[hengheng]

That is equivalent to a continuous draw of 150 MW. Not great, not terrible.

Far less power than those projected gigawatt data centers that are surely the one thing keeping AI companies from breaking even.

[macleginn]

I presume that this policy is not about building data-centres but about the use of AI by CERN employees, so essentially about marginal cost of generating an additional Python script, or something. Don't know if this calculation ever makes sense on the global scale, but if one’s job is to literally spend energy to produce knowledge, it becomes even less straightforward.

[tempfile]

How did that turn into "not great, not terrible"? That's still 300,000 homes that could otherwise be powered. It's an enormous amount of electricity!

[ceejayoz]

And all we get out of CERN is… the entire modern economy.

Their ledgers are balanced just fine for a while.

[hengheng]

In your opinion, what would instead justify the total cost of devoting 10'000 people's lives to basic research?