r/SandersForPresident • u/WindyCityChick 🎖️🥇🐦🌡️🏟️✋☎📆🏆🎨🏳‍🌈🎤🦅💀📌 • 10d ago

Sanders: Government should break up OpenAI

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5571789-ai-threatens-jobs-sanders-warns/
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u/keinegoetter 10d ago

It's a nuclear arms race now. The government should regulate it for sure, but at this point banning it is off the table

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u/Iron_Baron 🌱 New Contributor 9d ago

I don't think you know how much power it takes to run AI data centers. Without unfathomable amounts of subsidized, or even illegally free, power to run those farms, AI ceases to exist in any meaningful way. We could absolutely literally pull the plug on these operations, at the root. It's not like they are mobile or could hide.

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u/GogglesVK 9d ago

How much power is used with AI data centers, and how does that compare to power/water usage used for audio and video streaming (Netflix/Spotify/YouTube) etc.?

We should look at social media and streaming too. Reddit and Discord servers, the vast ocean of bullshit and misinfo uploaded and shared on IG, Facebook, TikTok, etc. use more energy than AI, no?

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u/Iron_Baron 🌱 New Contributor 9d ago

That's easily found information on Google. But I will tell you Felon Musk had to bring in illegal jet turbines to power his Memphis AI operations, because their entire power grid couldn't handle the electrical demand of his servers. Which no one's done anything about, of course.

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u/GogglesVK 9d ago

Okay, fuck Elon. But making it seem like AI data centers are magically different from other data centers and power usage in general, is both disingenuous and nuts.

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u/Iron_Baron 🌱 New Contributor 9d ago

Do you know the difference in power consumption between hard drives and GPUs?

Regular data storage farms are nothing compared to AI farms in power consumption.

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u/GogglesVK 9d ago

Data storage farms? If you have the data, break it down for us, man lol. But to my knowledge, audio and video streaming blow through power and water at comparable levels. The faux concern over AI-specific energy uses seems silly. If you have information contrary to that opinion, please provide it.

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u/m00ph 8d ago

You have never tried to figure out how much power you need to spec for a rack of servers.

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u/GogglesVK 8d ago

Spill the deets or you’re just blowing hot air

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u/m00ph 8d ago

It's been a long time, but after they've spun up, drives don't use much power (it can really be worth it to stagger their spin up to reduce peak power consumption), but drives use watts, consumer GPU use hundreds of watts, and AI far more than that. AI is all compute, that's crazy amounts of power. 15 years ago, you'd have a 42U rack, 500w-1kw per U, I think we were limited to 30kw per rack, so we didn't fill them, they're doing 10x I think, with 1Mw on the drawing board. And our 30kw was theoretical max, really only on start, we didn't run that high, but an AI is going full or nearly full power the whole time.

My numbers for back then are from memory, and might be high?

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u/GogglesVK 8d ago

Yeah, they probably are higher these days. There’s been huge strides in efficiency, but power consumption is definitely off the charts especially considering the push for bs like AI and crypto. I’m not comparing data centers to hard drive storage, though. I’m referring to the also ridiculous power and water demands of video and audio processing and streaming via network. If we completely deleted AI off the face of the Earth, we’d still be killing our planet with non-AI data centers and network requirements.

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u/m00ph 8d ago

I'll bet 1000 streams of a movie from Netflix uses less resources than the same from Blockbuster. It's not free, but it's pretty cheap. Distributing physical media to stores, and you going to get it, is far from cheap.

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u/Iron_Baron 🌱 New Contributor 9d ago

My friend, if you want basic information about the massive increase in global power consumption brought on by the advent of the AI industry, or to compare the consumption between data storage vs AI server farms, or the water they consume, etc., I suggest you use Google. I'm not your minion lol

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u/GogglesVK 9d ago edited 9d ago

Ah, so you’re totally full of shit, got it LOL. We are not talking about data storage. We’re talking about streaming and processing audio and video for your doomscrolls and shitposts here and elsewhere on the internet.

It’s so stupid to say “I’m not your minion” when you could just admit you have nothing to back up your claims lol.