity prices significantly.

Badeendje@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2024 18:17 next collapse

That not how prices work in a shortage.

Womble@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2024 18:36 collapse

I didn’t say anything about how prices work in a shortage, but I also sincerely doubt a 4% increase in 6 years (so 0.7% annually) is going to cause any shortages.

Badeendje@lemmy.world on 12 Oct 2024 19:38 collapse

So, you have other information you are basing that on? Because the source is one of the top 3 consulting firms in the world.

I’m sure they will happily provide consultancy to the energy sector to avoid this issue, but I’m kinda surprised when random Lemmy accounts think they know better than a leading company like this.

Energy is a pretty tight market where supply and demand are tightly intertwined. So a big boom on the use side as AI is threatening has a good potential to outpace the capacity of the supply side to scale up… thus creating scarcity, driving up prices.

Womble@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2024 11:39 collapse

Youve missread that article, it is saying rising demand generally may cause shortages, and that there is also predictions of growing demand fron datacentres, not that the later is the main cause of the former. I fact they suggest growth in electricty demand of a quarter in 2 years, vastly more than the 4% in 6 years growth in datacentre demand.

InputZero@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2024 13:25 next collapse

I can’t find the source but I remember an article thatdiscussed the rate solar energy is adopted. The researchers made lower and upper bound predictions, and what if all solar PV development stopped immediately. The worst case scenario based on availabile data suggested a three fold increase in solar PV electricity generation, the number used by the article you cited, to a best case scenario of solar PV increasing to the power of three, really big exponential growth. Now the optimistic model seemed a bit too optimistic for me, but it at least suggested that there is a lot more capacity to build out solar PV. If that capacity is realized or wasted was the biggest unknown factor in that study, which like duh. Still, I took it to mean that the future will probably be a little bit more optimistic than the most pessimistic projections. It’s a small comfort.

interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml on 13 Oct 2024 14:14 collapse

If EV get out of their slump, they will devour every last electron that we have and we will need 10 times the current production.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 12 Oct 2024 11:53 next collapse

Remember folks that they got industrial discounts while you get surchrges for being a stupid slave!

Aint it great!

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works on 12 Oct 2024 12:47 collapse

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it

SARGE@startrek.website on 12 Oct 2024 12:50 next collapse

When people start seeing huge rises in their electric bill, don’t be surprised to see normal everyday people trying to burn down datacenters.

johnnybravo@lemm.ee on 12 Oct 2024 15:50 next collapse

Can’t wait for the bubble to burst!

linearchaos@lemmy.world on 13 Oct 2024 01:53 next collapse

It’s not going to burst, it’s an incredible marketing opportunity that will invade our privacy until and unless we make it illegal. Every screen, camera, vehicle, tool will call home and report everything about you so that the company that sold you the item can make a buck.

echodot@feddit.uk on 14 Oct 2024 09:06 next collapse

Unless they can show an obvious advantage people aren’t going to pay more to be spied on.

The reason that smartphones became so ubiquitous was because they were useful products that actually had capabilities that were attractive to the general public it was only afterwards that they started to be used for spying. It doesn’t work the other way around you can’t make a spy product and expect people to buy it.

linearchaos@lemmy.world on 14 Oct 2024 12:01 collapse

It hasn’t hurt TV sales yet.

mojo_raisin@lemmy.bestiver.se on 14 Oct 2024 14:45 collapse

AI is the greatest accelerant of our species demise.

linearchaos@lemmy.world on 14 Oct 2024 16:27 collapse

If we ever actually manage to create a artificial general intelligence probably.

Right now I personally think the worst of it is that companies and governments have called our bluff, and figured out that as a whole we don’t care enough to do anything about any of it. They can sell our data, track what and where we watch, shove ads in front of our eyeballs 24x7. Take away our right to protect ourselves legally, we’ll just click OK and keep going.

echodot@feddit.uk on 14 Oct 2024 09:04 collapse

It’s not just AI though, it’s all data centers. Including all the corporate stuff that has nothing to do with AI.

The company I work for has computers in data centers all over the world doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it is AI sure, but a lot of it is for remote networking or processing of large data sets, a lot of it is to do with scientific research and security research. That was going up even before AI came along.

biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works on 12 Oct 2024 23:59 collapse

Quite unintelligent for an industry based around intelligence

msage@programming.dev on 14 Oct 2024 09:29 collapse

Yeah, hah, “intelligence”.

It’s ads all the way.