Reading thoughts: “Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data
In southeast Memphis - KeShaun Pearson’s hometown, a latest industrial megaproject called “Colossus,” owned by Musk’s artificial-intelligence company xAI, is being used as a training ground for Grok. It can consume as much electricity over the course of a year as 200,000 American homes, and it was powered by natural gas equipped with enormous turbines. Currently, to meet the surging demand of generative AI, energy and tech companies are turning to reliable and stable fossil fuels over solar, wind, or nuclear. Swaths of Data centers are booming across the United States in states like Virginia, Arizona, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. Compared with China, lack of energy is the biggest disadvantage of the United States, hungering for energy is the main driving force to push Constellation to restart their Unit One at Three Mile Island - the site of the worst nuclear disaster in American history. A guarantee to power Microsoft’s data centers over the next two decades enhanced its confidence to spend the $1.6 billion needed to restart the plant. However, residents still worry about the downsides of the nuclear energy which has radioactive waste and must be stored almost indefinitely. While fossil fuels are much more trustworthy, they cause noise, water and air pollution; nuclear energy also has its downside with radioactive waste. Companies are also investing in hydropower, geothermal plants, and solar panels; Google is exploring building a data centers over the in space, to enable cloud-free access to the sun. At the end of the deep dive article, Wong said “To get there, an industry that likes to move at warp speed will have to develop a quality it severely lacks: patience. Nevertheless, from my perspective, this is a race that the United States would never want to lose, as backwardness invites aggression, AI might be the last trump card for the U.S..