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Energy use is going to continue to climb. I'm worried about the environmental impacts of this, but from everything I've seen society values model output more.
by pizzuh 1y ago
Energy use is going to continue to climb.
I'm worried about the environmental impacts of this, but from everything I've seen society values model output more. Curious to watch this over the rest of the decade.
- jes5199 1y agosolar and battery costs are falling so fast that emissions are likely to go down, even with growth in energy use
- edhelas 1y agoSure sure, you did the maths ? How many batteries do you need to power-up a datacenter at night ?
- jes5199 1y agoTony Seba did the maths: https://www.rethinkx.com/publications/understandingstellarenergy2025.en https://www.rethinkx.com/publications/understandingstellaren...
- Filligree 1y agoNot that many, if you pair it with offshore wind, a large grid (which covers multiple time zones), and ideally nuclear. The conditions for that don’t exist everywhere, but we don’t need these datacentres everywhere. LLMs aren’t latency-sensitive.
- p_j_w 1y ago>if you pair it with offshore wind Unfortunately the current government of the US is entirely beholden to fossil fuel interests so they're actively hostile to offshore wind.
- pizzuh 1y agoGreat point. Assuming we can adopt them at the correct pace and on a global scale, then energy doesn't have to be a limiting factor