Posted on 08/27/2024 8:11:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Former President Donald Trump said American artificial intelligence (AI) companies will need nuclear gas and nuclear power to beat Chinese competitors during an interview released Monday.
In an interview with Shawn Ryan of the “Shawn Ryan Show,” Trump said that natural gas and nuclear power will need to expand in the U.S. to meet the surging electricity demand that tech companies are helping to drive with new, power-hungry data centers needed to enable AI technologies.
Providing American AI innovators with cheap, reliable electricity will enable U.S. firms to compete with and potentially defeat Chinese companies in the race for dominance in the crucial technology, Trump said.
“How are we going to compete with China in the artificial intelligence space if we don’t up our energy production? Ryan asked Trump.
Trump began his answer by referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “Marxist” and asserting that he does not think American tech companies could compete with Chinese firms if a prospective Harris administration is setting U.S. energy policies. He proceeded to speak about how much electricity generation will be required to sustain an AI boom that would make America the global leader in the technology.
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“If we’re not going to be the big player, then China is going to take over that industry very easily. And the problem is, we have to produce massive electricity that we don’t have. But the environmental impact statements won’t allow us to do that. The rules and regulations that we currently have won’t allow us to do any of it, not a tiny fraction of it,” Trump said.
“ But if I’m president, we’ll be able to do it, and we’ll do it through natural gas — which is clean — and we’ll do it through, primarily, natural gas and nuclear. You know, nuclear now, has become very good, very safe,” Trump continued. “You build the smaller plants and you attach them. But nuclear is very powerful, very good. …. We will create tremendous electricity for our country. And that will allow AI to compete, and you’re right, whoever gets that, it’s going to be a big advantage, you know, that’s sort of going to be the oil of the future. And we have to be the main player.”
Data centers are a leading contributor to increasing estimates for future electricity demand over the coming years, complemented by other policies pushing electrification, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Almost every regional power market in the country increased their projections for five-year annualized electricity demand growth between 2022 and 2023, with the rate of growth doubling in some markets, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Biden administration has also imposed an aggressive set of regulations for power plants that some grid experts have warned will seriously jeopardize longer-term grid reliability if implemented. Republican state attorneys general and a leading utilities trade association have sued the federal government to challenge the rules.
Goldman Sachs projects that American power demand will grow by about 2.4% between 2022 and 2030, with data centers driving an overall increase of 0.9%.
Power grid experts and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Mark Christie have warned with varying degrees of urgency that the U.S. is retiring reliable fossil fuel-fired capacity faster than it is being replaced, while also pursuing policies that will increase electricity demand in the long-term.
You need to get the DOE and more importantly the EPA and its "environmentalist" conspirators in the non-profit sector out of the way. Better make sure your new BFF Mr. Kennedy understands that.
Cuz to me it just sounds like centralized data storage and analysis facilities.
> companies will need nuclear gas and nuclear power <
So much for good editing. Trump said natural gas and nuclear power, which is correctly stated later on in the article.
Side note: I have an interest in physics. And I never heard of “nuclear gas”. So I first did I quick Google search. Nothing came up, of course. I was kinda disappointed, as I was hoping to learn something new.
The entire economy is, very simply, expended energy. You can not produce anything without energy.
China completely understands this - which is why it is building a new coal plant weekly, and a new nuclear plant monthly.
In the future, China WILL be rich, because it is already planning now to use MORE energy.
Democrats intend to make us poor, because their rhetoric and policies demand we use less energy.
A countries' strength and well-being of its citizenry relies on it's ability to make things. It takes energy to make things. The more energy you have, the more things you can make. It's that simple.
China completely understands this
You bet they do. Too bad our "college educated" do not.
“can someone please explain what “AI” is”
That’s a good question. Here are examples, maybe:
1. The computer checking your spelling and completing words and sentences for you.
2. Facial and voice recognition.
3. Computer-created video and audio that looks or sounds very much like the real thing.
EPA, NRC, and the courts of law. Lawfare for nuclear existed long before lawfare for Trump. Jurisdiction ought to be assigned by Congress to one or two courts with expert judges to bring these suits, the bar against dismissal for lack of standing/failure to state a claim out to be very very high, and loser NGOs who bring these suits ought to cough up all legal costs including costs of delay for losing a suit. Injuncition against things already approved by the NRC ought to be prohibited or prohibitively expensive if attained.
AI is mainly an investing buzzword, and it's overhyped. At this point I wouldn't invest in AI stocks until the prices come back down to intrinsic levels.
But AI does have it's uses. In the narrowest definition, AI makes decisions (or at least recommends decisions) that would be good based on studying reams of data. Since databases were created we've done reporting in the IT profession. AI is adding algorithms to data analysis that's way beyond standard reporting. In it's broadest definition, AI includes simply adding more logic to existing programs. I've heard people refer to adding simple validation checks within data entry screens as "adding AI". Often the real world "AI" in most cases (not the mega power hungry data centers Trump talked about) is somewhere in between. Imagine a program helping a professional you're seeing (say, a financial planner) go behind his recommendations to you to double-check that the investment portfolio he recommends meets your needs (i.e. near retirement means 50% stocks/50% bonds, but if you state a fear of inflation then make it 70% stocks/30% bonds as long as the stocks are broadly diversified across many asset classes). To me that's not truly AI. But it's the most practical (read: most often used) application of adding more and more and more and more algorithmic "thinking" in the software can lead to more closely mirroring intelligent help.
AI is to save people the hard job of thinking and analyzing to reach a conclusion. One of the problems is that humans confronted with a perilous situation start imagining all the ways they might die and refrain from going forward until they have figured it out, unless they have had a couple of beers too many. Not sure AI has either that built in prudence or that mechanism for short circuiting reasoned conclusions.
That only gets produced when I whip up a batch of my nuclear chili, once or maybe twice a year.
China is imploding demographically. We’re not that far behind. The third-worlders we are importing will replace us.
I’m all for the idea of nuclear ☢️ power, but we also need to make sure it’s safely produced and that incidents like Chernobyl never happen again.
Sounds like the same work product as my local tavern.
Spot on!
France is kicking out butts in nuclear technology. They are the world leaders in reprocessing technology and it’s practical application not just theory. They are surging ahead with closed fuel cycles and fast reactor technology that can not only make power but is high temp enough to desal seawater, run industrial production and have molten salt energy storage to ramp up and down rapidly to load follow. They have 3000 years of fuel stockpiled without having to mine a single gram of new uranium plus the waste off a fast reactor decays back to natural uranium levels in 300 years not millions like PWR spent fuel. We are being left behind and will pay dearly for it as natural gas becomes scarce in the ffuture. Assuming we don’t find a way to get methane hydrates from the continental shelf. The stability curve is right up against it’s meta stable point for production one little oops and the whole thing destabilizes bye bye production platform. Based on current reserves, production and export of rates the USA has 12 years of gas left of course of the greens would allow NY State and PN access to it’s Shale gas that adds another decade or so. Hydrates are truly massive carbon sinks ten to twenty times the known liquid hydrocarbon systems humans actually could affect the carbon balance if we were to burn them all out 1500+ppm or higher in the atmosphere at that point forget 440ppm. Not that it matters plants love 1000 to 1500ppm co2 levels ask the potheads they add co2 to greenhouses at those levels to double production of plant mass.
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