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asats an hour ago

Yeah, data-centers are definitely the worst thing happening to the planet. You got your priorities straight.

AI data centers are what, half a percent of the world electricity consumption, if that, and an even smaller fraction of the total energy?

dredmorbius an hour ago | parent [-]

Growth trend matters more than absolute present value.

Data centres generally had been seeing energy use growing at 12% annually, or with a doubling time of 5.8 years (about 5 years 10 months). AI is accelerating that trend.

In the United States, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals. In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them.

<https://www.iea.org/news/ai-is-set-to-drive-surging-electric...>

asats 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

>or with a doubling time of 5.8 years

So that in ~6 years they will account for 1%, and still a fraction of the percent of the world total energy use?