In 2023, Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh of electricity, surpassing the consumption of over 100 nations, including places like Iceland, Ghana, and Tunisia, according to an analysis by Michael Thomas. While massive energy usage means a substantial environmental impact for these tech giants, it should be noted that Google and Microsoft also generate more money than many countries. Furthermore, companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft lead renewable energy adoption within the industry.
Detailed analysis reveals that Google’s and Microsoft’s electricity consumption — 24 TWh in 2023 — equals the power consumption of Azerbaijan (a nation of 10.14 million) and is higher than that of several other countries. For instance, Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, and Tunisia each consumed 19 TWh, while Jordan consumed 20 TWh. Of course, some countries consume more power than Google and Microsoft. For example, Slovakia, a country with 5.4 million inhabitants, consumes 26 TWh.
I originally read that as ‘Google and Microsoft hold more power than most countries’, which is also true.
While massive energy usage means a substantial environmental impact for these tech giants, it should be noted that Google and Microsoft also generate more money than many countries. Furthermore, companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft lead renewable energy adoption within the industry.
So fucking what? That’s like excusing a mass-murderer because he’s rich and he promised to “not kill quite as many people in the future.”
What a useless and pandering thing to say.
Why do you think using energy is bad by itself? They are paying for it and they are trying to get as much renewable as they can.
Why do you think using energy is bad by itself?
Building infrastructure has an environmental cost. Even if they’re building them for themselves, wasting the energy produced on AI and some other bullshit will worse our climate catastrophe while delivering nothing useful in exchange
No, it’s not.
Them making money implies that they are being paid to use power, which is true. Their absolute carbon footprint is irrelevant given that most of what the carbon they use is at the request of someone else. The metric to judge them on is their carbon footprint relevant to peers.
I.e. it’s not fair to judge a cab company for driving someone somewhere (judge the person choosing to hire a cab), but it is fair to judge them if they use gas guzzlers instead of EVs.
what are you on about, mate? who’s paying for copilot’s adoption? who’s funding the disparaging of the medieval term for a minstrel with a song?
who’s paying you for this absurd take?
As of last year ~70% of software developers were using copilot or a similar AI assistant. The legal field has seen a drop off in junior hires because of AI assistants. Snapchat’s AI filters and tools have long been a huge draw for that platform (and then copied by everyone else to avoid bleeding users), and Bing saw massive user growth after integrating OpenAI.
AI has problems and limitations but it’s absurd to think there’s no demand for it just because it’s pushed by annoying people. Everything with hype will get pushed by annoying people.
~70% of software developers were using copilot or a similar AI assistant
That’s interesting, do you have a source?
It was the Stack Overflow developer survey I believe
It’s OK, I sort my garbage to make a better world. Evens it out.
You also use Gmail and force Google to run their servers to power it.
Reducing your carbon footprint as much as possible is important, but it’s absurd to get mad at companies that power 90% of the world’s businesses for using a bunch of power to do so. It takes power to do those things. Get mad at the companies who are over consuming relative to their peers and those that are driving demand towards unattainable activities. Just getting mad at people for moving and using energy is absurd.
it’s absurd to get mad at companies that power 90% of the world’s businesses
It’s absurd to actually think that this is what’s happening. wow.
Microsoft posted a revenue of $211.9 billion for 2023. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of the world’s population uses Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and loads of online applications run on Microsoft Azure, the economic impact of Microsoft’s products is probably counted in trillions of dollars.
Comparing this to countries with the same ballpark energy consumption, Azerbaijan’s GDP was about $78 billion, Slovakia’s GDP was around $127 billion, and Iceland’s GDP was approximately $30 billion in 2023.
The economic output of Google and Microsoft by far exceeds these countries’ GDPs, highlighting the vast financial scale of these tech giants relative to their substantial electricity consumption.
Oh yeah, it’s crazy to think that! I don’t know where I would have gotten that idea, other than the article that OP linked that we’re all discussing.
Yes, training new AI models uses a bunch of power, so does building out any new infrastructure. Atleast Microsoft and Google use a far high percentage of renewable power than most other industries.
Google reported to have earned 305B in 2023. Finland had an estimate of 300B GDP, while consuming 79.8 TWh of electricity.
So, in comparison, Google is massively more efficient than Finland?
If your efficiency function is centered around revenue, then yeah, of course… No surprise that one of the world’s most successful for-profit companies generates more profit per watt-hour than a nation, which encompasses all sorts of non-revenue-generating activity like running hospitals and keeping street lights on.
Those will be counted towards GDP – that’s all economic activity.
Lemmy is bad with money, economics and business, also anti corporate/work, so anything positive towards corporate tends to be slammed with ignorance. I try my best to just ignore those replies / votes and move on.
My comment isn’t anti-corporate or anti-work though…? It just isn’t that strange that Google is more efficient at generating revenue (as dollars-per-kWh) than Finland is.
Google has 4.9 billion users while Microsoft has 1.6 billion active devices.
I think comparing them to small nations is dumb but it doesn’t seem extreme when you take into account the huge amount of users (half the planet uses google everyday)
In any case, it’s up to the government to make sure our grid is robust and runs on renewables. Microsoft is building it’s own nuclear reactor because the government is so fucking inept. This is a scape goat.
Microsoft is building it’s own nuclear reactor because the government is so fucking inept.
lmao. oh yeah I’m sure that nuke is gonna be hella secure.
https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers
