
AI Computing Is on Pace To Consume More Energy Than India, Arm Says (yahoo.com) 50
AI's voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources, requiring the industry to change its approach to the technology, according to Arm Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas. From a report: By 2030, the world's data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world's most populous country, Haas said. Finding ways to head off that projected tripling of energy use is paramount if artificial intelligence is going to achieve its promise, he said.
"We are still incredibly in the early days in terms of the capabilities," Haas said in an interview. For AI systems to get better, they will need more training -- a stage that involves bombarding the software with data -- and that's going to run up against the limits of energy capacity, he said.
"We are still incredibly in the early days in terms of the capabilities," Haas said in an interview. For AI systems to get better, they will need more training -- a stage that involves bombarding the software with data -- and that's going to run up against the limits of energy capacity, he said.
Sigh... (Score:3, Funny)
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Here we go again with this [xkcd.com].
NVidia shipped 100k AI GPUs last year, which - if run nonstop - would consume 7,4 TWh. Crypto consumes over 100 TWh per year, and the world as a whole consumes just under 25000 TWh per year.
AI consumption of power is a pittiance. To get these huge numbers, they have to assume long-term extreme exponential scaling. But you can make anything give insane numbers with an assumption like that.
I simply don't buy the assumption. Not even assuming an AI bust - even assuming that AI ke
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Anyway, in The Matrix, everything was done for much cheaper with human brains, maybe we should take note of that!
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Get to work (Score:2)
Re: Get to work (Score:2)
That's not how exponential growth works.
The only thing that can grow without bound is space itself. To everything else, there's limits. Even to the sun.
OK, I guess we'll run out of materials by then - even to construct a Dyson sphere, there isn't nearly enough stuff even if one collected every rock floating around in the solar system.
Power satellites (Score:2)
Power satellites dedicated to AI are a thought. Heat sinks are a problem, but there is a 1.5 GW heat sink about 5 minutes into this video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEkZkINrJaA
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It only cost ~$15k to save $90/mo in power. I'll break even around 15 years.
Only at an interest rate of 0%.
The current prime rate is 8.5%. 30-year mortgages are 7%. At those rates, you'll never break even.
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Why do you assume financing?
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Why do you assume financing?
Money is fungible. If you don't spend the money on panels and batteries, you can pay off your credit cards, pay down your mortgage, or invest the money in T-bonds. Any of those will be a better use of your money.
There may be non-financial reasons to build a battery-backed solar system, but otherwise, spending $15k to save $90/month doesn't make much sense.
Disclaimer: I have solar panels (good investment). I do not have batteries (bad investment).
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Disclaimer: I have solar panels (good investment). I do not have batteries (bad investment).
Yeah, last time I did the math on it, batteries totally killed the ROI of a PV system. Going fully grid-tied with net metering is the only way it makes sense financially, if the goal is to save money rather than being done out of necessity (such as for an off-grid cabin) or for environmental principles.
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Disclaimer: I have solar panels (good investment). I do not have batteries (bad investment).
Yeah, last time I did the math on it, batteries totally killed the ROI of a PV system. Going fully grid-tied with net metering is the only way it makes sense financially, if the goal is to save money rather than being done out of necessity (such as for an off-grid cabin) or for environmental principles.
I have enough battery to run for a few hours during an emergency, then a generator kicks in. That's probably a better investment than just a bunch of batteries.
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Disclaimer: I have solar panels (good investment). I do not have batteries (bad investment).
Good point, you can't imagine how much money I have spent on batteries over the years for UPS. I would never consider that an "investment" more like a cost of operation. I have solar and wind too to recharge the batteries but not enough to keep me going in the middle of the night when there is no wind and even then.
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I agree with the other guy, if your breakeven is over 9 years, then solar isn't worth it yet.
Get a smaller off grid system for disaster planning and then wait for prices to drop further (and another 40% decline is due within the next 5 years.) Plus the panels are getting smaller for the same power. 10 years ago, a 100w panel was 32sq feet and $750. Last summer, a portable 100w panel was 16 sq feet and $129. A fixed panel was under $100 and also about 12 sq feet. And that's after 10 years of inflat
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It only cost ~$15k to save $90/mo in power.
The local solar installer quoted me $60k for a system that's grid-tied (no batteries) and won't run at night when the grid goes down.
I'm finding this hard to swallow.
So I'm estimating you have a system that outputs about a single megawatt hour in a month. That is likely about an 8kw set of panels. Since you mentioned enough batteries to last a few days, then I am willing to believe $15k all-in, *mostly* in battery and associated management system.
There's no way that you have a solar installer quote you $60k for a 8kw installation without battery. I see about $15k to $22k quoted. Certainly significantly more than the parts, but not $60
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Per cubic meter, their tech is shit compared to NVidia, but they focused on scalability. Not only that, but they can easily recycle most of their platform. Oh oh... Unlike NVidia, Huawei can actually deliv
Time to focus on hardware research (Score:2)
Obviously the companies will go wherever profits indicate, but memristor tech is theoretically a massive leap forward, allowing low-power transistor equivalents, using less volume, maintaining persistent states without power, and providing more than just binary states per memristor. And it's been in labs for at least a decade.
Basically, if you're trying to make a neural net in hardware, memristors appear to be what you want.
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Re: Energy is not the issue (Score:2)
Renewable energy is not a free lunch. The sun doesnt shine at night, the wind doesnt always blow and hydro can run out of water in a drought and there isnt enough of it for current needs never mind projected ones including the massive rise from EV charging.
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That's why you combine generation and storage (and note I didn't say "batteries"). That storage can include turning atmospheric co2 into fuel.
But underlying your point is that we simply have too many people. Generating baseline power for the current population is rendering the planet uninhabitable.
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Ironically AI may help us finally make fusion energy feasible. I hope...
Wonderful! (Score:2)
Let's generate still more greenhouse gases, while simultaneously dumping more heat into our atmosphere, in the cause of corporations firing more people and wealth being concentrated further still. Then we can move faster toward the dystopia outlined in the film Elysium. Historians may look back on all of this and call it The Grand Cost Externalization - assuming that civilization survives long enough for said historians to be born.
Is it time yet to break out the torches and pitchforks?
Where's the efficiency? (Score:2)
This is kind of interesting, but I'm also thinking WTF?
What kind of terrible code do you have that ingests petabytes of data including billions of pages of literature and can't come up with something that can beat a young adult human who's read tiny fractions of that?
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Wishful thinking.
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I've been following it so closely that the big press sends me to an AI that can't plan a car trip better than abetterrouteplanner. Actually, it was worse than a 5th grader. It was "don't try it again for a few years" bad.
I did hear that one AI that could identify with 90% accuracy tumors on radiographs that a human should take a second look at. Note that this did not compare the efficacy of one human suggesting to another which to take a second look at.
My point was: the energy efficiency and dataset inge
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Customer service jobs have seen high losses. As soon as the current AI is combined with a physical presence then jobs like stocking, shelving, janitorial services, security, and many more will see rapid replacement.
I agree there's a problem with confabulation. But see the CNBC article, 'TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Recent data shows AI job losses are rising, but the numbers donâ(TM)t tell the full story" where it says, "According to a recent report of 750 business leaders using AI from ResumeBuilder
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As I said,
You haven't been following A.I. closely have you? Because it's being used in many high value applications and exceeding the current human experts in those fields.
Even in it's current dumb state, combined with robots, the current A.I. can replace about 60% of human beings and that includes some fields that require a masters degree or doctorate to get a job.
Most manual labor jobs are easy to replace (stocker, shelving, janitorial services, landscaping, simple assembly, etc. etc. etc)
And A.I. is alre
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Massively parallel vector multiplication. Currently big companies are eating the energy bills because they're stuck in the upward portion of a hype cycle, but soon they'll have to start charging people to talk to their chat bots. They don't get energy for free either.
Huge gains for increased efficiency. (Score:1)
Seems to me that focusing on increased efficiency would have huge payoffs. Brains do this with a very tiny amount of electricity so the potential power efficiencies are vast.
So... (Score:1)
how long till we are combined with a certain type of fusion so the AI will have all the energy it needs??
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Just as soon as the AI designs a working fusion system for itself.
Spartan (Score:2)
A long time ago, people realized progress depended on energy. If you have enough energy, you can do almost anything.
Best to get to it. If it needs to be "clean", so be it, but conservation AKA Spartan lives, is of very limited conceptual value.
Get to it making more.
The only long-term solution to AI's energy needs (Score:2)
is humans. The average human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat.
At least the AI... (Score:2)
At least we know that the LLM will not hallucinate the em-phaasis on the wrong sylll-ahble. They're at least good at that part.
But if we're trying to put India out of business and replace them with AI, this doesn't seem good: India will consume less energy doing the same thing as the AI!
Headline does not say what article says (Score:2)
By 2030, the world’s data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world’s most populous country, Haas said.
"The world's data centers" encompass a whole lot more than just *AI Computing*.
Lots of implicit, fuzzy numbers (Score:2)
Currently data centers consume about 1% of worldwide electricity, and India consumes about 6%. However, we're talking about 6-year projections. How much will India use in 6 years, and how much will data centers use? Increasing data center electricity usage by 6x sounds like a lot, but increasing to 6% of total usage sounds less ominous.
Comparing to India is an attempt to place the issue in a context that is understandable for everyone. If so, that was a fail, since almost no one has a good feel for how much
Nuclear (Score:2)
They could always build nuclear power plants and have more electricity than we could ever productively use... but nah. Let's burn some more coal.