Absolutely needed: to get high efficiency for this beast … as it gets better, we’ll become too dependent.

“all of this growth is for a new technology that’s still finding its footing, and in many applications—education, medical advice, legal analysis—might be the wrong tool for the job,”

    • pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      24 hours ago

      It should be clarified that it’s 99.99% Bitcoin mining that’s wasting all that energy, any other crypto that still uses mining is basically irrelevant when compared to it

    • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space
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      1 day ago

      I found this article from last year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

      Our preliminary estimates suggest that annual electricity use from cryptocurrency mining probably represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption.

      The wide range should not be too surprising, it’s a mess to keep track of, especially with the current administration. Since then, with Trump immediately pledging to support the “industry”, I can only imagine it consuming even more now.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        That’s a huge amount of electricity even at it’s lowest. Are they building the AI to crypto mine is also another question. I could see these sneaky bastards combining the two somehow.

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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            21 hours ago

            I was thinking how it probably helps by getting into nanoseconds with buying and selling stocks. I have found that there are very few coincidences with huge technologies, tons of cash pouring in and dark money. I could be wrong though.

            • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              Trading has nothing to do with cryptocurrency mining. Also, any high-frequency trading firm worth their salt is using FPGAs for the things where performance really counts.

        • Loduz_247@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          As for OpenAI and Microsoft, they’re betting on energy with a company called Helion Energy. They say they’ll have it ready by 2028. Whether they’ll achieve that? We’ll see.