| ▲ | goda90 16 hours ago |
| Power problem: solved Natural Gas supply problem: worsened Carbon in the atmosphere problem: worsened |
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| ▲ | saghm 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Yeah I guess I'm not the target audience for this because I assumed that "the power problem" was "massive increase in electricity costs for people despite virtually unchanged usage on their part", not "AI companies have to wait too long to be able to start using even more power than they already are": > Nicole Pastore, who has lived in her large stone home near Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University campus for 18 years, said her utility bills over the past year jumped by 50%. “You look at that and think, ‘Oh my god,’” she said. She has now become the kind of mom who walks around her home turning off lights and unplugging her daughter’s cellphone chargers. > And because Pastore is a judge who rules on rental disputes in Baltimore City District Court, she regularly sees poor people struggling with their own power bills. “It’s utilities versus rent,” she said. “They want to stay in their home, but they also want to keep their lights on.” https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec... |
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| ▲ | jstummbillig 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | I understand the instinct but if people seriously think that they are solving any problem by unplugging cell phone chargers, they are simply bad at math. Human time is easily worth more than that, even when working at minimum wage. That said, it obviously sucks that utility prices are rising for people who can not effortlessly cover that (not to speak of the local pollution, if that's an issue). Maybe some special tax to offset that cost to society towards hyper scalers would be a reasonable way to soften the blow, but I have not done the math. | | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How many paid hours do they get? Human time isn't fungible with paid hours. | |
| ▲ | esseph 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are not necessarily bad at math, but they probably aren't electricians or EEs or have ever needed or been asked to calculate how much power a cell phone charger uses. Mom/Dad used to unplug things and turn lights off, so they do too. |
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| ▲ | imglorp 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And the air quality around these plants is poor, leading to health problems for the neighbors. This short term, destructive, thinking should be criminalized. I think it's time to discuss changing the incentives around ai deployment, specifically paying into a ubi fund whenever human jobs are replaced by ai. Musk himself raised the idea. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/tech-leaders-push-for-universal... |
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| ▲ | PunchyHamster 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It can't be "criminalized" if govt and justice system is effectively actively bribed by the AI cartel because AI-related GDP "growth" is only veneer hiding the economical fuckups of the government | |
| ▲ | lukan 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I assumed gas plants are pretty good in terms of air quality? Coal plants are bad. | | |
| ▲ | imglorp 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In the case of Grok's turbines, no emissions controls means sick people. Plus all the CO2 pushing climate collapse faster which hurts every coming generation. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph... | |
| ▲ | condensedcrab 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Gas plants are not bad… but imagine 400 MW of gas plants in a concentrated area. You’ll always have NOx and SOx by products whenever you’re burning gas. | |
| ▲ | HPsquared 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It depends on if they treat the exhaust to remove nitrogen oxides. Not sure what the standard is for this kind of plant though. | |
| ▲ | macNchz 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Gas is certainly less of a problem than coal, but they still produce plenty of bad stuff: nitrogen oxides and bad VOCs like formaldehyde that are well studied to increase risk of asthma and some types of cancer. I certainly wouldn’t want to live close to one. |
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| ▲ | einrealist 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The word 'pollution' appears exactly one time in this entire thing, the word 'community' or 'communities' never. |
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| ▲ | wyldfire 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The only way to solve problems like this IMO is to price in the externalities. Tax fossil fuels for the damage they do, in order to reveal their true cost. Then they will never look like the most affordable option, because they're not. | | |
| ▲ | eszed 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A carbon tax, you say? 9 out of 10 economists agree, and dozens of voters. Dozens! [That read as snark, didn't it? Sorry. I absolutely, completely, 100% agree with everything you say.] | |
| ▲ | einrealist 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | True. The same is true for nuclear energy. I never heard of a nuclear power plant that did not receive substantial subsidies throughout lifetime. Not to forget the nuclear fuel and the efforts required to create it and later to store it. |
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| ▲ | quikoa 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This website appears to be very AI heavy in articles. I think it's fair to say these articles are biased because of that. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The natural gas turbines used are relatively efficient as far as engines go. Having them on-site makes transmission losses basically negligible. Nothing short of full solar connected to batteries produced without any difficult to mine elements will make some people happy, but as far as pollution and fuel consumption data centers aren’t really a global concern at the same level as things like transportation. |
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| ▲ | estearum 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm honestly curious whether you yourself are even aware of the disingenuousness of this argument. It's fairly impressive in its density! 1. Nobody complained about the efficiency of natural gas turbines. You can efficiently do a lot of useless stuff with deep negative externalities, and the fact it's efficient is not all that helpful. 2. Saying "the extreme far end would not be satisfied even by much better solutions" is not an excuse not to pursue better solutions! 3. There are many dimensions of this that people care about beyond the "global concern" level regarding "pollution and fuel consumption." 4. There are many problems that are significant and worth thinking about even if they are not the largest singular problems that could be included by some arbitrarily defined criteria | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I'm honestly curious whether you yourself are even aware of the disingenuousness of this argument. Unnecessarily condescending and smug, but I’ll try to respond. That said, you’re putting forth your own disingenuous assumptions and misconceptions. The natural gas turbines are an intermediate solution to get up and running due to the extremely long and arduous process of getting connected to the grid. Arguing pedantry about the word efficiency isn’t helpful either. The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that. The gas turbines are an efficient way to power them while waiting for grid interconnect and longterm renewables to come online. Disingenuous is acting like this is a permanent solution to the exclusion of others. The whole point is that it gets them started now with portable generation that is efficient. | | |
| ▲ | windexh8er 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that. Unnecessarily smug? Beyond that they can be stopped. They're being met with a lot of resistance in the Midwest as they're attempting to be built without much understanding of the public utilities impact. People are catching on to the fact that energy and water consumption is pushing up costs for residents. A lot of assumptions are supporting this argument. > The gas turbines are an efficient way to power them while waiting for grid interconnect and longterm renewables to come online. I like the gymnastics of wordplay here. Efficient only when you look at them through the lens of some ephemeral timeframe that may or may not exist. | |
| ▲ | estearum 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The gas turbines are hopefully an intermediate solution due to the long and not guaranteed process of grid connection and renewable buildout. History is of course full of such bets that did not work out the way their proponents hoped. > The data centers are being built, sorry to anyone who gets triggered by that. It's obvious that you're starting from your conclusion and working backwards, which is probably how your initial comment was full of so much motivated reasoning to begin with. In your mind, is there any set of negative externalities that would justify not building the data centers, or at least not building them now, or at least not building them now in specific areas that require these types of interim solutions? | | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is exactly right. These are glorified emergency generators, and grid power is ordinarily far cheaper; especially for interruptible loads like training new models (checkpointing work in progress and resuming it later is cheap and easy). The article mentions that quite clearly. |
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| ▲ | miltonlost 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > as far as pollution and fuel consumption data centers aren’t really a global concern at the same level as things like transportation. Same level doesn't remove the concern for this unnecessary pollution. Stop changing the subject from the environmental problems that AI usage can have by their increased power consumption. Natural gas engines are efficient! Ok! But what about the pollution they produce to nearby neighborhoods? What about the health repercussions? Do human lives not matter? https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph... |
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| ▲ | protimewaster 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, that headline made me think "Oh good, there's some solution on the horizon that won't require absurd amounts of electricity." Not so. |
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| ▲ | torginus 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And imagine all this poorly located, overpriced, haphazardly thrown together and polluting infrastructure will basically get flushed down the toilet once either the AI bubble pops, or they figure out a new way of doing AI that doesn't require terawatts of power. |
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| ▲ | corimaith 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Coincidentally the USA is more than self sufficient in natural gas and is a net exporter. Drill baby drill! |
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