How much electricity will be needed to power Microsoft’s new $80 billion AI system?

Photo above - So easy a caveman could figure it out? How much extra electricity is needed for both EVs and exponentially expanding AI data centers?

$80 Billion is A LOT. That’s how much Microsoft is spending on new AI data centers in 2025 alone. (see link below). What could you buy with that instead? 250 Boeing 747s, and start your own airline. 2 million Teslas. The entire nation of Costa Rica. (Zillow estimate, based on Google Street view images.)

Wait . . . come back to that other one. TWO MILLION TESLAS???!!! Holy Mohammed!

Okay . . . someone is going to produce reply with a link to a photo showing solar panels on the roof of some Microsoft building. Nuh-uh. I’m not buying it. There is NO WAY to get that much electric power power. Solar panels generate 150 watts per square meter, under ideal conditions. Which excludes cloudy days, dawn, dusk, and night. An average size data center sucks up 1.3 megawatts of electricity continuously, 24/7. Those rooftop solar panels are mostly props. Maybe they power the lights in the parking lot?

Someone else is going to produce a link showing that Google, Microsoft, and Amazon want to build private nuclear power plants. If you’re not even MORE alarmed at this, you need to watch the HBO “Chernobyl” mini-series. Or the recent documentaries about Fukushima. The plant is STILL leaking 300 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean daily. The fish we eat all have extra background radiation now, because of one Japanese earthquake.

Microsoft says there will (eventually) be a silver lining. But probably not in 2025. In the meantime, they admit their $80 Billion science project “will disrupt the economy and displace some jobs" (exact quote).

There were 1 million EVs sold in 2023. Almost all of those need to be plugged into a grid powered by fossil fuels too. Will successive generations look back at today’s mashup of insatiable AI electricity demand, and exponential EV sales as being “so dumb a caveman could have figured it out?”

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Microsoft is spending $80 billion on data centers this year

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

AI is the new Web 3. A scam by and large. We are already hitting a wall in terms of massive energy waste and diminishing returns.

It is also already showing flaws that can't really be fixed. It is great at spouting out responses based on massive amounts of data (most of it stolen based on IP law) but has no way of verifying the quality of the data used. Junk in, and junk out.

LeopoldBloom · M

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Worse than that, some of the language AI is learning from is just other AI.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom how is this any different than the left wing or right wing echo chambers people online flock to?