Google and Microsoft consume more energy than 100+ countries | Windows Central
Microsoft and Google's electricity consumption surpasses the power usage of over 100 countries
“While nuclear fusion seems like the perfect solution for AI's power needs due to its non-existent impact on the environment…”
nonexistent is key here.
Non-existent power source for a non-existent tech, a match made in heaven
(meaning what they hype as AI is actually mostly just LLM)
Well, it's definitely non-existant...
Second law of thermodynamics would like to chime in, even with such a perfect nonexistent power source, waste heat is still an issue.. which you can radiate to space, which would take tremendous land use to facilitate...
Or we use that land and capital and effort for solar power, which exists and could power practically everything in our lives, minus AI. Sounds like a win to me.
(Also not to mention the necessity to fire up more fossils for this shit to compensate for the current lack of miracle power for their pipe dreams)
"A drop in the bucket" would be an overstatement here.
But we will soon have AGI, and then you can have your very own JARVIS! Don't you like Iron Man? Don't you like super heroes? Don't you like sci-fi? /s
and how much of that is energy that's essentially used to run other companies, by way of their cloud services? I imagine that'd be a pretty substantial amount.
To be fair, that level of centralization in the hands of a for-profit corporation is worrisome too. They'll lure in small businesses and then enshittify.
They'll lure in small businesses and then enshittify.
I'm not so sure... These "cloud" services are paid services they make a lot of money from, and it's a huge industry with a very large number of competitors (practically all major hosting services, and even a lot of smaller ones).
But people from those countries must also be using Google and Microsoft
There might be some double counting, but it doesn't matter - this just illustrates the insane scale of these companies.
Not just people, but importantly also corporations running their services on Microsoft azure or Google cloud.
No matter which way you correctly read the headline, it's false.
You can either read it as Google and microsoft individually consumed more electricity than these 100 countries did (false, it's Google and microsoft combined)
OR Google and Microsoft combined consimed more than these 100 countries did total.
Did an intern write this or something?
CoPilot with Gemini plugin did.
Hm. Maybe it's ambiguity is there to maximise clicking on the article?
In 2023, Microsoft and Google consumed 48 TWh of electricity (24 TWh each).
Each of them separately.
And both of these companies build and purchased more renewable energy sources than all 100+ countries combined. Microsoft has committed to be carbon free by 2030, and while I don't belive in their commitment, they at least seem to be trying contrary to most nations. They even invested in nuclear plants for their power needs.
You can fault both companies for a lot of different reasons, but in terms of carbon emissions due to power usage, they are better than 99.9% of the countries on that list.
They didn’t build it. They buy from local suppliers, power that could have been used by people and companies already there. Now it’s just a lot more, while a serious part of the power consumption goes into debatable purposes like overhyped AI stuff.
Edit: and fwiw, recently Microsoft themselves announced that they are far from their reduction targets roadmap, so not sure where you got the happy flow news from
Green energy that could go to higher priority sectors like decarborning housing, food production and transportation . Carbon free doesn't mean no ecological impact, of course it's better than fossil fuel, but it still a lot of ressources extracted and place taken over nature (which is the first cause of biodiversity loss). So ideally we should only destroy so much for essential needs.
Meh, it's all smoke and mirrors.
This is the "manufacture more to use fewer resources" nonsense of cash for clunkers.
Are we talking consumed for their own use? Or consumed as part of delivering cloud services to their customers?
These are very different things. The former would be horrifying the latter would be misleading in the extreme.
I think it is the customers who pay for the electricity that they use? Las time I checked MS didn't pay anything in my electric bill.
For software and devices running locally, sure. Much of what MS does these days is cloud based where the bulk of the electricity is being used in a data center somewhere and the customer isn't (directly) paying for it.
Well you don't have 1000 vms running in azure, do you? It's not about your Xbox..
Many countries don't use a lot of electricity, especially those where the grids are spotty or in poor repair, or the overall population is small. Even without the AI garbage, I'd expect large tech-sector companies to use more energy than many countries.
(In other words, the headline for this was really poorly chosen. "Microsoft and Google pour more electricity into AI than 100+ countries use" might have gotten a bit closer to the actuall point, if it's actually true.)
Microsoft and Google pour more electricity into AI than 100+ countries use" might have gotten a bit closer to the actuall point, if it's actually true
From what I can tell, the article is talking about total electrical use, not just AI.
Also probably ignoring the fact that some of their data centers have practically the entire roof covered in solar panels, Microsoft is investing in nuclear energy, etc.
That is a big probably.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Generative AI is taking the world by storm, and its impact is evident across all sectors, including medicine, education, music, computing, and more.
According to a detailed analysis by Michael Thomas, this surpasses the power consumption of over 100 nations, including Ghana, Tunisia, and more (via Tom's Hardware).
Some of the downsides to advancements in the AI landscape include the degradation of the environment, however, Google and Microsoft are big on renewable energy and have been championing the campaign while seeking alternative power sources.
Elon Musk claimed we're on the verge of the biggest technology breakthrough with AI, but there won't be enough power by 2025.
Sam Altman has been exploring a potential alternative power source for OpenAI's AI efforts, with nuclear fusion at the top of his list.
While nuclear fusion seems like the perfect solution for AI's power needs due to its non-existent impact on the environment, scientists and researchers say it's "too late to deal with the climate crisis" and view fission and renewable energy as better options.
The original article contains 449 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
They want to become carbon neutralbut climate crisis is already running.
Feels like build „don’t smoke here“ - signs in our forests while they are burning.
Sun consumes 100000000000+ countries power. We have to do something!
Easy, switch it off!
Not the brightest idea...
Bitcoin is estimated to consume 172 TWh, which is way more than Google and Microsoft combined.
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
Yes, bitcoin is trash. But most modern cryptos use far less energy. For example the second largest crypto ethereum uses almost no energy compared to bitcoin/AI..
"AI" can not say the same at all. And, unlike crypto, there's no realistic improvement in sight. It just keeps getting worse.
PoS requires significant staker profits to work, which would create the same inequality as the dollar has. It's basically dollar bonds but without regulations.
There's more to "AI" than just ChatGPT...
I think you're mixing up what AI actually means here, you would probably like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGIpdiQrFDU
But in brief, what about DLSS? The ML models for that get improved with every driver update.
STT models like whisper that are great at transcribing/translating.
Object recognition models for drones to keep the camera centered on you and for object avoidance.
ML models for finding new cures.
Models in astronomy for finding planets... Etc.
You're trying to tell me that everything "AI" is trash and not getting better?
172 TWh per year
Your statement was as useful as the following: A VW Polo car costumes 3000 liters of fuel.
*Edit: Downvote me all you want 😂 if I am right I am right.
Your point?
The data in the article was for one year. This is the same unit.
The article is also about per year
The downvotes aren't because you're wrong, they're because you're bring obnoxious about being right.
So, is Watt-hours/unit-time no longer a meaningful unit?
Because, if so, you better tell every power company I've had, because that's how they've billed me.