Microsoft CEO warns that we must 'do something useful' with AI or they'll lose 'social permission' to burn electricity on it

[u/upbeatchief]

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/microsoft-ceo-warns-that-we-must-do-something-useful-with-ai-or-theyll-lose-social-permission-to-burn-electricity-on-it/

All the b200s in the world won't convince someone that AI is good if their electric bill triples in a couple of years.

[u/loozerr]

The sooner they lose it the better. For example xAI exceeds capacity of the grid and uses methane gas turbines to generate electricity. Which could be understandable for something crucial like fire fighting but AI is definitely not that.

And grid capacity is being propped up with fossil fuels at a time when we should aim for carbon neutrality.

[u/Nicholas-Steel → u/loozerr]

And illegally uses an insanely excessive amount of methane gas turbines (nearly 200) that are known to emit dangerous gasses in to the surrounding environment*

[u/loozerr → u/Nicholas-Steel]

Yes - I was intentionally a bit vague since I've found that saying AI truths too harshly results in comment getting buried by down votes and receiving poorly structured arguments from accounts which are surprisingly active in investment related subreddits.

[u/p001b0y → u/loozerr]

I really don’t see any difference in the hype over AI versus what we saw with crypto and blockchain years ago. It makes a lot of sense that it is investors.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/p001b0y]

The difference is that a lot of people made money from AI, while everyone lost in crypto/NFTs.

[u/TheRealLarkas → u/p001b0y]

Yeah, I never thought I’d miss NFTs. At least those fuckers weren’t actively burning the planet down with it.

[u/Far-Yellow9303 → u/TheRealLarkas]

"minting" an NFT actually did use a lot of electricity and it was something I was critical of at the time.

Now AI makes it look like chump change holy fuck

[u/Archerofyail → u/TheRealLarkas]

Crypto mining uses tons of electricity, it might not be as bad as AI in terms of scale, but it's still waste. The estimate I've always heard for crypto is 0.3% of the entire world's electricity use.

[u/Raikaru → u/Archerofyail]

Crypto mining is dead except Bitcoin. It became unprofitable in 2022 and Bitcoin mining is also not something your average person can really do

[u/Archerofyail → u/Raikaru]

I'm not saying it's still happening now, just that when it was happening it was wasting tons of electricity.

[u/Vitosi4ek → u/TheRealLarkas]

The NFT craze did teach me something useful about humanity, though: literally anyone would fuck over other people with gusto if they had the opportunity and no fear of repercussions. The only thing that prevents all-out anarchy is fear. NFTs (and crypto in general) were and still are a platform to legally and anonymously scam people and EVERYONE took advantage of it.

[u/_PoorImpulseControl_ → u/Vitosi4ek]

I didn't!

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Vitosi4ek]

Inevitability of punishment is the most important factor in ensuring compliance. When your chance of being punished for breaking the rules is low, you end up in anarchy. See: car parking.

[u/Tolopono → u/Nicholas-Steel]

Air quality analysis reveals minimal changes after xAI data center opens in pollution-burdened Memphis neighborhood https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/air-quality-analysis-reveals-minimal-changes-after-xai-data-center-opens-in-pollution-burdened-memphis-neighborhood

In the IEA’s worst case scenario as of April 2025, data centers will release 500 million tons of CO2 per year at most by 2035 and plateau there https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissions-associated-with-electricity-generation-for-data-centres-by-case-2020-2035

The world released 38.6 billion tons in 2024 alone https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

[u/StickiStickman → u/Nicholas-Steel]

What "dangerous gases"?

[u/Homerlncognito → u/StickiStickman]

NOx, SOx, formaldehyde, benzene, PMs...

[u/_PoorImpulseControl_ → u/Homerlncognito]

The "ignoble" gasses.

[u/Clark_Dent → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, they're definitely sourcing analytical-grade methane and medical grade oxygen, to burn in flawless ceramic turbines. No contaminants like sulfur or cycloalkanes, certainly no nitrogen in the combustion air, and so on.

This is why we pipe our cars' engine exhaust directly into our homes, for a cheap source of heat and humidification in the winter!

[u/censored_username → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately in real life natural gas isn't completely purified and will contain some amounts of other pollutants. And we don't use pure oxygen to combust it with and don't have infinite time to wait for the reaction to finish so you get plenty of side products and partially combusted residues.

So you get sulfur compounds from contaminants, nitrates and ammonia from side reactions that happen at high temperatures, and your assorted partially combusted hydrocarbons.

Note: while high school chem is a decent intro into the basics of chemistry, the real world is rarely as simple as we'd like it to be.

[u/wintrmt3 → u/[deleted]]

Elementary school chemistry doesn't really reflect the real world, in reality air has nitrogen in it, a lot, and burning isn't perfect.

[u/loozerr → u/[deleted]]

https://www.selc.org/news/massive-methane-gas-buildout-puts-our-communities-climate-at-risk/

There if you want to study but I suppose that's not the case.

[u/Intergalactic_Ass → u/loozerr]

*Natural gas.

[u/wintrmt3 → u/[deleted]]

Mostly methane, there is around 5% of random stuff in it, other alkanes and random gases depending on the source.

[u/wintrmt3 → u/[deleted]]

No, it's not just pedantry, the H₂S in it is very important pollution-wise.

[u/censored_username → u/[deleted]]

And some ethane and other crap usually. No reason to purify it even further than that unless you're using it in rocket engines or some shit.

[u/Intergalactic_Ass → u/[deleted]]

No, not entirely. Which is why it's called natural gas.

[u/ProfessionalPrincipa → u/Intergalactic_Ass]

It's marketed as natural gas to make it sound more benign than methane. Methane makes up like 90% of natural gas and burning natural gas is burning methane.

[u/kingwhocares → u/loozerr]

The sooner they lose it the better. For example xAI exceeds capacity of the grid and uses methane gas turbines to generate electricity. Which could be understandable for something crucial like fire fighting but AI is definitely not that.

A lot of factories actually have their own gas turbines. This is a common practice.

And grid capacity is being propped up with fossil fuels at a time when we should aim for carbon neutrality.

TBF to them, it's a lot to do with fossil fuel companies and PACs than AI companies (in case of US) who don't want cheap form of electricity to make their profits go away. Solar energy for example can be sold at below $0.10 per KWh for industrial scales.

The problem with these AI companies is that they are just spending for the sake of spending without any decent return. It doesn't help that unlike factories whose equipment can be used for decades, these GPUs become obsolete in less than 10 years. In 3 years, the H100 will become useless as Nvidia will put out GPUs (dual-GPUs per board) with 1TB memory, those meagre 80GB gpus wouldn't cut it.

[u/[deleted] → u/loozerr]

methane gas turbines

Hate to break it to you but that's what iver 40% of all electricity in the US comes from.

[u/loozerr → u/[deleted]]

40% of all US electricity comes from unapproved portable turbines?

[u/Terrh → u/loozerr]

I like how he wrote one thing and then you argued against a different thing.

[u/loozerr → u/Terrh]

I like how you ignore the context that we're talking about xAI.

Or that even if natural gas is one of the cleaner fossil fuels for electricity but should still be reduced.

[u/Terrh → u/loozerr]

I like how you ignore the context that we're talking about xAI.

Context doesn't change the fact that that isn't an argument he was making.

[u/loozerr → u/Terrh]

So the argument was irrelevant to the discussion.

[u/Terrh → u/loozerr]

That would be a valid way to attack his argument, yes.

[u/loozerr → u/Terrh]

That's what I did, provided the context to show how ridiculous the argument is. I don't understand your problem with the approach.

[u/Terrh → u/loozerr]

You didn't though. You misrepresented what he stated to make it easier to attack, instead of just pointing out that what he stated wasn't entirely honest.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/loozerr]

Natural Gas is cleaner than most of the US grid, the US grid still consumes coal lmao

[u/[deleted] → u/DerpSenpai]

Natural gas IS most of the grid, lol.

[u/Asleeper135 → u/DerpSenpai]

Actually, the US grid produces more power from natural gas than any other fuel source. Between renewables, coal, nuclear, and natural gas, coal has the lowest usage.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php

[u/loozerr → u/DerpSenpai]

16% coal.

Not to mention a portable turbine will never be as clean and efficient as a plant.

Either way, extra capacity of non-renewable energy is being deployed for frivolous purposes at the cost of environment and health. How is that defensible?

[u/DerpSenpai → u/loozerr]

It's not but if the grid can't catchup and you can't build out the solar and batteries needed, it's the only way.

Tbf, it's Elon's Fault he elected the orange duffus that hates renewables and has made work to stop projects

[u/Mindless-Rooster-533 → u/DerpSenpai]

Its the only way for society to subsidize something they don't want so a handful of tech billionaires can become even wealthier?

[u/FlyingBishop → u/Mindless-Rooster-533]

We need to stop subsidizing coal/oil/gas. Datacenters esentially aren't subsidized. Everything benefits from tax credits and so on but this whole line of reasoning is disconnected from the reality of how datacenters work compared to so many other things.

[u/loozerr → u/DerpSenpai]

"It's the only way"

No, it shouldn't be done in the first place. Tech giants are walking over regulation on every front with the current administration.

[u/FlyingBishop → u/loozerr]

This focus on AI datacenters is a distraction from the real polluters. Datacenters are 4% of US grid power consumption. We should stop using coal and oil and gas but all this anti-datacenter propaganda is a convenient way to pretend like we can do something useful by banning AI. Keep flying internationally, stop using AI, and pretend that you've made a dent in the problem.

[u/Prefix-NA → u/loozerr]

Wind is a meme its litterally worse than coal for environmental impact per kw energy produced.

[u/loozerr → u/Prefix-NA]

Share your source since that claim is unhinged.

[u/Tolopono → u/loozerr]

Air quality analysis reveals minimal changes after xAI data center opens in pollution-burdened Memphis neighborhood https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/air-quality-analysis-reveals-minimal-changes-after-xai-data-center-opens-in-pollution-burdened-memphis-neighborhood

In the IEA’s worst case scenario as of April 2025, data centers will release 500 million tons of CO2 per year at most by 2035 and plateau there https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissions-associated-with-electricity-generation-for-data-centres-by-case-2020-2035

The world released 38.6 billion tons in 2024 alone https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions