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OpenAI CEO Altman: future AI depends on energy breakthrough (www.reuters.com)

submitted 10 months ago by sculd@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Speaking at a Bloomberg event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Altman said the silver lining is that more climate-friendly sources of energy, particularly nuclear fusion or cheaper solar power and storage, are the way forward for AI.

"There's no way to get there without a breakthrough," he said. "It motivates us to go invest more in fusion."

Right, surely the energy intensive AIs will make the world invest in climate-friendly energy instead of just burning more fossil fuels as they always did.

Also shows how unsustainable the current neoliberal system is.

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[–] SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Right, surely the energy intensive AIs will make the world invest in climate-friendly energy instead of just burning more fossil fuels as they always did.

You linked to the article but didn't read this part?

In 2021, Altman personally provided $375 million to private U.S. nuclear fusion company Helion Energy, which since has signed a deal to provide energy to Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab in future years. Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest financial backer and provides it computing resources for AI. Altman said he wished the world would embrace nuclear fission as an energy source as well.

Yeah, nothing about fossil fuels.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Fission isn't fusion, and saying he "wishes" people would use more fission power isn't actually doing anything to push for that. Fusion powering anything is still a literal fantasy for now, and in the meantime there is only going to be more fossil fuel use coming out of this. No one is currently building more fission plants for public grids, and he knows that perfectly well.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely. Just because Altman "wishes" a new energy breakthrough its not suddenly going to happen. And even if nuclear fusion succeed, applying them in real life in scale is another big problem...

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

And he wants it to succeed because he's invested money into it and wants to make more money, not because he cares about the environment.