AI is not the panacea they’re making it out to be. This article is attempting to influence readers to support American AI business models to ‘complete’ with China. Except that AI doesn’t make my job easier and is very bad for the environment.
AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over
Submitted 22 hours ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/
Comments
El_guapazo@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
In my case, AI assistants are even confusing and annoying, but since they cannot be turned off, in my case I have to endure it.
lengau@midwest.social 2 hours ago
Given that part of my job is evaluating applicants’ ability to do the job, and given that LLMs are very good at answering the sort of questions many people ask in interviews, AI is making my job significantly harder.
If someone could make a prompt that actually made an LLM write good code, I wouldn’t have nearly as much of an issue.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
enough talk already i wish the us empire would just hurry up and actually collapse.
andallthat@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
So, a few monthe ago China launched Deepseek and the narrqtive was all “the fact they didn’t have access to the latest Nvidia GPUs forced them to get creative and develop a model that is more efficient and cheaper”.
Now the US is getting behind on “AI wars” because China has more energy for huge data centers?
How about the US get creativve and develop LLMs that are actually useful and can work without sucking Gigafucks of electricity?
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
china has also been investing in solar for decades since the us gave up on it and became the leader
moseschrute@lemmy.ml 32 minutes ago
Yeah but in defense of the US, solar makes big oak sad
/s
404UsernameNotFound@lemmy.wtf 4 hours ago
To be fair in 2024, China’s electricity supply was primarily based on coal and renewable energy sources, with coal accounting for the largest share at approximately 57.77 percent. Renewable energy, including hydropower, contributed around 20.27 percent. Nuclear energy played a relatively minor role at about 4.47 percent. So it’s mostly coal power plants in used for AI in China.
simplejack@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Gotta hand it to the fossil fuels industry, they got what they wanted and their propaganda worked.
And now Americans have a janky grid, slower / more expensive transportation, and bigger power bills.
AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
At least we are free*
*Terms and conditions apply
wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
- Be rich
- Be white
- Be male
- Be "Christian"
- Be straight
- just kidding be rich
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
“free” is the sound that natural gas makes as it is released from its underground prison …
dkwannabe@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
And likely those statements will not change anytime soon in the foreseeable future.
CubitOom@infosec.pub 12 hours ago
The race to have the magic box that tells you lies that you want to hear while also consuming incredible amounts of resources…why is this a race again?
krunklom@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I really don’t understand this perspective. I truly don’t.
You see a new technology with flaws and just assume that those flaws will always be there and the technology will never progress.
Like. Do you honestly think this is the one technology that researchers are just going to say “it’s fine as-is, let’s just stop improving it”?
You don’t understand the first thing about how it works but people like you are SO certain that the way it is now is how it will always be, and that because there are flaws developing it further is pointless.
I just don’t get it.
CubitOom@infosec.pub 3 hours ago
I’ve actually worked professionally in the field for a couple of years since it was interesting to me originally. I’ve built RAG architecture backends for slef hosted FOSS LLMs, i’ve fine tuned LLMs with new data, And I’ve done even took the opposite approach where I embraced the hallucinations as I thought it could be used for more creative tasks. (I think this area still warrants research)
I’ll admit that the term AI is extremly vauge. It’s like saying you study medicine, it’s a big field. But I keep coming to the conclusion that LLMs and predictive generative models in general simply do not work for the use cases that it’s being marketed to consumers, CEOs, and Governments alike.
This " AI race" happened because Deepseek was able to create a model that was more ore less equivalent to OpenAI and Anthropic models. It should have been seen as a race between capitalism and open source since deep seek is one of the more open models at that performance level. But it became this weird nationalist talking point on both countries instead.
There are a lot of things the US is actually in a race with China in. Many of which are things that would have immediate impact. Like renewable energy, international respect, healthcare advances, military sufficiency, human rights, food supplies, and afordible housing, just to name a few.
The promise of AI is that it can somehow help in the above categories eventually, and that’s cool. But we don’t need AI to make improvements to them right now.
I think AI is a giant distraction, while the the talk of nationalistic races is just being used for investor buy in.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Feelings don’t care about logic. It’s that easy.
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
The telling lies part is not good, but I think the dream of AI is a servant (or slave) with unlimited potential that can solve, until now, unsolvable problems. Cure for cancer, sure that will be $10k a pill. Eternal life? Sure that will be 1 million dollars a years for all eternity. Robot army to protect you? Top of the list.
Question I have is, is the AI we see the same AI the teck bros see? Is there a public interface that is made to appear a little buffoonish so the masses can laugh it off, but the real interface is much much better?kieron115@startrek.website 4 hours ago
The only answer I need from an AI is 42.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
Those things are being solved by other forms of AI, not LLMs. AlphaFold is about the most useful thing AI has done so far and it’s not a chatbot.
We get access to entertainment AI, but there could be different forms of AI in use in medical science that have nothing to do with image or text generation.
Womble@piefed.world 8 hours ago
Have you considered that if the worlds two superpowers are dead certain on this being an important area that they are willing to thrwo coutless billions of investment into, that they might know more than you do?
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Governments fail to implement incredibly obvious, easy, and proven solutions all the time so yeh they can be pretty dumb. Not to mention historical examples of governments (paricularly the UK when it was a world superpower) investing their entire economies in nigerian prince tier scams.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Yeah. But then i remembered some history and how lobbying and vulture capital works and decided it unlikely.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Because it was a race for simulating more deadly nukes till now. But that got silly, so they need something new.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Don’t worry. They’ll just ask AI about the grid and it will tell them how great it is.
vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 11 hours ago
“good catch! That’s a very astute observation. Here’s a bunch of paragraphs explaining (incorrectly) how you’re wrong!”
KumaSudosa@feddit.dk 10 hours ago
Just like next quarter’s finance numbers for USA will coincidentally just all the great stuff Trump has achieved!
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
renowned expert in Chinese technology and founder of the media company Tech Buzz China, [Rui Ma]
Is the person they’re talking about who is “stunned” at how super double awesome China is at powering AI.
Ffffffffffffffuck this.
drmoose@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I like how Americans propaganda themselves - china doesnt even have to anything as Americans will gladly put them on a pedestal to spite themselves.
Crazy how apparent this is on TikTok especially. People with LGTBQ flags are salivating about China while their flags are literally censored there
RenLinwood@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
Ilixtze@lemmy.ml 21 hours ago
Turns out stubborn contrarianism and anti-science bias are not viable philosophical foundations for progress; what a surprise.
pdxfed@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
But for a few fleeting moments we did create a lot of value for the shareholders. Totally worth it to flush it all down the drain.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Yeah. Kind of amazing that for all of their America first bullshit rhetoric, Republicans have consistently and routinely neglected our infrastructure to focus time and money on gays, immigrants, and giving out blowies to billionaires
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Look at other corrupt governments and you can see some even more startlingly disfunctional infrastructure.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 18 hours ago
to purposefully distract with gays, immigrants so they could keep giving out blowies to billionaires
j4k3@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Conservatism is collapsing into irrelevance as a long term commitment.
baronvonj@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Close. Conservatism is collapsing the United States of America into irrelevance.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
the race to the bottom may already be over
jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk 7 hours ago
Maybe Trump can Make Ampères Great Again.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Give up, all is lost, all is lost.
moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
That level of cushion is unthinkable in the United States, where regional grids
Yeah, capitalism will resolve everything by being greedy. Electricity is not and will never be a merchandise. It’s a basic human need and a natural state monopoly.
elephantium@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Need?
Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
can’t use power to make everyone use electric cars need power for “AI”
Nice job you jabroonies you did it you lost everything. This is the slow descent of America and it the boomers fault.
My father in law is convinced theres some guy in a garage that’s gonna invent the next big invention, but hey guess what it takes MONEY that regular joe schmoes dont have!!
unconsequential@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
Anyone who is working on the next big project in his garage is just signing his own death certificate. That’s the truth about the American energy industry and capitalism’s free markets make “healthy competition economy” myth. Traditional American capitalism is long dead.
tisktisk@piefed.social 19 hours ago
I'm not fully disagreeing with you, but blaming past generations is quite precisely how the boomers goofed as severely as they did. They played the blame game to the same tune we are currently, the only difference is they didn't LARP and play pretend about it as shallowly as we do. If we want to be truly better we must first ensure that we don't become exactly like the selfish demons we must vanquish. Otherwise evil persists merely in a different form.
It's got to stop here with us--we are the last generation, all of us. Identifying core issues is critical--but the secrets of the Egyptians were secrets even to themselves.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
AFAIK in USA it is pretty common to build the power infra structure as part of the AI data-centers that need it.
This has already been pretty common for normal data-centers for years.
USA never really had good public service infra structure for it. While for instance in Denmark many companies build data-centers because Denmark both has good infrastructure, and also can supply data-centers with relatively cheap energy from renewable sources, without the company having to foot a giant bill to invest in that too.The American model is of course inferior, but it’s not like it doesn’t work at all.
fitgse@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
For some. But Alabama power has raised rates AGAIN to build another 2 gas plants because of data centers. My power bill has increased by 50% in the last 6 years.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
OK so Alabama push the bill to consumers for expanding power to data centers in that situation. Meaning the American AI industry has absolutely nothing to be envious about China for in that situation. Which is what the article claims.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 21 hours ago
I guess burning coal as fast as possible means energy is a “solved problem” for China?
moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
Reading the article helps to see that they are going full renewable.
Even if AI demand in China grows so quickly renewable projects can’t keep pace, Fishman said, the country can tap idle coal plants to bridge the gap while building more sustainable sources.
wewbull@feddit.uk 21 hours ago
themurphy@lemmy.ml 21 hours ago
You dont know a thing about infrastructure, do you?
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Everything China has us cooked in every sector
someguy3@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Everywhere we went, people treated energy availability as a given,” Rui Ma wrote on X after returning from a recent tour of China’s AI hubs.
For American AI researchers, that’s almost unimaginable. In the U.S., surging AI demand is colliding with a fragile power grid, the kind of extreme bottleneck that Goldman Sachs warns could severely choke the industry’s growth.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Aha. I see the angle they’re going for. "we need more energy to
compete against the baddiesundercut the working class
Furbag@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I don’t really give a shit about the AI race and I genuinely hope that we lose it, because I feel like being a winner in that “industry” is inherently unsustainable.
The AI hype is so infuriatingly frustrating.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 hour ago
Further fear mongering about China’s data center/powergrid infrastructure superiority is also the PERFECT excuse techbros need to rationalize building data centers in parts of the US that are in desperate shortage of water for human beings and with precarious electrical grids that ready to fail in the middle of the next heatwave.
The US is essentially in a second Civil War and this will be one of the main methods in which people are killed in this war, purposefully setting up the conditions for people to die in a heat wave and have no water so they are desperate… and the only way people in the US are going to stomach it is if they have been truly convinced they have to accept these brutal conditions “because we are hopelessly behind China!”.
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I just want anyone else to win. All the things. I want US Hegemony to end. At any cost. If that’s AI then good.
I hate this country the way Saw Gerrera hates the empire.
frongt@lemmy.zip 16 minutes ago
Sure, but this isn’t going to do that, and it’s going to harm–no, scratch that, continue harming–a bunch of people in the process.
batmaniam@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I understand you’re frustrated about the AI race. That’s an excellent point, and it deserves careful consideration. First, in considering the AI race we need to consider what AI is…