Meta has faced a setback in its plan to build data centers run on nuclear power. The FT reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff last week that the land it was planning to build a new data center on was discovered to be the home of a rare bee species, which would have complicated the building process.
Amazon has also faced a recent setback after the government on Monday rejected a request to increase the amount of power a nuclear plant can direct to one of its data centers. It’s still allowed to use 300 megawatts from the Susquehanna plant but initially sought 480 megawatts.
Big tech companies have gone all-in on nuclear power as each prompting of their AI models requires boiling the ocean for energy. Large language models have to do more inference, or thinking, than a traditional search. But big tech has bet the farm on generative AI for their future growth potential—Zuckerberg has said he envisions a world in which social feeds are filled with AI-generated content based on your interests. It could be useful in other ways, like improved ad-targeting.
The jury is still out on whether any of this investment in generative AI will bear fruit. At least in the enterprise sector, where customers would be more amenable to paying for tools, the adoption of products like Microsoft Copilot has been lackluster due to unreliable performance. Copilot subscriptions cost $30 a month, and it’s hard to gauge whether tools like automated document drafting are worth the money. Output from AI often requires a lot of editing, which can negate any time savings.
At the very least, all this investment in AI—capable of generating an image of Mario flying into the Twin Towers—could at least result in the U.S. having a lot more clean energy. Honestly, let’s make ChatGPT searches more inefficient if it means we counterintuitively can help the environment. It’d produce more good than the metaverse did.
Microsoft is paying billions to recommission Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which has been offline for five years. The company will be paying a big premium over existing solar and wind energy, but the appeal of nuclear is that it provides a consistent stream of energy without lumpiness. While it seems like nuclear is having a resurgence, it’s still not clear how many Americans would be okay with having a nuclear plant near their home.
Microsoft, Google, and others set big ambitions in previous years to become carbon-neutral, but have admitted that big investments in AI have set those goals back. Microsoft said earlier this year that its emissions have grown at least 29% since 2020 due to AI investment.
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