Bill Gates says not to worry about AI's energy draw, technology will adapt
Bill Gates addresses AI's energy consumption concerns, foreseeing its role in enhancing energy efficiency. Datacenters' current 2-6% energy load may decrease with AI advancements, despite projections of up to 9% consumption by 2030. Gates emphasizes green energy investments to offset AI's impact.
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Bill Gates addressed concerns about the energy consumption of AI processing, stating that AI will drive the transition to sustainable energy by making technology and electricity grids more efficient. He mentioned that datacenters currently contribute around 2 to 6 percent to the energy load but believes AI will lead to a reduction in energy consumption. However, conflicting estimates suggest datacenters could consume up to 9 percent of electricity in the US by 2030. Gates emphasized that AI advancements will make datacenters more efficient, potentially reducing their share of future power demand. Despite concerns about electricity consumption, Gates highlighted investments in green energy by technology companies to offset the additional demand created by AI datacenters. Additionally, Gates' Breakthrough Energy fund has invested in sustainable energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The discussion also touched on Microsoft's increased carbon dioxide emissions due to the expansion of datacenters to meet customer demand for online services, including AI.
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4 commentsWhere I live, Google is building a huge 860 MW hyperscale datacenter that will require massive amounts of solar and wind to be built in our region, ruining a lot of forests and mountains. It also consumes insane amounts of water.
To put the energy demands into context; 860 MW (7.5 TWh a year) is about 25% of the energy use of all households and the agricultural sector in Norway.
The same is true for other european countries. In Denmark, datacenters now consume 20% of the total energy production. The same is true for Ireland.
Renewable energy is not that green if it only adds energy to the mix on top of fossil fuel use, instead of replacing it.
Solar and wind is resource intensive to build and wind and solar parks can claim large areas of forest and biodiverse nature when installed.
Another local business near me put solar on the roof of their industrial building, and it powers all their delivery cars + their cooling needs for storage. It is owned by the local business, not by an international investment firm, and it does not claim any extra nature when installed. This is how we should use renewables!
It's just like Wirth's law: software will become slower faster than hardware becomes faster.
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