Posted on 11/24/2024 2:29:16 PM PST by DFG
The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities.
The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them will become increasingly difficult, the developers say. The facilities could increasingly demand a gigawatt or more of power — one billion watts — or about twice the residential electricity consumption of the Pittsburgh area last year.
Technology companies are in a “race of a lifetime to global dominance” in artificial intelligence, said Ali Fenn, president of Lancium, a company that secures land and power for data centers in Texas. “It’s frankly about national security and economic security,” she said. “They’re going to keep spending” because there’s no more profitable place to deploy capital.
Renewable energy alone won’t be sufficient to meet their power needs. Natural gas will have to play a role, developers say, which will slow progress toward meeting carbon dioxide emissions targets.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
There’s something else going on here besides this artificial intelligence can’t even reason
Interesting i just asked Perplexity how much electricity it uses to answer just one question.
here is the answer.
According to recent calculations, ChatGPT uses approximately 0.0029 kilowatt-hours of electricity to answer a single question, which is nearly ten times more energy than a typical Google search that consumes about 0.0003 kilowatt-hours per query.
“Renewable energy alone won’t be sufficient to meet their power needs.”
Oh, Spencer, come on! Everybody knows the Unicorn Fart Generator is going to do the job.
At a high rate of 25¢/kWh, the cost of the power to answer one question is 0.000725 cents.
Which is why Microsoft is buying Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant and renewing its license.
Enough power there to power two cities
I am not exactly crazy about Microsoft owning a power plant but I am glad that the plant is not being decommissioned
This is why after years of telling consumers to live with expensive ‘green energy’ the tech giants are getting ready to bring online nuclear energy.
Good for them but not for us...
AI industry run by billionaires.
AI needs huge amounts of electricity.
Regular consumers need electricity to live.
Who is going to get the electricity?
Hook up solar panels and windmills.
Electricity generated by solar and wind is undependable and Dirty.
Computers require dependable and Clean power.
Dirty power is power that is not Regular which means that its wave form is very constant. Clean power does not vary in its amplitude or frequency.
Solar and wind can not supply clean power
Which is why the push to EV’s. They don’t give a rat’s behind whether you can drive, or not. They just want the electricity generation.
1.21 Gigawatts! Great Scott!
I am not exactly crazy about Microsoft owning a power plant
Not exactly the place where you want to see a Blue Screen Of Death.
A much more important priority than air conditioning, heating, or electric cars.
Anyone pushing these things should have to build and provide their own power sources. In the mean time, if they draw more than our systems can provide, they get shut down first. They don’t like it...tough, get off the grid.
Sounds like AI is metastasizing.
Is this a good use of power ?
Microsoft has never owned a nuclear power plant
Having worked at one for 37 years and in that time worked under 3 different owners, one of which had no experience as being the owner operator of nuclear power generation, I can tell you that managing a nuclear power plant is different than anything most businessmen are accustomed to.
And most management types are not the type are ready to accept that they could be wrong.
Yes, because it will be used to enslave us.
Or worse.
When the elite want tools to allow them to dominate their citizens there is never a shortage of precious resources.
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