AI isn’t yet slurping any significantly obscene amount of power from the grid, although as it gets more ubiquitous that will surely change. The individual data centers are massive things but they are outnumbered by orders of magnitude by all the rest of it
The big villain in senseless datacenter power usage is cryptocurrency
Plus most of the rest of it, of course, acres of racks burning through the world’s resources to run the world’s ten millionth pink slime news factory or Youtube click fakery cluster, or whatever
But AI isn’t yet adding its useless weight to the groaning pile in any significant way
Like I say, it’s going to become a significant thing, and I’m sure for the tiny fraction of all the world’s data centers that are operated by Microsoft specifically it already is, but it isn’t yet, on a global scale.
Doing a rough comparison: 500k KWh * 365 / 240 billion KWh= ChatGPT uses ~0.076% of the power that Crypto uses.
Just to put Crypto into perspective.
PS: The 500k is from the article (which states it’s per day), and the 240 billion for crypto is the first result I saw from Google, so take with a grain of salt.
edit: I only just now saw which space (?) this is from. Please don’t bully me, I’m only here for the discussion (which so far has been civil).
AI isn’t yet slurping any significantly obscene amount of power from the grid, although as it gets more ubiquitous that will surely change. The individual data centers are massive things but they are outnumbered by orders of magnitude by all the rest of it
The big villain in senseless datacenter power usage is cryptocurrency
Plus most of the rest of it, of course, acres of racks burning through the world’s resources to run the world’s ten millionth pink slime news factory or Youtube click fakery cluster, or whatever
But AI isn’t yet adding its useless weight to the groaning pile in any significant way
Based on what, your gut feeling?
Here’s an article based directly on Microsoft’s own sustainability reports outright saying that their electricity consumption has gone up 30% because of AI: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/microsoft-reveals-the-energy-impact-of-artificial-intelligence
This is a pretty good article about it, with this being the relevant graph:
Like I say, it’s going to become a significant thing, and I’m sure for the tiny fraction of all the world’s data centers that are operated by Microsoft specifically it already is, but it isn’t yet, on a global scale.
Fair, but it’s pretty much on track to be the new crypto of energy usage. We’re just a few years out for it to get fully ramped up
Sure, crypto is certainly worse.
But ChatGPT uses the equivalent power of 17,000 households according to this article.
In other words, 17 million households can all turn off the AC when they are not home and the savings can run like 100 chatGPTs
Doing a rough comparison: 500k KWh * 365 / 240 billion KWh= ChatGPT uses ~0.076% of the power that Crypto uses.
Just to put Crypto into perspective.
PS: The 500k is from the article (which states it’s per day), and the 240 billion for crypto is the first result I saw from Google, so take with a grain of salt.
edit: I only just now saw which space (?) this is from. Please don’t bully me, I’m only here for the discussion (which so far has been civil).
it’s also completely useless, and even it’s hyped up by the same people who sticked around crypto when it was a thing
Rather than merely wagging the finger at each weekly villain, we should work towards policy that internalizes the cost of energy.