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Because AI and Crypto use so much electricity, what if a law was made that they had to power it with green energy? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Something on the lines of if your company facility is using over X amount of energy the majority of that has to be from a green source such as solar power. What would happen and is this feasible or am I totally thinking about this wrong

Edit: Good responses from everyone, my point in asking this was completely hypothetical, ignoring how hard it would be to implement a restriction. My own thoughts are that requiring the use of renewable energy for high electricity products could help spur the demand for it as now it's a requirement. Of course companies would fight back, they want money

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[–] rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The bigger operations already are using so called green energy. There are large operations in the north west where hydro is abundant and cheap.

This might be a few years off but I am considering setting up a farm where I am. We are planning on a very large solar installation at some point in the near future and we will probably have way more supply than we can use. I wouldn't mine btc but running some other algo hardware and throwing it at nicehash or other smart pools would probably be a good use of that power assuming I can get the hardware cheap enough.

No one with any working braincells is running larger than at home operations on standard power costs in most of the country. My state has some of the lowest cost power in the US and it's still not profitable to mine most coins and it doesn't get much better with commercial rates. I'd also bet that the larger AI farms will also do what they can to run on solar, wind, etc so that they pay as little as possible for power.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Who defines "too much"?

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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That would actually not do anything.

So there’s this stupid thing called carbon capture right? It’s where instead of putting money into useful things there’s these companies that use a lot of resources on machines that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. The companies claim that they use “green” energy, but it doesn’t. As earmarked as that may be these machines still just use grid energy, which still uses fossil fuels. All it does is take some capacity to replace fossil fuels from green energy.

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[–] AnomalousBit@programming.dev -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

First, you need to separate power hungry crypto from AI, one provides a real benefit while the other is a useless fiat that can be accomplished without dumping gigawatts down the drain. If you want to trade crypto that’s fine, just don’t use a vulgar amount of society’s power to do it.

[–] topinambour_rex@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago

Which is which ?

[–] Fly4aShyGuy@lemmy.one 0 points 9 months ago

We really need to grow past this idea that just because you don't personally use or like a thing that it is useless. Who are you to get to decide what has value and what doesn't? If there wasn't value, no-one would buy or use it. The unspoken part of this argument that gets repeated so often is that the reasons people are interested in the thing are reasons associated with groups you've been told very confidently don't matter. Lack of control from the government? Only a nasty conservative/libertarian hick who "don't like no GuBmint" would want something like that. Anonymity/privacy reasons (I know, only for for certain coins)? Only a scammer would want that, why care about privacy if you have nothing to hide?

None of this is even promoting or saying I'm pro crypto, just saying these are poor arguments.

As an example, as someone who doesn't follow any sports whatsoever, I could argue the amount of resources and travel for this big football game coming up are vulgar. I mean come on, I don't care about this game so why should anyone else be allowed to use resources on it?

Inevitably, you will come back and say but sports offers X, Y, and Z real benefits. If I were to continue the analogy of the inverted argument, the next argument is ALWAYS: "Yes, true, but it's not the absolute best or most efficient at X, Y, or Z so therefore that doesn't count". It could very well be argued that any benefits coming from the super bowl could be done in cheaper, more environmentally friendly ways. Do we cancel this game then? Is anyone who is interested in it a POS?

This was an example, I actually realize there are tons of benefits to sports even though I don't get much at all out of it personally. But it's part of becoming a well adjusted person to realize people are going to have different values and I don't get to decide what is important to them, or that because they are part of an out group their interests and values don't matter.

To make one more example, if someone said they put their life savings in gold in their safe to prep for some doomsday scenario, I certainly wouldn't agree at all that it was a good choice. A fairly objective case could be made that it is in fact the wrong/bad decision, however I still don't get to decide their values don't matter just because I don't agree with them, or more importantly because Reddit/Lemmy folks told me confidently that those values only belong to preppers/conservatives/libertarians/etc etc and also that those are bad people.

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