Artificial Intelligence (AI)

[ALC Fox]

Regarding the energy demands of AI, how feasible is it really that data centres could be put in space?

 

Is the energy needed to put them there less than that required if they were situated on the  Earth instead, bearing in mind that they may need to be repaired and/or upgraded periodically?

 

Also what about ever-increasing space pollution and the increasing likelihood of debris in space becoming a danger for other satellites?

 

I'd genuinely like to read about the pros and cons, understanding that once the data centres are up there, they're powered by limitless solar energy.

[Chelmofox]

11 hours ago, ALC Fox said:

Regarding the energy demands of AI, how feasible is it really that data centres could be put in space?

 

Is the energy needed to put them there less than that required if they were situated on the  Earth instead, bearing in mind that they may need to be repaired and/or upgraded periodically?

 

Also what about ever-increasing space pollution and the increasing likelihood of debris in space becoming a danger for other satellites?

 

I'd genuinely like to read about the pros and cons, understanding that once the data centres are up there, they're powered by limitless solar energy.

Not my area of expertise, but i thought the heat dynamics dont really work in space. Sure its cold, but with no atmosphere you cant get the heat away from the hardware. I also image that real world latency would be a massive issue, as well general maintenence. 

Edited 7 June by Chelmofox

[danny.]

17 hours ago, Chelmofox said:

Not my area of expertise, but i thought the heat dynamics dont really work in space. Sure its cold, but with no atmosphere you cant get the heat away from the hardware. I also image that real world latency would be a massive issue, as well general maintenence. 

Latency isn't an issue at all. APIs are nowhere near instant now, even the quickest models have perceivable delays of seconds not ms. Starlink V2 latency is < 5ms, assuming AI satellites are in that ballpark or even double that - it wouldn't be noticeable for gaming let along LLM API calls.

[leicsmac]

18 hours ago, Sampson said:

It's the 21st century equivalent of the nuclear Arms race between the US and China in the 1950s and 60s.

 

Just hope we in Europe decouple from it all.

And it's potentially much more dangerous for the whole world in terms of destructive power than nuclear weapons are. 

[Zear0]

20 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Just listened to some American talking head going on about how the US is totally right to go all in on AI and data centres for reasons that boil down to basically "we good, China bad, we do it or they do" and that "the wars of the future will be fought with AI".

 

That would be the most insanely hubristic and self destructive sentiment I had heard today if I hadn't heard about the possibility of Leicester appointing Martin as manager. 

Was a good chat with Jack Clark I saw and it’s not even US (good) China (bad).

 

All the leaders of these companies are massive distrusting of one another and are racing each other. Jack mentioned there’s a perception they all think Elon, Sam, Mark Demis and Dario are bad and only they can be trusted with the pinnacle model.

 

 

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, Zear0 said:

Was a good chat with Jack Clark I saw and it’s not even US (good) China (bad).

 

All the leaders of these companies are massive distrusting of one another and are racing each other. Jack mentioned there’s a perception they all think Elon, Sam, Mark Demis and Dario are bad and only they can be trusted with the pinnacle model.

 

 

It was some talking head on Reuters that I saw. I'll have to look at this interview here. 

 

You're right about the competition element, but I think it's a distinct possibility that these people are messing with forces they don't really understand in the name of personal legacy and prestige. And that doesn't end well.

[Chelmofox]

1 hour ago, danny. said:

Latency isn't an issue at all. APIs are nowhere near instant now, even the quickest models have perceivable delays of seconds not ms. Starlink V2 latency is < 5ms, assuming AI satellites are in that ballpark or even double that - it wouldn't be noticeable for gaming let along LLM API calls.

It is. We are talking data centers here that may need to communicate with each other. The latency between you contacting an LLM and getting the result isn't the only thing going on.  To get results from an LLM requires communication across a huge amount of nodes, and when these are hit at scale there needs to be fast, transactional compute ensuring the huge amount of requests can happen in a timely manner. Then there is all the transactional logging going on, and also some more traditional steps happening across lots of different aps.  Also, there is black magic i dont understand with saving thought requests from LLM calls, hence why you can resume conversations over long context periods.  

 

Not seen anything to suggest Starlink latency is <5ms. Their own docs suggest 25->60 in 'good' areas. God knows what node to node would be like. https://starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1470-99699-90

 

Data centers do more than just output LLM requests. I spent several years working in the digital ads space. Real time bidding requires a huge number of request across supply/demand nodes to complete all steps in 100ms. Sometimes this arms race meant Demand Platforms paying big bucks to get the physical infrastructure as physically close to the supply sources as possible to gain an advantage. Can't see anything like that happening when the latency of one request is 60ms in the best case scenario from satellite to earth. 

Edited 7 June by Chelmofox

[danny.]

I said V2. Not sure why you’ve pivoted from LLM API calls to real time bidding. 

[Chelmofox]

1 hour ago, danny. said:

I said V2. Not sure why you’ve pivoted from LLM API calls to real time bidding. 

I cant find any specs on V2 that make that claim. My comment was about data centers, thought made it clear that more goes on than just LLM calls.

[danny.]

1 minute ago, Chelmofox said:

I cant find any specs on V2 that make that claim. My comment was about data centers, thought made it clear that more goes on than just LLM calls.

Fair enough, we are talking about different things then. I agree a general purpose data centre isn't ideal in space. A self contained one that that mainly holds LLM models and doesn't need to talk to other centres loads wouldn't have an issue with latency though, obviously some parts would need syncing like billing/usage/limits etc but thats not as time critical as requests. The main issue is cooling, they would need an insane amount of radiator area to get rid of the heat via infrared.

And also, sorry, not V2 - I had mistakenly thought StarLink was on V1 now - it's already V2. The next gen (which I guess is V3) is going to be at a lower orbit and SpaceX have claimed < 5ms latency. You're right, current is closer to 25-50 most clients (which again would be fine for an LLM only data centre, and TBH probably a lot of general hosting, it wouldn't be perceivably slower for a lot of less urgent stuff like general website hosting, esp once you take browser and CDN caching into account)

[brookfox]

Chatting to Gemini this morning (as you do!) and “it” said that objectively there’s a 12-36% chance that AI essentially causes a doomsday end of civilisation scenario this century. And it’s 80%+ if you added quantum capabilities in. Yet we keep running at it essentially in an East vs West arms war. Honestly blows my mind.

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, brookfox said:

Chatting to Gemini this morning (as you do!) and “it” said that objectively there’s a 12-36% chance that AI essentially causes a doomsday end of civilisation scenario this century. And it’s 80%+ if you added quantum capabilities in. Yet we keep running at it essentially in an East vs West arms war. Honestly blows my mind.

Unfortunately there's still so many humans so caught up in the idea of supremacy that they don't know or don't care about how dangerous the methods are to get it. Particularly when they think the consequences are far enough away for it not to affect them. 

[Grebfromgrebland]

I guess this is what all those modular nuclear generators will be used for eventually 

[danny.]

52 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Unfortunately there's still so many humans so caught up in the idea of supremacy that they don't know or don't care about how dangerous the methods are to get it. Particularly when they think the consequences are far enough away for it not to affect them. 

It's genuinely impressive how you make every topic about this.

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, danny. said:

It's genuinely impressive how you make every topic about this.

Only as a response in this case.

 

Is the assessment about AI being abused in a new kind of arms race between bad people inaccurate, then?

[danny.]

3 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Only as a response in this case.

 

Is the assessment about AI being abused in a new kind of arms race between bad people inaccurate, then?

I don't understand what AI has to do with the "idea of supremacy". 

[leicsmac]

Just now, danny. said:

I don't understand what AI has to do with the "idea of supremacy". 

Sorry, then let me clarify. It's considered as a weapon (and a powerful one at that) by those who hold that idea and they are looking to use it to gain advantage over others, in spite of that perhaps being dangerous. 

 

As the original post above mine mentioned, it explains why a lot of parties are looking to run towards it (as it were) in the way that they are, in spite of the cost.

[Zear0]

And it begins…

 

 

[Chelmofox]

43 minutes ago, Zear0 said:

And it begins…

 

 

Because all the labour, modelling, testing, investment and technology that went into to this was only American right?

 

Maybe we should have done this with the ARM processor once we realised it started to get popular and could have been a threat by non UK nationals.

[leicsmac]

USA in ridiculous future inhibiting nationalism shocker.

[Zear0]

27 minutes ago, Chelmofox said:

Because all the labour, modelling, testing, investment and technology that went into to this was only American right?

 

Maybe we should have done this with the ARM processor once we realised it started to get popular and could have been a threat by non UK nationals.

Should have blocked the takeover of Deepmind too

[leicsmac]

... and what was it that Nikola Tesla said about "man made horrors beyond your comprehension"?