News Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries

[Admin]

And yet, these two high-tech giants also lead the industry in terms of green energy adoption.

Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries : Read more

 

[stonecarver]

I would love to see these same statistics with the same charts vs 2010 side by side. Social media and AI are the biggest change since 2010 you still have the same silly day wasting cat videos today as 2010. Would be interesting I guess to see that.

 

[hotaru251]

TBH world should just come to a global understanding: those single companies/business who use extreme amounts of power should be forced to support improving the power supply as they put most strain on the grids.

 

[brandonjclark]

TBH world should just come to a global understanding: those single companies/business who use extreme amounts of power should be forced to support improving the power supply as they put most strain on the grids.

I'd like to see them be compliant with US law, for starters...


https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-taxes-irs-96eb66abe86de19f1108209a8d57431a

 

[gtarthur]

Why wasn't Amazon, the world's largest cloud provider, included in this story? For that matter, why not also include Meta/Facebook? Singling out Microsoft and Google actually diminishes the magnitude of the issue. It also gives the appearance of prejudice.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

The power requirements are absurd, and the ironic part is that it's not that hard to fix. We can cut the power requirements required by AI data centers by 9/10ths if we introduced better AI that runs locally on the device. The advent of ARM and RISC-V will also naturally lower power requirements for desktops and servers by a large percentage. Privacy legislation can also go a long way to reducing power requirements since, let's face it, a decent chunk of the Internet today is used to send ads, acquire user data, and build profiles.

Experimenting with Samsung Dex was a huge eyeopener on this subject. It can do most basic computing tasks while sipping only 7-25w of power. I'm not going to say you don't need a faster computer (many do!), but there IS an argument to be made that we're not being efficient with most of the current tech we have. Windows bloat can be removed so it frees up resources. Programmers can improve their apps to better allocate RAM and prevent memory leaks. We can cut power without losing any performance simply by being smart.

 

[strikerace]

And yet, these two high-tech giants also lead the industry in terms of green energy adoption.

Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries : Read more

Complying with anti-monopoly laws would be a bonus. Too much 'power' concentrated with too few people.

 

[USAFRet]

We can cut the power requirements required by AI data centers by 9/10ths if we introduced better AI that runs locally on the device.

Do you have any verification/corroboration of this "9/10ths"?

 

[ThomasKinsley]

Do you have any verification/corroboration of this "9/10ths"?

That number is an estimate meant to be within the order of magnitude. There are multiple variables, including AI capabilities of desktop processors and how popular local AI will be. The more it is used over online models, the more we will save power. Local AI is doing away with GPU requirements, which should significantly lower power requirements.

There is a growing body of data on how AI will increase power requirements in datacenters. It's something we can fix.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand.html

 

[USAFRet]

That number is an estimate meant to be within the order of magnitude. There are multiple variables, including AI capabilities of desktop processors and how popular local AI will be. The more it is used over online models, the more we will save power. Local AI is doing away with GPU requirements, which should significantly lower power requirements.

There is a growing body of data on how AI will increase power requirements in datacenters. It's something we can fix.

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand.html

So, just a guesstimate.
OK.

"AI" depends on LOTS of data, readily accessible. LOTS = more data than your PC or laptop can hold. By several orders of magnitude.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

So, just a guesstimate.
OK.

"AI" depends on LOTS of data, readily accessible. LOTS = more data than your PC or laptop can hold. By several orders of magnitude.

I prefer to call it a Fermi estimate. 😛

Google is offering "quantized models" small enough to fit on local devices. While it says it's local, it leverages Cloud Workstations, so I presume this is a hybrid model. For a true offline experience, FreedomGPT requires around 5GB of storage (as of 2023) and 16GB of RAM.

 

[USAFRet]

For a true offline experience, FreedomGPT requires around 5GB of storage (as of 2023) and 16GB of RAM.

Really?

To hold a representation of the entire planets knowledge base, completely offline, in less space than a typical movie.

Someone is blowing some smoke.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

Really?

To hold a representation of the entire planets knowledge base, completely offline, in less space than a typical movie.

Someone is blowing some smoke.

Some models are larger (and better) than others. FreedomGPT really functions as a host platform for the open source Alpaca and LLaMA LLM models, but it could be sketchy (edit: some are complaining it is). I'm not endorsing the app, just offline models in general.