this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024

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Google and Microsoft consume more energy than 100+ countries | Windows Central (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wake me up when AI can simulate my brain. Literally, run me.exe and let me know.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (8 children)

All fun and games until a moth ends up in your transistors.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

But people from those countries must also be using Google and Microsoft

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Not just people, but importantly also corporations running their services on Microsoft azure or Google cloud.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There might be some double counting, but it doesn't matter - this just illustrates the insane scale of these companies.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Comparing huge multinational countries which serve every country to the half of countries with the smallest energy usage is not terribly illustrative.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Correction, the insane amount of energy the AI needs

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

Is all of this due to AI? I’m confident most of the energy is spent on other stuff, like data centers. Both Google and Microsoft are cloud providers.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

To be fair, Iceland only has around 400k inhabitants.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Closer to 400k

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Right, it was a bit over 100k km², memory is a bitch, corrected.

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Bitcoin is estimated to consume 172 TWh, which is way more than Google and Microsoft combined.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

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!

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