this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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I know Microsoft is a controversial company from Start Menu ads to Balmer’s dancing ability. But! I have been following the AI topic pretty religiously and they have known that this would be the case for quite a while. In fact part of OpenAI’s growth struggling and subsequent partnership with Microsoft involved power generation.
Microsoft has been investing in electric power including using small module nuclear reactors. Sam Altman has been putting a lot of effort into power as well, acknowledging long ago that electricity generation is critical for AI. He’s been pushing into green energy also. Exowatt, Helion, etc.
So yes, the carbon footprint is going up now because they ‘had’ to unleash this genie from the bottle first or someone else would have. At least they know that the need for stable electric power and green power or renewable and efficient power is necessary and have been pursuing these solutions actively.
It should be so that they really change things so that power grids are more stable and renewable energy is better utilized. So to me, there is hope they are doing the right thing and putting effort where it matters.
I’m more effing disappointed and concerned about @$$h0les like Ron Desantis doing things like this:
Helping generate less carbon at some point in the future does not help with the fact that we are racking up the carbon bill now. What these companies are doing is entirely unnecessary, gimmicky, and will lead to even worse climate change outcomes. Between AI, crypto, and the O&G companies we just keep pressing the gas even harder on serious, irreversible climate change.
I hope this AI push fails spectacularly at some point, but the damage is already being done.
Hmm let's see what changed since I last looked. This study seems recent, just looking at the publicly available sections:
Translation: They're way more expensive than renewables. SMRs have some advantage which are mentioned (less land usage, non-intermittency), then we have
...but not renewables+storage, which would be a good comparison point. If it looked any good they definitely would've included it.
Now that doesn't mean that these things don't make sense for Microsoft. It might e.g. simplify power distribution within datacentres to a degree that other sources just can't, also reduce or eliminate the need for backup power, etc. But generally speaking I'm still smelling techbro BS.
I don’t think Microsoft has a money problem.