AI, Data Centers, and Power

As I believe I have suggested here before, we are at a moment in the history of the North American economy where there are two paths forward, and both of them entail some pain.

One path involves the continued growth of general (or "generative") artificial intelligence, a system that could render irrelevant most of the apps on many of the world's phones and devices, and destroy the companies that have made their income from those apps, and the other companies that have invested and lent too much in them. The destruction of the whole app-based ecosystem -- THAT is what is at stake on this path. Will the world be more than sufficiently compensated or condoled for that loss by the benefits that the growth of GAI will supposedly bring?

The other possible path involves a bust and/or long pause in the development of GAI and the continued thriving of the apps ecosystem. That involves pain, too, since a lot has been invested there. Again: will the pain be collateral to a greater gain? And if these are the only two paths, which of them might a reasonable and well-informed person cheer?

I decidedly prefer the latter.

This past Tuesday the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article under the headline, 'Phantom Data Centers Seek More Power Than They Need, and it bears powerfully on the broader issue I've just outlined. GAI needs ever bigger and more powerful data centers. Those data centers need ever higher levels of electrical power. The reporter of this story, Jennifer Hiller, does good work at the interface of data center developers and utilities. That is a photo of Ms Hiller above.

She writes that the power center industry has had to ask itself what data center projects are "for real". Plans have to be made years ahead of time, and some of those promoting data centers are operating on a wing and a prayer. Some are projects that are "ready to build" and others may never materialize at all. And, as the headline indicates, even some that will get built may end up small-scale operations, not the scaled-up monsters projected by eager promoters. Utilities could lose out by being too trigger shy or too trigger happy. In terms of the second and third grafs of this post, they could bet on the path of AI and have it fail them. Or they could bet on the path of established specialized software apps, and miss out on the opportunity if GAI in fact makes those leaps and bounds its acolytes have promised.

Personally, I have some faith that the utility executives will play it safe, preferring to risk the loss of an opportunity rather than to risk being played for suckers. The very anxieties of which Ms Hiller writes make the case that we are about to head down the second path. The anxiety will help undermine the path against which it cautions, and GAI is in for a significant slowdown.

Citizen NIMBY opposition may contribute to that result. And, again as a personal statement, I think that will be for the best.

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable a...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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