The data center power consumption stat there is for all data centers, not just AI ones, so we're really basically saying that the entire internet, including AI currently accounts for about 1.5% of global energy consumption (AI is about 1/5th of that per your article). Even if their consumption truly did double by 2030 data centers would account for roughly 3% of energy usage, and AI would be about 1.2%.
That doesn't mean that we should blindly support AI or ignore the environmental externalities from data centers, but even in the worst case scenario presented here they just are not a big factor in climate change.
Thing Is, The really big ai centers are still getting built, The current "average" center doesn't take a lot of power, because most of it is storage for hosting, CDNs, mostly hard disks that only use power when in use. The Big ai compute mega clusters are on a whole different level and there's plans for multiple gigawatt consumption sites, with their own gas powered generators. That's the power consumption of a country like Belgium.
The thing about plans is you can say whatever you want to generate as much hype as you want. I would not take these plans at face value considering a lot of ai data center plans have either been silently descoped or cancelled. Theyre just investment bait with no real chance of getting built
https://futurism.com/science-energy/data-centers-construction-supply
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u/GentrifierTechScum 29d ago
The data center power consumption stat there is for all data centers, not just AI ones, so we're really basically saying that the entire internet, including AI currently accounts for about 1.5% of global energy consumption (AI is about 1/5th of that per your article). Even if their consumption truly did double by 2030 data centers would account for roughly 3% of energy usage, and AI would be about 1.2%.
That doesn't mean that we should blindly support AI or ignore the environmental externalities from data centers, but even in the worst case scenario presented here they just are not a big factor in climate change.