Do we actually know where the money for all this is coming from? The hardware and power bills alone should look like a huge black hole for any company doing this. Completely unsustainable, and yet Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple all continue to function without issues.
The revenue generated is tiny, so where is the money coming from?
Duh, the datacenter holding company is funded by openAI, which is funded by nvidia, who makes their money selling chips to the datacenter holding company, who then rents out their equipment to openAI, who gets funding from nvidia. So basically Enron 2.0
Some companies like Microsoft have started buying old closed down nuclear power plants like Three Mile Island in order to use them to power their AI, so hopefully it can offset a large portion of the energy demand.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai
Microsoft isn’t the sort of company I would want to run a nuclear power plant. That’s a huge responsibility
if the nuclear plant is actually reopened, it’s still be a huge waste. Because we really need that energy elsewhere rn
Microsoft isnt just reactivating old nuclear power plants.
They are building what could very well be the first functional commercial fusion power plant
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/world-first-fusion-power-plant-helion
Great, just what the world needed: bigtech buying (scarce, non-renewable) uranium and selling the resulting plutonium to the highest bidder.
I voiced this concern elsewhere recentley, it terrifies me to think of how much energy, bandwidth, computing power, and storage all goes into what is essentially, frivilous, pointless, lazy, stupid bullshit when it comes to AI and what people actually use it for.
I mean, I am as anti-AI as any rational human being.
but when you start describing digital things as frivilous, pointless, lazy and stupid bullshit… That kinda describes about 98% of technology and internet usage.
But heaven forbid you use a PC power supply that’s not 80+ efficient!
AI has basically obliterated 30 years of energy efficiency gains.
That’s just fucked up.
