Microsoft has invested in several fusion projects too.
Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors
Submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-power-train-ai-small-nuclear-reactors
Comments
Endorkend@kbin.social 1 year ago
spark947@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Its going to be all for nothing at the end of the day.
dtrain@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Elaborate?
kadu@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Well, there’s only so much training you can do before it has ingested all of Garfield lore and fan creations, so you start over fitting and can’t generate new Garfield material anymore, and at that point, what’s even the point of going on?
xantoxis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yesssss
I don’t give a shit about training AI but the idea of Microsoft running nuclear reactors is hilarious to me. Either they do it well and we all benefit from the knowledge, or Windows goes out with a bang
circuscritic@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Small Modular Reactor technology is the future, and it’s really promising.
Self-contained (no onsite refueling), mass produced (cheap, higher quality), and modular (add more for more power, or small enough to power a data center).
Here’s a quick video from a professor of Nuclear Energy covering the topic:
PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks [bot] 1 year ago
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query@lemmy.world 1 year ago
AI’s going to kill us off by doing what we do better than us. Consuming resources and producing waste.
Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I guess the nuclear power people are gonna become Microsoft fans… powered by nuclear power.
fluid_neutral@lemmy.today 1 year ago
people need lots of energy for life as well, now what??
Lightrider@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
Anything that gets us closer to thorium/LFTR energy is fine with me.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 1 year ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Training large language models is an incredibly power-intensive process that has an immense carbon footprint.
Now, The Verge reports, Microsoft is betting so big on AI that its pushing forward with a plan to power them using nuclear reactors.
Yes, you read that right; a recent job listing suggests the company is planning to grow its energy infrastructure with the use of small modular reactors (SMR.)
But before Microsoft can start relying on nuclear power to train its AIs, it’ll have plenty of other hurdles to overcome.
Then, it’ll have to figure out how to get its hands on a highly enriched uranium fuel that these small reactors typically require, as The Verge points out.
Nevertheless, the company signed a power purchase agreement with Helion, a fusion startup founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this year, with the hopes of buying electricity from it as soon as 2028.
The original article contains 346 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
hperrin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s pretty cool. I would have guessed it would be cheaper to use wind energy.
GuillaumeGus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Cheaper but unreliable.
vluz@kbin.social 1 year ago
Oh my Gwyn, this comment section is just amazing.
Rooty@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, every time AI or nuclear energy is mentioned the quality of the comments plummets. Since we have the two combined in this story, the results are tragically predictable.
naticus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve played this game and know where it’s headed. They’ve decided to create Vega.
profdc9@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s grim to think the driver for renewable energy will be the demand for endless AI synthesized child porn.
dope@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Nothing so trivial.
What we’ll get is on-demand custom advertising. That Taco Bell advertisement will feature the smiling faces of your dead relatives.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
the FBI appreciates you being so open in how you use AI. An agent will be with you shortly.
collegefurtrader@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Is this the new crypto mining is bad story?
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Only if you think developing small nuclear reactors is a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing.
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Yeah, there’s definitely some parallels between how people negatively reacted to crypto and the current wave of reactions towards AI. My personal theory is that a lot of people are becoming hostile towards big tech, and anything that’s seen as the next big thing in tech will quickly get negative reactions.
Mio@feddit.nu 1 year ago
Just go to Chernobyl and build there. Dealt with the aftermarch now instead of later. The order matter because then they will understand there is a big problem with nuclear power. Yes, it have even happened in modern time. Look at what happened at Japan 2011.
wishthane@lemmy.world 1 year ago
How many people did the Fukushima incident actually kill? Meanwhile people are actively being killed by air pollution and climate change caused by fossil fuel energy. Nuclear energy incidents seem worse because they happen over a short period of time, but it’s just like with airplanes - plane crashes are horrific and disastrous, but statistically airplanes are massively safer than even rail and especially road transport.
It requires good governance and adherence to safety standards and upkeep to be safe, but we’ve shown that we can reasonably do that for the most part.
Renewables should of course be the first priority, though lithium mining is also a significant health hazard - but really when you compare everything statistically and not just by the significance of individual events, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be trying to eliminate fossil fuels by any feasible means, and that includes nuclear power.
Mio@feddit.nu 1 year ago
adherence
You know that if we look at for example Chernobyl how many did varies a lot between who you ask. That is even today. You also need to think of those who did not die but survived with some damages. Chernobyl is not over so you can’t even stop counting who died from it. It will take very long time before it is over.
Yes, I agree with you that pollution is a even bigger problem that I can’t understand that no one cares about it. Seeing on TV that people going to work in a smog of smoke and they don’t react. It is deadly! Personally, I agree that fossil fuel should banned for example for cars. There are alternatives, maybe not as good but you will survive. Teleports does not exist yet but we survive somehow anyway.
dope@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I have read scifi (Bear : Blood Music, Egan : I forget) where packing enough computation into a small enough space caused reality to warp. So look out!
DoomBot5@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I played minecraft, where too much data in the same chunk caused it to corrupt. Watch out!