Comment by questionableans

9 hours ago

There is a huge business opportunity to become the world leader in sustainable data center design. Whoever wins could one day have immense influence over every single data center in the world (or even out of this world, where efficient resource utilization would likely be essential). It’s disappointing to see the United States miss out: US companies and research institutions would actually be extremely competitive in this field with the right government incentives.

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questionableans

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alex43578  7 hours ago

Sustainable design for datacenters is orthogonal to success in data centers. That's like saying a local bakery should become a leader in pet adoption - it'll score some feel good points, but is almost counterproductive to the actual mission.

A data center (right now) needs to be built fast, with a large amount of always-on power. Sticking a gas turbine behind the meter in the parking lot is one of the most practical ways to get there.

  • questionableans  4 hours ago

    It’s not just a feel good thing. There are real resource limits, even if someone chooses to foolishly not believe that. If you can get more done with a given level of power and other resources, you get more out of your data centers.

splicebot  8 hours ago

I think most people who are working towards greater AI would consider that not an opportunity, but planning to lose in a game that is winner(s) take all.

Winning scenarios in AI don't include being accountable for sustainability and they don't include expertise being valuable. Winners will decide what sustainable means for them.

  • questionableans  4 hours ago

    Winners don’t decide what is sustainable, the reality of the planet does.

    • splicebot  1 hour ago

      The situation only has to be sustainable for those entities that get a vote that matters. I don't think they've given us any reason to believe they intend on that being a whole lot of people. In fact they've been quite up-front about saying they are concerned about the possibility of that number being zero

  • leptons  8 hours ago

    Winner take all is a farce. It didn't work for Uber when they tried to out-spend the competition, Lyft is still very much a thing, and so are taxis (the non-robo kind). There will always be many, many AI companies and trying to execute "winner take all" in this space is only going to make more problems and waste a shit-ton of money.

    • alex43578  7 hours ago

      If you subscribe to an AGI/ASI view, the stakes are different than the network effects that Uber thinks they could get. Success here would mean you could theoretically pull away from the competition so far and so fast, whether that be at a company or nation-state level.

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deepwoods  9 hours ago

Isn't the goal to power most non-earthbound data centers with solar? I am no scientist, but going out to space feels like it gets rid of most of the downsides to solar.