Regarding total costs relative to the pure energy costs it is multiple orders of magnitude different but also realize in the datacenter the energy is the pure commodity while almost every other component has huge margins driven by lack of supply. I do think over time this might get closer together (more competition on HW might lower margins) while energy might become more of a bottle neck (raising the energy prices).
Though I do suspect that golf course owners in Arizona and alfalfa farmers in California must be ecstatic.
This was going so well until this. Everything at scale has environmental impact because you centralize the downside and distribute the upside. This is an important alienation, but it hides the amount of heat, noise and impact on distribution that datacenters have on local infrastructure and environment.
So, assume 8 of those, and it’s a space heater per house. I have never been disturbed by my neighbor’s space heater.
The problem is centralization, not the absolute energy usage. (And also that LLMs are trending to 100x more efficient than the data center sizing assumed).
Centralization is a huge huge environmental win, far far more than even cloud computing was compared to tons of inefficient, under utilized racks spread though our office buildings.
Calculate the scale. Add it up. Do it.
Look at the numbers and come back to me.
Then why would any AI company exist when they could just use their money to buy tokens from another AI company and make money for zero effort? There would be no incentive to be a provider.
Not to mention inflation would grow to match or outpace the rate you could earn on these guaranteed AI gains.
In the equilibrium, profits fall to zero in capitalism, but there's never equilibrium, everything is changing. Profit comes from insights that others haven't seen, from access to opportunities that others don't have, or through monopolistic control generating economic rents.
For that AI to make money, it has to have a harness that gives it one of the above things, which does seem possible.
So how many companies/individuals pay a random spam bot contacting them 100€ to upgrade their website? I guess start with targeting gullible and trying to scam them will be the more successful experiment for them. (If run unrestricted)
Take a vacation.
I have the feeling China is somehow ahead when it comes to energy (and cost) efficiency for AI usage. After all, the two are in a direct competition, and this difference is significant. Or is the "hyper" scaling of energy hungry datacenters in US part of a bubble?
BTW, according to the article the full GLM 5.3 model is in the "10x to 100x" ballpark. So this is not outside the realm of plausibility.
As we electrify and decarbonize, we are looking at going to 1000-1500GW average load (clean energy sources are 2x-6x more energy efficient than fossil fuels at delivering energy services , so looking at the primary energy flows here you'll not only see elimination of the "rejected energy" category, but heating by fossil fuels gets counted as ~100% effect when heat pumps are 200%-600% effect on those terms https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ )
Going to 50GW of AI would be an amazing jump for which we don't have fab capacity anytime.
My entire point is that 99% of the dollar cost of running these models goes to things other than the GPU power. The capex cost to building cost to GPU cost to storage/networking/chasses/wiring plus the other operation costs dwarf the electricity. Even the other electricity costs, lets say double it for all the supporting compute, plus another 25% for a 1.25 PUE, and you're at 2.5% of all-in cost of running these models is from electricity.
The non-electricity costs are massive and the constraints on fabs, etc. will drive the amount of the AI build far more than energy availability.
There are noise issues in some places. But the panic is excessive. Like nuts.
Maybe environmental panics are to the left what moral panics about stuff like trans people are to the right.
Add in 1) all job destruction that Sam Altman and other leaders tout, 2) Musk operating an environmental disaster in the most offensive way possible for xAI, and 3) general fear bait a new technology that has such uncertain consequences, and I'm surprised the backlash isn't stronger.
Go talk to community members about any change in the buildings in their area and the data center backlash fits right in line with normal responses.
a.) we’re supply constrained
b.) only 3% of households pay for AI
Inference amounts will continue to grow heavily.
I never understand the mindset that leads to these massive leaps in reasoning. I was recruiting a guy, he was a VC GP, he says the same thing. I think he’s wrong. The more we use the more we want to use.
Do we seriously think our species will jinx the Kardashev energy requirements
Every massive technological leap that have big private buildouts results in massive overbuild. It's the nature of FOMO when a big civilization changing tech gets introduced.
Will AI change everything? Are too many data centers planned? The answer is almost certainly yes to both.
Is that best spent on LLMs, world models, physical AI, who knows. But we'll need the infrastructure, what's being built is conservative
Well there's also training to consider. But yeah, most of what I see online about datacenters is nonsense. People worried about water use as a top concern are misinformed.
Look, I absolutely get it if you're worried your boss is just waiting for the day to replace you with an LLM. Fucking get organized with your fellow laborers instead of getting distracted by datacenter water use. Call your politicians to rein in billionaires. If anything the ownership class is probably directing online discourse towards electricity and water user to keep people away from class-focused debates.
I can't believe the TAM requires more than it at a 2x speed up. OpenAI, Anthropic built models whose only purpose now is things like research and defense.
And by defense, obviously, in America, we mean war. killing, etc.