On 16/05/25 02:22, Justin Zobel wrote:
[...]
Using a mobile phone cannot be compared to the power used by data
centres to train AI in the slightest.
Just straight off the top of my head, your phone and computer
automatically go to sleep by default. Servers do not.
It's also a matter of how these data centres are powered. Corporations
will often go for the cheapest source which is often dirty
non-renewable sources of energy.
The world is more complicated. You might want to check how the
hyperscalers are over-commiting/over-provisioning the hardware to avoid
idle servers and how the workloads are shifted to make more use of
renewables and how the data center and the power supply strategy looks
like for these companies. Resources like
https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-centers-work-harder-sun-shines-wind-blows/
and the publications from Google, Meta, etc. around 2020 in this context
provide interesting insights into this topic. "Net-zero" commitments are
present also outside of the tech field, also because of political
obligations. Of course there are still "dirty components" in many cases,
but the over-generalization you did above doesn't describe the current
reality well enough.
--
Alexander
