Three Mile Island nuclear plant to restart, power Microsoft data centers
axios.comHumans can do a lot of useful things with electrical energy. It's good to see our most powerful entities (companies) directly getting involved in getting the energy they need and still trying to do that in a climate-friendly way.
Of course, except that generative AI is not a "useful thing". While I'm not against nuclear energy, using that to off-set power hungry LLM's instead of... residences, businesses, or other anything else instead seems like a waste.
The jury is still on that long-term.
Sure, but on the other hand what happens if Gen AI bursts after all of this infra development?
- price of electricity goes wayyyyy down
- stigma around using atomic elements goes down
- price of excess available compute goes wayyy down (or the second hand market becomes side project budget range)
With excess electricity we can do a lot of things like Carbon Capture, water purification, power hadron colliders, replace gas stoves, etc. and with price of computer going down it makes more sense for certain industries to double down on tech. Essentially we are able utilise cheaper electricity + compute to patch over problems. On the other hand if the AI tech bros’s magic konch shell can lead innovations then I wouldn’t mind that either.
It's unfortunate that Three Mile Island is a meme. Objectively this is a good thing, but it will create headlines and stoke more pearl clutching around AI power consumption.