Flyfisherman AI data centers consume staggering amounts of power—projected to account for up to 12% of total US electricity by 2028 and rivaling the energy usage of entire nations like Ireland or Japan. Put the consumption in perspective: Modern AI racks require up to 150 kW—roughly 10 times the density of traditional cloud computing. A single facility can consume as much power as a mid-sized city. Global Footprint: Data centers consumed 448 TWh globally last year, with AI driving a significant portion of that growth. Question: Is this really worth it, and what do AI data centers do for humanity? Best regards from Sweden. Reply
mnielsen Why all the hit pieces? Natural Gas and Generators is a great way to get power until the grid is upgraded to provide it. Given this is fully an industrial park which has an oil refinery nearby which is far far more an environmental issue what is the real problem Tom's Hardware has? Also, the TVA is also using National Gas Energy Generation for grid power which replaced the Coal Plant that had been generating power for many decades. Okay so there could be some permit issues with xAI saying they are covered but others questioning it. These articles are sounding more like political hit pieces then Tom's Hardware's old focus of technology, is this the transition to a Political Site like the Electrek site which is outright anti-Tesla and anti-Elon much of the time? How about we leave the question of local permits to non-Tech news sites which can truly cover what the actual legal issues are instead of this complaint about Natural Gas Generator permits. Reply
mnielsen Flyfisherman said: AI data centers consume staggering amounts of power—projected to account for up to 12% of total US electricity by 2028 and rivaling the energy usage of entire nations like Ireland or Japan. Put the consumption in perspective: Modern AI racks require up to 150 kW—roughly 10 times the density of traditional cloud computing. A single facility can consume as much power as a mid-sized city. Global Footprint: Data centers consumed 448 TWh globally last year (more than Saudi Arabia), with AI driving a significant portion of that growth. Question: Is this really worth it, and what do AI data centers do for humanity? So your question seems to be what is the value of AI to humanity… and how could it possibly be worth the resources it uses. The same question could have been said when humans primarily used horses for transportation and are automobiles actually worth it. In fact most technology (advancement?) leads to that same question of value to humanity as we let machines, tools, computers do more of what humans could have done be it slower. AI's is what will be driving cars and trucks (at scales) autonomously in the future which will provide far more goods to humans at a believed lower cost as the trucks won't need human drivers and cars can drive elderly that wouldn't otherwise be able to travel without asking for assistance. Self Driving Cars have the opportunity to be far safer than human drivers which so far has saved notable number of lives which many would consider a benefit. Those are just a couple of humanity benefits but there are near endless examples. The question of using technology can always be questioned but our society is on a journey to advance technology which uses resources. But your question is AI worth the massive power is an economic question and funding (both business and government) will answer those questions probably on an AI use case by use case. For many, they won't want to give up their advanced AI queries anymore than you want to give up cooking on a stove which uses either Electricity or Natural Gas. Reply
alan.campbell99 Clean? If you're ignoring the NOx emissions? I would wonder if these issues with the strait of hormuz are going to make it less cheap too. Now as to AI, focusing on generative AI I'd argue you can't include something for which it is mathematically impossible to be 100% infallible with other notable technological shifts. Something you cannot reliably measure an ROI on. We're four years into this, how is it there's still debate on the benefits, seeing what happens when companies pay the actual costs of this e.g. Uber blowing through their annual token spend in a few months and now asking questions. I would also be wary about what the impact will be to societies when more and more people do cognitive offloading to LLMs. There are already indications that students perform worse in memory recall using LLMs to write papers compared to those that did the work themselves. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/elon-musk-spent-estimated-usd1-billion-on-an-energy-company-to-power-xai-filings-reveal-apr-energy-owns-a-fleet-of-trailer-mounted-gas-and-diesel-turbines-capable-of-generating-more-than-1-gigawatt#main
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