A cartoon by Jen Sorensen.
Excerpt from my newsletter: Power demand for massive data centers used for AI and cryptocurrencies is growing rapidly and could reach the power consumption of these centers by 2026 the entire country of Japan. A researcher quoted in the linked Vox article notes that generative AI can, in many cases, use 30-40 times more energy for the exact same task (e.g. an internet query) than previous technologies. Microsoft talks a good game about climate change and using AI to accelerate decarbonization, but at the same time they were Marketing AI to Exxon and Chevron as a way to find oil and gas reserves and accelerate production.
Then there’s Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer facility in Memphis. The area where it was just built is a historically black neighborhood that already suffers from high rates of asthma and premature death due to pollution from other industrial activities. The data center requires so much electricity that around 18 portable methane gas generators were installed to operate it, providing water to the community smog. The facility runs Musk’s chatbot called Grok, which is integrated with X/Twitter and has a “fun” mode that provides slightly mundane answers and tends to spread inaccuracies, according to Vice.
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