Post #1175422

2022-12-23 15:16 UTC

Climate change is already threatening the data centers required to power large scale tech, like &quot;AI&quot;. Or, accounting for climate we see a tech future that&#39;s patchier &amp; less always-on + ubiquitous, NOT larger and more powerful. This doesn&#39;t mean that those with power to shape and control tech will themselves grow less powerful. But it does mean that the colloquial Moore&#39;s law fantasies of tech, particularly popular in &quot;AI&quot;, will face a series of hard stops. @mel_hogan

Replies (4)

@KatrinaMatheson@fosstodon.org 2022-12-23 15:52

@Mer__edith @mel_hogan Yes. I just wrote a paper (for a class - PhD student here) about how AI and Climate Change represent emerging epistemes in direct opposition.

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@markkrueg@social.treehouse.systems 2022-12-23 16:23

@Mer__edith @mel_hogan I think it’s likely large AI data centers will migrate off-planet (orbit, etc) soon. This will allow access to unlimited super-cooling as well as much more efficient solar power. Once Starship (100 tons to orbit, fully re-usable) is flying regularly in 1 to 2 years this should become cost effective. The data latency will be an issue, but many AI tasks are not latency limited.

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@tnsi@ieji.de 2022-12-28 08:27

@Mer__edith @mel_hogan I think we are sooner going to see a social stop/blocker to data centers once water resources become strained- many of these data centers are misusing municipal potable water resources for cooling. As a web dev, I love the internet, but I love people being able have reliable access to clean potable water even more

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@NadiaYvette@mastodon.social 2023-01-24 18:36

@Mer__edith @mel_hogan It might degrade the quality & performance of new parts more than shut things down in itself, but some materials used to build computers (hafnium noted in the article) are dwindling: https://www.engineering.com/story/what-raw-materials-are-used-to-make-hardware-in-computing-devices

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