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
We ran a lot of QE during Covid, which is still going into stocks. VTI doubled the last 4 years.
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.
My AI girlfriend is not bullshit good sir.
But heaven forbid you use a PC power supply that’s not 80+ efficient!
AI has basically obliterated 30 years of energy efficiency gains.
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
if the nuclear plant is actually reopened, it’s still be a huge waste. Because we really need that energy elsewhere rn
then lobby your government to open more nuclear power plants? why do you anticipate a nuclear reactor owned by ms is going to be used for anything but what they as a company need it for? like yes it is a fucking waste for them to hoard an entire nuclear power plant to themselves… from the perspective of society at large… microsoft themselves probably view it as a good investment, not wasteful, why wouldn’t they?
microsoft is a corp, they’re only beholden to profit. even if they could give a shit about the poors they wouldn’t unless it could make pretty lines go up.
Because we really need that energy elsewhere rn
yeah, i mean ig. lmao smh. “we” and “elsewhere” are doing a lot of the heavy lifting here in this sentence. i don’t mean to be a dick but this is poor rhetoric. “their nuclear power plant is selfish and bad bc i said so >:(“ really only serves to give libs canon fodder for the “personal responsibility^tm” gun. maybe not as frequently here on lemmy but in the real world that is the response this would get. ik it seems like pedantry but this is a serious issue with leftist messaging in the modern world.
then lobby your government to open more nuclear power plants?
How about we lobby government to make it illegal to sell fission reactors to fucking AI tech bros.
Microsoft isn’t the sort of company I would want to run a nuclear power plant. That’s a huge responsibility
These nuclear plants were closed for a reason. It was determined that they were unsustainable and required major maintenance and reconstruction.
If Tech Companies (who have no experience in running Nuclear power plants) start recommissioning them, and don’t properly maintain them, it is going to get very disastrous, very quickly.
Great, just what the world needed: bigtech buying (scarce, non-renewable) uranium and selling the resulting plutonium to the highest bidder.
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
It would be nice if that nuclear power was used to power cities instead of AI trash.
That’s just fucked up.
