[robnado]

This is an economics problem: if the cost of energy is lower or equal to the benefit of consuming it, the energy will be consumed. As more and more energy is consumed to run these datacenters, price of energy will go up, and datacenters will learn to either be more efficient, or will pass on these costs to their users who will learn to be more efficient. Of course, there might be inefficiencies like subsidies and monopolies that distort the market for energy for a while, but in the long run, this is a self-fixing problem.

[crowcroft]

Are environmental externalities accounted for? How do we accurately measure the 'benefit' of something when it's still largely speculative (ie. AI is not providing as much value RIGHT NOW, but we think it will in the future).

Economic problems are rarely just economic problems, and saying that it will resolve itself in the long term is dismissive and offers no value to the discussion.

[api]

That's why high-carbon sources like coal and oil should be subject to carbon taxes: to price in externalities.

[Veedrac]

The environmental externality of new energy in the US is likely ~0, potentially even net positive, because approximately all new energy in the US is renewable, and displacement effects are likely to dominate the small-single-digit percentage of nonrenewables and the marginal environmental cost of the renewables themselves.

[ben_w]

Yes, however the economic situation develops not necessarily to most people's advantage.

A (hypothetical) AI that can perform any intellectual labour at for an energy cost of 1 kWh to produce output at the quality and quantity levels of a median human working for an hour, at $0.1/kWh is going to be a better economic choice than 50% of humans on earth even if those humans cut their wage demands to the UN abject poverty threshold.

But at the same time, there's not (currently) enough electricity for 50% of the world's people to be replaced by such AI regardless of the price.

Thus energy prices rise until the machine labour is as expensive as the human labour.

But that likely results in a lot of people even above that threshold no longer being able to afford to keep the lights on.

If we only get this AI quality/cost/generality level around 2031-ish, that may be fine, because renewables are on an exponential growth curve and around then exceed current global demand all by themselves.

[zdp7]

The issue is an environmental one. The cost here is environmental damage. The solution will need to be policy decisions that take that damage into account.

[robnado]

That's why much of the world is gradually shifting over to renewable energy usage. In a world where energy is renewable, does not generate greenhouse gas and (hopefully) does not produce other externalities, our best way of dealing with these resource allocation problems is the free market.

The alternative is regulation, which, I'm not even sure how it could be used to address this particular issue. Ban AI or crypto? Humans will find new ways to waste vast amounts of energy with computers. Require that computers have a certain efficiency rating of megaflops/joules? People will use more of this now far more efficient computing, resulting in more overall usage. Require corporations to be audited for energy efficiency and be certified? Goodbye all small players that cannot handle all the overhead of such legislation.

[xnx]

It would be great if more externalities were priced in to the cost of energy, but there doesn't seem to be anything special about AI datacenters vs. any other use of energy. Data centers actually seem much more consciences about the impacts of their energy. I don't think I've read any headlines about cement plants trying to switch to 100% renewable.

[jononor]

Everyone else has to pay the price that data centers are willing to as well. And they can afford quite high prices before having margin troubles - likely much higher than what we as residents want to pay for energy.

[teitoklien]

This is on the assumption that supply will continue to remain constrained, excess energy usage, might as well be the investments necessary to shift to more Solar Panels and renewable energy storage, high compute intensive workloads can be executed anywhere, higher energy usage, might as well incentivise optimising AI, Research and Other Compute-intensive training workloads to shift to day time, when solar power peaks, and process everything during that time. The capabilities that this unlocks are tons, driving more investment into advanced battery tech, solar tech, etc.

Higher Consumption also drives investments to generate Higher Supply and hence future surplus and improvements in standard of living.

[add-sub-mul-div]

In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

[TheDudeMan]

(people sing a different tune when the power consumer is bitcoin miners)

[ben_w]

Bitcoin network produces exactly the same number of bitcoins over time regardless of how much power it consumes; AI, even if you are unimpressed by the quality, does actually make more stuff when more energy is consumed.