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AI Earth Science

'Let's Not Go Overboard' On Worries About AI Energy Use, Bill Gates Says (ft.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Bill Gates has defended the rapid rise in energy use caused by AI systems, arguing the technology would ultimately offset its heavy consumption of electricity. Speaking in London, Gates urged environmentalists and governments to "not go overboard" on concerns about the huge amounts of power required to run new generative AI systems, as Big Tech companies such as Microsoft race to invest tens of billions of dollars in vast new data centres.

Data centres will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 per cent, the billionaire said. "The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 per cent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," said Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has been a prolific investor in companies developing sustainable energy and carbon- reduction technologies. In May, Microsoft admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, in large part due to the construction of data centres.

Gates, who left Microsoft's board in 2020 but remains an adviser to chief executive Satya Nadella, said tech companies would pay a "green premium" -- or higher price -- for clean energy as they seek new sources of power, which was helping to drive its development and deployment. "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.
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'Let's Not Go Overboard' On Worries About AI Energy Use, Bill Gates Says More

'Let's Not Go Overboard' On Worries About AI Energy Use, Bill Gates Says

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  • "Easy, simply deconserve energy real quick." (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Friday June 28, 2024 @03:13PM (#64586149)

    "Data centres will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 per cent, the billionaire said. 'The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 per cent reduction? And the answer is: certainly,' said Gates"

    Uh, okay. How?

    Maybe the answer is in the paywalled article? But I kind of doubt it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Possibly because if you eliminate enough human jobs, you eliminate the carbon emissions entailed with that work. Which may be why he was not anxious to talk about specifics.

      • Possibly because if you eliminate enough humans, you eliminate the carbon emissions entailed from them. Which may be why he was not anxious to talk about specifics. Fixed that for you!
    • I was thinking that he was saying that AI would increase efficiency in
      Electricity production
      Transmission
      or
      Usage ?
    • When we all lose our jobs and our houses to automation. So I guess he's not technically wrong.

      • Large software companies haven't done systemic power consumption reduction of their products, bloated web sites, bloated JavaScript in an EXE file, for 40+ years.

        They've shifted the electricity cost from the mainframe to the consumer and now to the consumer + cloud.

        How many billions of kilowatt hours have been used and paid for by end users (not the software company) because of power hungry software?

        Where's the call to produce lighter software, not push out 2 cosmetic reskin releases a year (just to pretend

  • "Whoa, there!" (Score:4, Informative)

    by YetAnotherDrew ( 664604 ) on Friday June 28, 2024 @03:13PM (#64586151)

    "Hold on, now! Let us tech billionaires continue to socialize our costs," said Bill.

    And everyone listened because it was a pleasant change from that "debate" last night.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Talchas ( 954795 )

      I mean, the upside is that these datacenters (mostly) aren't exporting and hiding their costs. (Electricity generation's externalities are not the worst, but are often relevant) Companies trying to do the power-hungry AI training or running expensive models have to pay for that electricity themselves (and this provides direct incentive to try and find more efficient ways of training/etc). They might pass that cost on to the consumer, but that's in fairly obvious ways. Contrast all the cryptocurrency nonsens

      • Coal plants are filthy cancer-causing monsters. Barket and Gaiman and Burton can't collectively imagine anything so horrifying.

    • "Hold on, now! Let us tech billionaires continue to socialize our costs," said Bill.

      And everyone listened because it was a pleasant change from that "debate" last night.

      FTFS - "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity"

  • I don't care what Bill Gates says. Climate Change seems to be only important when it doesn't impact his revenue streams. This guy can go pound rocks in one of his farms that he's going to find a way to exploit like his own female employees.

  • Listen to the Master Thief (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Friday June 28, 2024 @03:25PM (#64586175)

    Bill ALWAYS has an angle.

    What's he trying to steal this time?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      He's getting the noisy crowd up in arms about how much electricity AI is burning.

    • He still owns something like 1.4% of all Microsoft stock. That sounds like sufficient motivation.

    • He's trying to profit from AI on one side, and nuclear power for AI on the other. As he has a vested interest in both sides of the transaction, we have an obligation to ourselves to be critical of his opinion.

  • I have no idea what this processing power is actually being use for but the AI products that they're talking about are something in between a spreadsheet and a chatbot. None of the AI products or services that they're offering to consumers are capable of justifying this scale of energy use.

    Maybe they're trying using all this processing power for black budget govt stuff. Maybe they're just creating fake demand to manipulate energy markets. Either way, the idea that AI is a productive use of resources just

    • Re:I have no idea what this processing power is... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Friday June 28, 2024 @03:45PM (#64586255)

      You have no idea what's using all the power, but you're guessing black ops, market manipulation.. or aliens?

      • Big Tech is telling us that they need dedicated nuclear plants and 1/3 of the worlds GPUs to run chatbots.

        Can you make that make sense?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by zlives ( 2009072 )

          i mean you are on slashdot, if your GF/waifu needs more compute then she deserves more compute

    • Currently AI algorithms demand huge banks of tens of thousands of high wattage video cards to do the calculations. There's been a story or two floating around about alternatives to that but as it stands right now that's the only way to do it.

      We already know Bitcoin alone was able to suck down more power than Argentina. Like the entire country. Cryptocurrency is small potatoes compared to what AI, in other words LLMs, is capable of. Cryptocurrency is mostly useful for money laundering AI replaces employee
      • The products are chatbots and clip art generators. And I saw this one company generate an unwatchable South Park clone.

        AI doesn't actually represent any new kind of anything. LLMs aren't new and they don't need dedicated nuclear reactors. Image recognition isn't new and it doesn't require dedicated nuclear reactors. Voice synthesizers aren't new and they don't require dedicated nuclear reactors. I've seen a holographic tupac and Gene Kelly dance with a vacuum. None of it required dedicated nuclear reacto

        • The products are chatbots and clip art generators

          Those being big public-facing uses =/= they are the only, or even the "greatest" / "biggest" use cases though.

      • To give some numbers behind it all, ERCOT just revised its 2030 estimates upward. https://www.kvue.com/article/n... [kvue.com] Currently TX grid runs up to around 85GW peak usage. The prediction by 2030 is 150GW. Article points to crypto and data centers as the primary drivers. And I don't think ERCOT is really factoring in how much AI data center expansion could add to the demand side in the latest estimate. So would not be surprised if they need to add another 20-50 GW by 2030 to the estimate bringing it near 200GW
  • Ironically, him saying this will lead to the conspiracy nuts believing that they're on the right path. And most everyone else may assume he's got a stake in all of this.
  • Then you better use your mountains of cash to fund more of renewable energy projects, Gates.

    • You do know that Gates is known for his support of nuclear fission for low carbon energy, don't you? He's explained in interviews why he's looking to nuclear power than renewable energy. I could not find the interview I had in mind in a quick search but this interview touches on the issue:
      https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14... [npr.org]

      A summary of his argument for nuclear fission, as I understand it, is that there's a lot of places on Earth, such as Japan and Korea, that lack the geography to get enough energy from ren

      • You do know that Gates is known for his support of nuclear fission for low carbon energy, don't you?

        You do know that Gates is mostly known for his lack of support from Slashdotters, don't you? Invoking his name here, of all places, to support your views is what I might call "anti-propaganda". It makes you look rather like a shill.

  • If his energy costs go up, that probably isn't going to force him to give up a vacation or drop eating out a few times a year. For the rest of us a 30% or 70% increase in their energy bills could do that. An increase in energy demand will make power more expensive for ALL of us, depending on the market, some more than others. That being said, higher energy prices will motivate AI users to conserve energy, so in the long run they'll try and make it more efficient.

  • Let's not stand in the way of that, even if it kills us.

  • As he is also an investor in Terrapower [terrapower.com].

  • As a solution for replacing full-time employees you can kind of fuck right off with that. There is every indication that AI is going to be devouring jobs. There is something especially horrific about getting replaced by a machine and then that machine gets to use the electricity you were going to use to heat and cool and light your home that you don't have anymore because you don't have a job.

    The good news is the supreme Court just ruled that you can be criminally charged for homelessness even when there

  • Meanwhile they're trying to destroy the energy market for anything but EV.

    Never mind that various grids simply CANNOT KEEP UP WITH DEMAND!

  • "We want to control you and police your speech and discriminate against people we don't like better, so it's okay." - power-obsessed lefties.

  • "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.

    Yes. I'm sure every tech company is thrilled to pay more for energy. Because their investors/shareholders are ALWAYS happy when costs increase and their profits diminish.

    Bill, you lost touch completely with reality.

  • Gates be like, "What, me worry?"
  • Bill wants us to drive less, fly less...while he jets off all over the world on his private jet. Bill wants us to have smaller homes, heat & cool with electricity...while he has a huge MANSION that is gas fueled. Bill wants us to conserve electricity...while his server farms eat a LOT of energy, because it makes HIM money. He's another one of these rich elitists that says do as I say, not as I do.

  • Don't worry about AI power consumption. Once we figure out how to get it working right, we'll ask the AI to fix the problem for us.

  • What a coincidence!
    Bill gets a piece of the pie with his unicorn nuclear reactors.

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