zlacker

>>fnbr+(OP)
Extra respect is due to Jan Leike, then:

https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494

>>thorum+Bu
Reading that thread it’s really interesting to me. I see how far we’ve come in a short couple of years. But I still can’t grasp how we’ll achieve AGI within any reasonable amount of time. It just seems like we’re missing some really critical… something…

Idk. Folks much smarter than I seem worried so maybe I should be too but it just seems like such a long shot.

>>adamta+dH
Personally, I think catastrophic global warming and climate change will happen before we get AGI, possibly in part due to the pursuit of AGI. But as the saying goes, yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

>>candid+YO
Most existing big tech datacenters use mostly carbon free or renewable energy.

The vast majority of datacenters currently in production will be entirely powered by carbon free energy. From best to worst:

1. Meta: 100% renewable

2. AWS: 90% renewable

3. Google: 64% renewable with 100% renewable energy credit matching

4. Azure: 100% carbon neutral

[1]: https://sustainability.fb.com/energy/

[2]: https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/products-services/the...

[3]: https://sustainability.google/progress/energy/

[4]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastruct...

>>xvecto+QR
That's not a defense.

If imaginary cloud provider "ZFQ" uses 10MW of electricity on a grid and pays for it to magically come from green generation, that means 10MW of other loads on the grid were not powered by green energy, or 10MW of non-green power sources likely could have been throttled down/shut down.

There is no free lunch here; "we buy our electricity from green sources" is greenwashing bullshit.

Even if they install solar on the roofs and wind turbines nearby - that's still electrical generation capacity that could have been used for existing loads. By buying so many solar panels in such quantities, they affect availability and pricing of all those components.

The US, for example, has about 5GW of solar manufacturing capacity per year. NVIDIA sold half a million H100 chips in one quarter, each of which uses ~350W, which means in a year they're selling enough chips to use 700MW of power. That does not include power conversion losses, distribution, cooling, and the power usage of the host systems, storage, networking, etc.

And that doesn't even get into the water usage and carbon impact of manufacturing those chips; the IC industry uses a massive amount of water and generates a substantial amount of toxic waste.

It's hilarious how HN will wring its hands over how much rare earth metals a Prius has and shipping it to the US from Japan, but ask about the environmental impacts of AI and it's all "pshhtt, whatever".

>>KennyB+KX
> that means 10MW of other loads on the grid were not powered by green energy, or 10MW of non-green power sources likely could have been throttled down/shut down.

No. Renewable energy capacity is often built out specifically for datacenters.

> Even if they install solar on the roofs and wind turbines nearby - that's still electrical generation capacity that could have been used for existing loads.

No. This capacity would never never have been built out to begin with if it was not for the data center.

> By buying so many solar panels in such quantities, they affect availability and pricing of all those components.

No. Renewable energy gets cheaper with scale, not more expensive.

> which means in a year they're selling enough chips to use 700MW of power.

There are contracts for renewal capacity to be built out or well into the gigawatts. Furthermore, solar is not the only source of renewable energy. Finally, nuclear energy is also often used.

> the IC industry uses a massive amount of water

A figurative drop in the bucket.

> It's hilarious how HN will wring its hands

HN is not a monolith.