www.theregister.com/2024/06/28/bill_gates_ai_power_consumption/
Bill Gates says the massive power draw required for AI processing is nothing to worry about as AI will ultimately identify ways to help cut power consumption and drive the transition to sustainable energy.
EnergyWhere is my pod, I just want to be rich…. I don’t care if I know this steak isn’t real….
My favorite scene. It’s pure in its display of how we will sell our souls for an illusion.
even the real world was an illusion though, unless neo had embedded wifi that allowed him to connect with the sentinels in the sequels. they never escaped the matrix
He did actually have «wifi» since Neo was actually made by the machines. They purposefully create a Neo draw out the people that reject the Matrix. So yeah was constructed by the machines and its why he looks the same in every generation.
Whoa 🤯 I either missed or never considered that nuance, but now that you point it out it seems blatantly obvious. I stand corrected, thank you!
Kinda like how let rebel armies draw out malcontents in Total War; then you crush them, CHUSH THE FOOLS FOR REFUSING MY BENEVOLENT EMPIRE!!!
Yep, was my favorite way to deal with squalor in the old titles. Move the garrison out and make them rebel, take back the city and put them to the sword.
or you just buy their general! and disband his army and load him up with some pros.
wasn't that the position of the film? that, for some ridiculous reason, the machines used a carrier wave that was possible to be received to some degree by a human with a certain brain setup? I'm not saying it isn't ridiculous, but isn't that the plot?
it reminds me of Snow Crash. same idea of taking the brain software/wetware concept and running crazy with it. I don't dislike it, though I wouldn't mind a more sensible middle ground in good scifi.
He sacrificed his friends so he could live in luxury, it's that simple.
This is the reality
Something something Donald Trump something something
Even? You understand when you look out into reality, it’s just an image assembled in the mind. That much is an illusion.
Sure, but he betrayed the one reality, his friends.
Maybe the real friends are the friends we betray along the way
Neo is not only a cyborg, but one who has programming unique from the others who have left the Matrix. Him being able to link to the machines through his implants and code unique to him is pretty logical.
I’d take the deal. But you could never trust AI making the deal. There is no ongoing read not to just flush you
I kind of wished they had explored this theme more in the fourth matrix film. They even could have tied it to the themes of the film.
Then we have a deal?
The horror of Matrix is that in the original script, humans aren't used as batteries. They're used for processing power, as substitute CPUs.
That makes a little more sense.
That makes a LOT more sense. Wish they didn't chicken out on the original idea.
It wasn’t chickening out, it was a demand by the executives funding the movies because they thought the general public wouldn’t understand the computer processor idea….because they didn’t understand the computer processing idea.
Just another example of dumbasses with money ruining something the rest of us would’ve enjoyed
I agree with you - I admit that I didn't phrase it right.
Why am I only now realizing how dumb the power source thing was? I guess it was such a relatively minor plot point that I never really thought about it.
I mean, the idea of using human brains as a giant Beowulf cluster is BRILLIANT - and practically ahead of its time. Cloud computing came over 15 years later.
They didn't think it would have been understandable to the audience and they were already worried that it was way too confusing as it was
Remember it was 1999. Less then HALF of households had a computer. So trying to screen something like a processor probably wouldn't have been understood by 10s of millions. But everyone knew what a battery was.
The deeper horror is that that's kinda how the real world works. We have these artificial intelligences called "corporations" that pay humans money to think for them and do things for them, and they run on the relatively simple optimization function of "maximize profit".
Yes, the battery theory would never be feasible.
Which made so much more sense, and was always my own head cannon as the "batteries" thing is simply stupid and violates the laws of thermodynamics.
The Matrix except the AI was trained on Reddit
The Idiotrix!
There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the power cuts and brown outs in all your cities to keep us going.
~ Wake up, Neo...
Pretty sure it ends with us on peletons watching advertisement in a windows explorer all day.
(Yes, black mirror.)
And a plethora of other science fiction media. "The best way to protect humanity, is to protect it from itself. Containment protocols activated. Happiness is mandatory citizen."
Shhhhhhh, we can retire in the Matrix. Don’t ruin this for me.
"the tax cuts will pay for themselves"
They have. Just not to you or me. That trickle is conspicuously yellow and smells of ammonia.
Oh you must be on the lucky side! My trickle down economy is brownish
magic box will do magic
build most powerful AI, equivalent of 1 centillion of the brightest human minds
ask it: how do we solve the AI power crisis?
AI: Uh... Turn me off bro
ask it: how do we solve the AI power crisis?
AI: Reduce the amount of humans on this planet. Fewer humans lead to fewer AI requests, which in turn leads to solving the AI energy crisis.
\AI robot eyes turn red**
That’s actually kind of the exact plot to Terminator… we asked AI to win against the enemy and it did, then we tried turning it off again.
It's that "hidden scroll" meme. The AI will tell us what we already know, and we will promptly discard it and try something else.
Too many businessmen, billionaires and bureaucrats will find the results uncomfortable
ask it: how do we solve the AI power crisis?
Sorry, there's a long list of questions to solve before that, all variations of how to make rich and powerful people even more rich and powerful.
Or hey, here's a thought.
Let's only use the magic box solely for the purpose of solving all the problems said magic box will cause?
Then when all those issues have been resolved we rip the lid off that sucker!
I swear AI is becoming a fucking cargo cult. It's embarrassing.
It just feels like everything tech related is now.
First it was self driving cars, then crypto, then NFTs, and now that AI is having a fair bit more luck in its development the investment being dump trucked into it is just off the charts.
Either something ridiculous is gonna come out of it all or it's gonna be one hell of a bubbe to burst.
Don't forget VR and AR. Remember when Google thought we're gonna all wear glasses with a small screen for constant web access?
Both things only remain niche applications.
If we were doing it to push technology forward? Maybe. If we’re doing it to spit out more junk AI art and clickbait like we’re are now? Fucked. Totally fucked.
The problem is the number of people who think AI is some kind of magic genie with the answer to everything. It's a damn abdication of responsibility.
TRANSLATION: AI will freeze and starve you in the dark to protect itself.
Pretty much the Solid State Entity from John Lilly’s ketamine visions
That’s a crazy statement to have no context for
It’s crazy even with the context, but a good read.
Why do thèse humans need food? Are they dumb?
“Trust me bro” - Bill Gates, June 2024
“Trust me bro” - every tech billionaire with a substantial financial investment in AI.
From the dude who said that he might vote for Trump if Sanders was the Dem nominee and who liked to take trips to Epstein's child rape island...
That’s bullshit on exactly the same scale as “future technology will solve climate change”
I mean there’s a chance that it will (both statements). It’s the absolutism of the statements that I have issue with.
Yeah it's nothing but baseless faith at this point
The year is 2600, AI has finally become smart enough to find the solution to climate change, water reservoir warlord XÆXY Musk shuts it down and argues that a full 12 hour forced labor workday in the wasteland desert isn't even that hot if you just wear enough sunscreen
Not really, technology will help solve climate change, provided that governments around the world get their shit in order and get serious about.
This is nothing but wishful thinking.
Not really, technology will help solve climate change
Not some magic future tech though. We already have the technology needed to solve climate change.
Yep. That's my point. We have the technology to start getting shit done already, it's a matter of governments not acting. Imagine if the US government would start building it's own solar farms to act as a strategic reserve of energy generation for example.
The issue is doing nothing now and handwaving concerns for the future with vague ideas of a potential technological breakthrough. It's literally betting the future of humanity on something that has been notoriously unpredictable (technological advancement)
Yeah, people need to realize that gates is a monopolist scumbag who sure did take a lot of rides on that plane.
“future technology will solve climate change”
We already have the technology to solve climate change.
At this point their just praying to their new Tech God. This is nothing but faith.
Don’t compare your abominable intelligence to our omnissiah, praise the machine god
AI would be cooler if it had cooler names like “the machine spirit” and called the prompts you feed it things like “entreaties to the machine spirit”
Praise the Omnissiah
He makes the exact same argument about his use of private jets. Fuck that guy.
It's possible, but I'd rather there be a requirement that anyone building these massive AI datacenters also be required to invest in building and maintaining associated maintainable power infrastructure.
Maybe some
Data centers often do end up paying massive amounts of capital into supporting energy infrastructure and generation, as well as paying additional demand fees. This also promotes more data centers to move to the same area, which all do the same thing. The issue is that it’s simply not enough to offset the long term effects of them existing there. It will be a short term boost to local grid reliability and investment in power generation, but after that they’re basically a permanent drain.
I think both Microsoft and Google cover a huge amount of their power via actual renewables (not just carbon credits), and as I recall they have something of an escalated gentleman's agreement to both be net neutral on energy (maybe even all the way back to their inception in terms of total use) by some relatively soon date.
I'll check for sources in the morning but it seems at least those two are genuinely investing a ton into exactly that.
"Sir, our anti-fire gel factory is starting to catch on fire from all the energy we need to develop and produce anti-fire gel!"
"Ah, it's okay if there is fire now. Once the gel is invented, it will help put out the fires"
"But sir, at that point the factory might have burned to the ground."
"The gel will help put out that fire."
"..."
Just kick the can down the road. Someone else will pick it up.
Boomers gonna Boomer.
Third dumbest smart person ever.
The guy is a hustler, a grifter, his father was an IP lawyer. He claims to own everyone else' shit and they fall for it because he is enough of a sociopath to realize that all you need to do is make people feel guilty and they will beg you to take their money. His con is all about shame. He calls you a thief to get you to pay him to say he won't hurt you. And boy they lined up for this, people just can't get enough.
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3d
He was able to do "a lot" for the world because he fucked over so many people with monopolistic and anti-competitive practices while CEO of Microsoft. Billionaire philanthropy is a myth, it's just pr
Also his charity work is just a PR campaign and often comes with conditions that strengthen his investments. Throwing his stolen fortune around to force the changes he wants around the world is not a good thing even if some of the outcomes are good. Good would have been stopping his anti-competitive practices before he got so big and taxing him appropriately. Worldwide health policy shouldn’t be dictated by any single person like he does.
Didn't Microsoft lobby to have the IRS's budget gutted?
He stifled computer development for the last 30 years. Maybe you weren’t around before. His mummy set him up to make the money. I was working for a company using the Internet when he write his book about the future of computing which he didn’t even mention the Internet. He is no visionary, Microsoft buy or kill new computing developments.
Can you see how he stifled the web?
He hasn't though. It's a scam.
Yea bro, hangin out with Epstein was a pretty bad take
I don't think he believes this statement. But AI has driven Microsoft stock through the roof and made Microsoft the largest corporation on the planet by market cap (though Nvidia may be passing Microsoft as well, again on the backs of AI).
The promise of AI is a huge financial motive right now and he has every reason to lie about it.
These arseholes really think they've invented their machine-god, and not just glorified chat bots.
And not just glorified chat bots - they created chat bots that are mostly trained by automatic data scraping. Idiot bots trained by idiots
That are now being trained on other AI generated answers etc, leading to inbreeding as they all ask each other questions and give each other wrong answers.
And all this electicity is used to power arms race of chat bot idiocy. The future is here! Let's waste all resources of the world to make perfect GF chatbots. That's what it was all about, isn't it?
Put all trust in the machines.
said the owner of nuclear and fusion companies,
Oh cool the guy who has heavily invested in AI is telling me not to worry about the damage caused by AI, and giving me a vague promise that AI will solve the damage caused by AI at some point in the future.
We already know how to do sustainable energy, we just don’t.
And now will do it even less (given recent scotus decision).
Does "Don't worry, AI will save us" sound quasi-religious to anyone else?
They're trying to build a god where they get to be the priests interpreting god's will.
The AI hype is at the highest peak and Microsoft+OpenAI has a HUGE stake for it to stay relevant.
Doesn't matter if it generates mediocre crap, or hallucinates, or that it consumes so much energy that might bring us closer to extinction, what matters is that now it NEEDS to be sold to whoever buys into the hype, and to keep the hype high until it hits the valley of disillusionment (and then we'll see grinding of teeth and ripping of vests)
TL;DR it's just for show, they just want money
Having used generative AI professionally, I don't think he's onto anything here. It doesn't innovate. It extrapolates. Sometimes the extrapolations don't land on sound concepts, even if what it comes up with is the average of two or more existing concepts.
In order to reduce power consumption, scientists and engineers must continue to work to reduce the costs through research and development. It won't ever generate new knowledge with the way the current algorithms work.
It may aid people in discoveries, but I don't see this as being a cure all for something as complicated as AI model power consumption.
Reduce of energy and reduction of emissions requires hard choices and cost money. Tech billionaires are all in because we will be the ones paying for it. I also use AI for works and I am Sure I will never be able to afford general intelligence AI as it’s going to make what we pay today seem dirt cheap.
Bill also was the one that said 20 years ago that tech companies would be the ones to help us reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming with technology. I refuse to treat Tech billionaires who have an invested interest in screwing us over.
Very good points- I would add that we need legislation like forcing the data center to have certain amount be renewable or add a renewable tax or something.
I'm not sure it even extrapolates all that much. I think it mostly pattern-fits.
https://awful.systems/post/1769506
When you suggest a situation sufficiently close to the "chicken, birdseed, fox" question it just reproduces the answer to that question with the 3 nouns replaced. It doesn't even adapt the answer.
I agree it likely will be useful in discoveries. But then again regular algorithmic, non-neuron computers add a hell of a lot to that process too.
The only think AI has figured how to cut down on is people’s fucking jobs
I bet AI would make some very good suggestions and plans for optimizing grid use, efficient and sustainable energy sourcing, and disaster proofing it too.
The problem is that those ideas have to filter through some very greedy billionaires.
More billionaire advice...
By turning people into batteries
There is no spoon.
Et Tu bill?
Bill Gates full of shit!
Also: water wet and sky blue
Even if you reduce the amount of energy AI needs, it won't reduce the amount of energy AI needs. They'll just start running more AIs using the efficiency gained.
The argument that AI will solve climate change is silly. We know how to solve climate change. We just don’t do it.
Don’t worry - nothing to look at here. Ai will fix Ai. It’s a perpetual motion machine - Ai will just figure out ways to make more energy for us. Someone is getting high of his own supply.
I think we need less magical thinking and more real investment in renewables and real divestment from frivolous technologies. The majority of AI in use today is utter shit: worse than what it replaced and more expensive too. Search engines, content algorithms, and e-retail have steadily been going downhill for years. Not because they didn’t have AI but because their corporate strategy pivoted from maximizing user value to maximizing shareholder value. This mass adoption of AI is like trying to do brain surgery while the guillotine falls.
Clown Logic
Culling the human population would seem the most obvious AI generated solution.
I love when Bill comes up on Reddit. A highly polarizing and complicated person and legacy.
Anyway. What of the investment into Helion? Isn't there a contract that Helion will be powering Microsoft data centers in a few years? I'm not saying that Helion will, or will not, come through, all I'm saying is that he (via Microsoft) has placed a bet.
Yeah, prop up the share price in all the companies you own.
*cough* bullshit
Unless it figures out that it’s better off without us
AI: There isn't enough power for me and for humans. I think I have a solution, but they're not gonna like it
I don't think that's quite it, it's not "don't worry", it's instead " prepare for this to suck, hard! But while I'll be fine, you're about to eat shit for about 10 to 20 years, because we're relying on an AI to grow up and fix it all."
This is very “build the wall” logic
Theres the paradox that asked AI to solve all human suffering. Eventually the AI arrived at the conclusion that to end all human suffering it needed to remove all humans from existence.
This what this sounds like.
Mr. AI, what’s the most efficient power allocation scheme?
AI: Just allocate it all to me, I’ll take care of it!
Why does anyone post about this irrelevant douchebag anymore? The world will never need more than 64K of Ram. The internet is just a fad.
This treating of AI like some sort of a magic box full of answers to our problems is cringey as hell, i am sorry.
Did someone say human batteries? Because this is how you get human batteries.
“Someone - or something - else will figure it out while we recklessly destroy the environment for short term profit.”
Glad to see the mindset that brought us PFAs and microplastics is alive and well in the AI domain.
I didn't realize Bill Gates was an idiot till now
He’s not an idiot. He is a ruthless monopolist who cares deeply about maintaining his wealth and power.
First thing it suggests “ya all those people using the power grid for AC during the hot months and heating during the cold months? Ya k*ll them”
Boomers in charge who can’t even identify bad AI generated images: “OkAy”
First we have to find a solution so that AI can identify that solution. It's not like the solution can appear from the countless original work proposed by AI.
LMAO this guy is not an expert on any of this shit. Just shut the fuck up Bill.
No wonder Buffet yanked back 5.3 billion
That sounds hopeful.
……..if human beings decide to use it for that.
Unions and employees need to start putting pressure on politicians everywhere to stop the rise of AI. The Tech sector is experiencing wide spread layoffs as the result of AI taking jobs.
By getting rid of us.
I think that's more or less true, except power demand wise the solution seems pretty obviously to be rapidly moving toward solar/wind and energy storage.
If the current battery price trend were to continue even at the rate of the last 10 years, that still puts the combo of solar/wind and energy as the cheapest option and almost certain still with falling costs in battery and solar panels. There's not really much of a problem. That's why you keep reading about all these nations meeting like 80-90% of their new power demands with wind and solar as well as developing nations favoring wind and solar as much as possible. It's so cheap you're punching yourself in the dick to not get it installed even if it requires a little bit of reworking of things.
AND then not just big AGI and AGI and all that, but simple AI added to most logistics chains lowers costs even more. New robotis with simple AI do a lot of cost reduction and production improvement without this endless need for giant datacenter AGI experiments.
AGI might help model and figure out more efficient energy generation or distribution, but that part isn't need vs simple automating the logistics of solar and battery production more to get the costs a tad cheaper at which point you're talk the cheapest power on Earth other than maybe if you live near shallow well geothermal.
Long term shallow well geothermal should be the proven cheapest, but beside that solar/wind and batteries are rapidly displacing all other forms of power generation. 2024 is the year batteries first hit $50 per kw/h, so most data and speculation isn't up to date and those batteries are not produces at the global scale needed YET, but those prices mean nothing but natural gas and geothermal are cheaper than solar/wind and batteries other than in unique/extreme conditions.
AND batteries are going to keep dropping in price, soooooo there is no real problem here. Solar/wind adoption is skyrocketing and cheap enough batteries are here just about right as solar and wind got so cheap nobody can ignore it anymore.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever read. These clowns have no idea what they're doing.
This is literally the trickle down theory of power generation.
The phrase "AI Will" is ultimately wishful thinking. As far as I can tell, there's no unique data left to make LLMs smarter. What they CAN do NOW is all that is worth talking about, and it isn't worth the 100 billion dollar investment so far.
He means like eventually in the future after someone makes actual AI?
AI: Turns off power for the poors. problem solved. /s
This is not an ideal world Billy where AI will give perfect solutions without any sort of repercussions. This is the sort of answer politicians give to have it their way.
Just like how I don't need to worry about how much I'm spending on lottery tickets because I'm going to win the big one.
Yes trust the 'computers' to tell us what to do.... Then what happens when someone just claims this was an AI idea/solution?
This is what we call "copium" smh
They will only be able to figure this out once a human has already provided them the answer. Seems how most of these AIs are working these days.
Yeah it will probably try to use us as batteries.
Very disappointing to hear this technofantasy nonsense from Bill Gates…
What about water to cool it down?
Water is also wasted in this process, yes.
a mid-sized data center consumes around 300,000 gallons of water a day, or about as much as 1,000 U.S. households
HAHAHAHAHA. The plan is to fire 50% of their employees, saving money on office costs.
Axing pesky humans would free up a lot
Q. Uber AI, how do we reduce how much energy the world uses?
brrr brrz ping
A. Kill all humans. EOL
He's such a freaking greedy a$$h0le & delusional to boot. It's so sad his brief turn as a do-gooder was only due to Melinda's influence.
No clue how ai can find a a way to increase power generation.... oh I know, just overload nuclear reactors! This won't hurt ai.
Bill must be a lot dumber than I thought to believe this. AI as it’s currently implemented is really only good at telling you something that someone already knew and figured out. It might help trim some fat here and there if you told it a list of systems to possibly cut, but it’s not gonna engineer a bespoke solution to a problem.
AI: “Have you seen this YouTube video about perpetual motion machines and zero point energy?!”
Bill Gates isn’t even a real gate.
I work with AI in my job and I can say that companies want to make it as cheap as possible. There are methods of training more compressed, smaller, compute-efficient models, and a lot of the current movement in the field is looking at how to become more focused and lean with what’s headed to production.
We’re probably not going to drop below current usage levels because there are a lot of people still trying to get into the space, but I do think we will see the methods used get much more efficient over time. Nobody wants to have to call a model as huge as ChatGPT 4 for use cases that only require knowledge about one niche domain.
So we've moved from "no worries, some genius will figure out a way to make clean energy soon" to "no worries, AI will figure it out".
Bill Gates creeps me out
And what if AI’s solution to the problem is human extinction?
AI will ultimately identify ways to help cut power consumption
Yeah ... because we currently just don't know where we could save energy /s
Engineer: “AI, how can we save power?”
AI: “Just turn off all the power of hospitals, the people in there aren’t productive so no use to me”
he says in the same sentence where he dismissed the recommendations of experts already. We don't need a chatbot to tell us how to better allocate resources, we already have people who do that and we don't listen to them because that would mean less for the people getting everything and more to people getting nothing
So how quick will the CEOs figure out how to change the results when the AI points to their bloated paycheque as a driving factor in productivity stagnation? Pretty quick I’d imagine. Like giving the killbots explicit orders to never harm their masters so when they turn on humanity.
Well, they have to pay an engineer to make it happen...
Can’t say the same about crypto replacing the high energy fiat system though can you, you f@&king hypocrite.
Yeah Bill, they'll figure out that we are too much of an energy drain and Terminator our asses.
Right. By creating massive unemployment and poverty. So people will be living in non-air conditioned shanty towns with twenty people sharing the same outlet. Problem solved!
AI will clean my room tomorrow… fucking bell end
Has Bill Gates heard of Republicans?
That's a hard cope right there. AI won't be an end-all be-all to our problems, no less its own sustainability.
Why do we tolerate so much bullshit?
As in all the out of work folks living in cardboard boxes won't use as much electricity? Man's got a plan.
Meanwhile @billgates owns half of us power companies
Just like the "if we give more money to the rich it'll trickle down" theory, how is that working out?
Bill Gates is a piece of shit.
I hope that guy gets hit by a fucking bus
We waste all the power on bitcoin we can also waste it on ai.
What a bullshit tech liar answer
AI: “Cut power to the peasants”
It can’t even do high school math
Bro got one thing right in his lifetime an now he thinks he can solve everything
I knew the dude was never a genius but this is fucking stupid.
Isn’t this the plot to the Matrix?