i think he wrote a bestseller about avoiding climate disaster
a how to i suppose
i think he is concerned
is he going about it in a way that we all approve?
i doubt it/unlikely
overall i think he is a force for good
I think he genuinely wants to be a force for good, unlike many other uber rich. I think there is a fundamental disconnect between developing technology that requires a huge increase in energy use, requiring dedication of significant amounts of nuclear power so that he is resurrecting a power plant with a lot of bad press rather than putting the nuclear energy towards reducing fossil fuel use.
People were writing about the limits to growth back when I was an undergrad. Global warming is one aspect of that issue but not the only one.
ai? that genie is not going back into the bottle
will it help with nuclear power?
my magic 8 ball says yes
yes to that, but do we believe that MS/Google/Meta/X can be trusted to self regulate the production of energy from a nuclear reactor? Magic 8 ball says
Yeah, nuclear power is an answer to our power budget problem. But AI and bitcoin are heroin and crack to our power dependency issues.
We are making great strides on conservation and alternative generation, and still nuclear is the only realistic option. Then you add AI compute to the mix... it's not going to end well. Also, I don't trust most (any?) of these groups to self regulate their AI, I really don't trust them to run a nuclear power plant to sustain them.
ai? that genie is not going back into the bottle
will it help with nuclear power?
my magic 8 ball says yes
Gates doesn't want to reduce CO2, he wants to minimise the increase in CO2 from the massive amount of computing power for his AI plans. There is a difference. I feel about it the way I feel about bitcoin, the product isn't worth the computing power used. Although with AI, I think there are more potential negatives to society.
i think he wrote a bestseller about avoiding climate disaster
a how to i suppose
i think he is concerned
is he going about it in a way that we all approve?
i doubt it/unlikely
overall i think he is a force for good
Gates doesn't want to reduce CO2, he wants to minimise the increase in CO2 from the massive amount of computing power for his AI plans. There is a difference. I feel about it the way I feel about bitcoin, the product isn't worth the computing power used. Although with AI, I think there are more potential negatives to society.
Yeah, nuclear power is an answer to our power budget problem. But AI and bitcoin are heroin and crack to our power dependency issues.
We are making great strides on conservation and alternative generation, and still nuclear is the only realistic option. Then you add AI compute to the mix... it's not going to end well. Also, I don't trust most (any?) of these groups to self regulate their AI, I really don't trust them to run a nuclear power plant to sustain them.
could be
gates has made it clear he believes nuclear is a huge part of reducing co2
he has a few bets/investments with nuclear power/energy research
i was going to mention something about tax write-offs, but decided not to
Gates doesn't want to reduce CO2, he wants to minimise the increase in CO2 from the massive amount of computing power for his AI plans. There is a difference. I feel about it the way I feel about bitcoin, the product isn't worth the computing power used. Although with AI, I think there are more potential negatives to society.
I haven't followed Gates' investment in nuclear power research lately, but I'd be very interested to see ANY near-term design offer realistic construction cost projections. The Vogtle plant in GA went massively over budget and was years late.
could be
gates has made it clear he believes nuclear is a huge part of reducing co2
he has a few bets/investments with nuclear power/energy research
i was going to mention something about tax write-offs, but decided not to
I haven't followed Gates' investment in nuclear power research lately, but I'd be very interested to see ANY near-term design offer realistic construction cost projections. The Vogtle plant in GA went massively over budget and was years late.
I used to be in Data Centers and we looked at this ~7 years ago. At the time it really made a lot more sense to locate in a high sunshine area with cheap land and do big solar arrays with some wind as well if the geography worked. Nuclear has a lot of potential, but only if your scale is larger than a massive array can handle or scale to. I recall the break point was around 200-250 megawatts.
you are also making a tradeoff on if it more cost effective to move power over a distance or data over a distance. Data is generally easier (light or microwave), but takes time (measured in milliseconds). Normally that's not a big deal, but financial guys will spend millions (multiple / hundreds) for a few milliseconds. So this makes me think that a lot of what is going on is financial. Or this is just PR / Buzzword bingo.
could be
gates has made it clear he believes nuclear is a huge part of reducing co2
he has a few bets/investments with nuclear power/energy research
i was going to mention something about tax write-offs, but decided not to
I used to be in Data Centers and we looked at this ~7 years ago. At the time it really made a lot more sense to locate in a high sunshine area with cheap land and do big solar arrays with some wind as well if the geography worked. Nuclear has a lot of potential, but only if your scale is larger than a massive array can handle or scale to. I recall the break point was around 200-250 megawatts.
you are also making a tradeoff on if it more cost effective to move power over a distance or data over a distance. Data is generally easier (light or microwave), but takes time (measured in milliseconds). Normally that's not a big deal, but financial guys will spend millions (multiple / hundreds) for a few milliseconds. So this makes me think that a lot of what is going on is financial. Or this is just PR / Buzzword bingo.
I imagine the pool of experts is low seeing that this technology was pretty much all but dead till recently. It would be nice to see this succeed and more folks copy the application.
