[LINK] AI advances limited by electricity supply

[David]

On Tuesday, 29 July 2025 08:44:29 AEST Tom Worthington wrote:

> On 7/27/25 13:17, David wrote:
>> But this is still energy needed for other, arguably more essential, purposes.
> Data center owners pay for the electricity they use. They don't take it from someone else.

Whether they pay for it (probably at a negotiated & discounted bulk price) is not the point.  There's only a limited supply of electric power and an even more limited supply of "green" power.  Do we want AI data centres pushing up prices for domestic and other established users in order to fund new energy infrastructure at public expense?  ...and increasing the greenhouse load on the planet while they're at it?

>> Without affecting the ecology of those heat-sinks?
> No, water used for cooling heats the body it is discharged into. This is most noticeable with power stations, as they are large heat sources, [...]

Yes, cold water in, hot water out.  I suppose it's the equivalent of climate-change for whatever lives there.

>> Most such arguments about the proper use of energy & planetary resources depend on narrowing the scope of a large project's justification ...
> Yes, in this case we are discussing energy and water use, not materials.

I didn't express that very clearly...  By "narrowing the scope" I meant ignoring byproducts & indirect effects such as the cost of waste and focusing on the benefits, not reducing a project's physical footprint.  For example, it was once considered the atmosphere was so vast that nothing humans could do would affect it, but that didn't work out well,  I'm not an economist, but I understood the atmosphere was then a "global external common" in economic terms.

_DavidL_