While I love to see nuclear get a comeback from new tech ventures and commercial impetus, it's also interesting to point out how one now mostly hears crickets from the people who screamed about the energy consumption of crypto. AI has so far mainly managed to generate enormous amounts of spam sludge, pollute the already toxic landscape of social media with auto-generated garbage, and lead to a level of data prying and mass data ripping by the big tech companies that makes their previous efforts seem almost quaint.
This shit is largely what this voracious drive for more power is helping build. Even crypto wasn't this shitty, since at least its fundamental application wasn't nearly so broadly parasitic. Yet now I hear very little about uselessly burning vast loads of energy.
I guess if the companies responsible for the above trash heap are largely the same ones that hire or indirectly subsidize the jobs of so many people in the tech world as represented by a site like HN, then the whole dumpster fire is okay.
I'm also fairly sure that OpenAI, Microsoft and others would happily burn baby seals in coal furnaces if it meant powering their precious AI data needs. It's only for PR that they make useful noises about using clean power.
This shit is largely what this voracious drive for more power is helping build. Even crypto wasn't this shitty, since at least its fundamental application wasn't nearly so broadly parasitic. Yet now I hear very little about uselessly burning vast loads of energy.
I guess if the companies responsible for the above trash heap are largely the same ones that hire or indirectly subsidize the jobs of so many people in the tech world as represented by a site like HN, then the whole dumpster fire is okay.
I'm also fairly sure that OpenAI, Microsoft and others would happily burn baby seals in coal furnaces if it meant powering their precious AI data needs. It's only for PR that they make useful noises about using clean power.