Endangered Bees Threaten to End Mark Zuckerberg’s Nuclear-Powered AI Plans
Meanwhile, The government seems to have no issue allowing massive offshore wind farms be constructed, despite objections by citizens and reasonable concerns about the impact on whales and marine lifeforms.
When I wrote about bees this spring, I noted that this country’s honeybee population was buzzing at an all-time high.
Now it seems a different species of bee is threatening Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plans to run Meta Artificial Intelligence (AI) using nuclear power, a non-carbon-based power source capable of supplying its energy needs.
Plans to build a new AI data center near an unspecified nuclear plant, which may have become the first nuclear-powered facility of its kind, hit a roadblock after the pollinators were discovered on the land, according to a Financial Times report on Monday.
Zuckerberg confirmed the project’s setback at an internal company meeting last week.
Surveyors reportedly stumbled upon the endangered bees during an environmental review of the area, forcing regulators to suspend the project. Details on the species of bee or the precise project location remained under wraps.
There is no information currently available on exactly what bee species is killing Meta’s AI buzz. The 1973 Endangered Species Act currently only protects one species of endangered bee in the continental US: the Rusty Patched Bumblebee.
While it’s unclear which bee species has posed a challenge to Meta’s nuclear plans, according to a map from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, there are only about 471 Rusty Patched Bumblebees left, and most of them are in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and around the Virginia-West Virginia border.
Meta’s website currently lists nearly two dozen data centers worldwide, with the majority concentrated in the US. A map shows 26 data centers either completed or being built in addition to 75 different solar power locations, 21 wind power locations, and 25 “Water Restoration” projects.
Its important to note that AI models, particularly large language models, require substantial energy for both training and inference.
GPT-3, OpenAI’s 175 billion parameter model, reportedly used 1,287 MWh to train, while DeepMind’s 280 billion parameter model used 1,066 MWh.
This is about 100 times the energy used by the average US household in a year.
However, training a model is a one-time fixed energy cost, which can be amortized over the lifetime of the model.
Where energy costs can start to add up even further is in the use of the model over its lifetime. Running a query through an AI model is called inference, where the query is passed through the model’s parameters to deliver an output. Depending on how long the model is in use, which can be years, and how many queries it is fielding per day, the vast bulk of an AI model’s energy usage will come from inference.
Some estimates have AI accounting for 3% to 4% of global power demand by 2030.
I find it fascinating that Zuckerberg was forced to abandon the plans to fuel his AI center with nuclear power. The government seems to have no issue allowing massive offshore wind farms be constructed, despite objections by citizens and reasonable concerns about the impact on whales and marine lifeforms.
Hopefully, in 2025, more reasonable people with a better-balanced sense of priorities will be assuming office. Maybe Zuckerberg can revisit the issue then.
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Comments
Bees are the easiest thing in the world to move to a new location. Find the queen. Move the queen and the other bees follow. Wild bees same as domesticated bees.
If its bumblebees, they do not hive like honey bees; instead, they make small hives underground, with 50-300 bees.
The bumblebee hives would have to be dug up, which is probably too destructive to work.
I planted extra wildflowers this year to try and attract some of the wild bees to my little immature orchard as it comes in. Gonna be another 3-5 years till we get consistent production. Got a nice group of big fat bumblebees hanging out. Nice and peaceful bees, just flying from one flower to the next.
Usually somebody plants arrowheads.
No moles so they resorted to bees? Zuck should just tell everyone he is going to bring in several hundred hives of honey bees every year and be done with it.
Different bees, way different. Commercial honey bees are brought in by the million in avocado and almond production. This causes problems for the bees due to the monoculture pollen v more varied sources. Weakens them, then add the effects of pesticides and they have colony collapse.
No. You mean honey bees and bumble bees are not the same thing? Who knew?????
Chump don’t want the help..
Chump don’t get the help ☺
On the bright side, it’s comforting to know that Zuck is not (yet) a Soros-class tyrant who can wave his checkbook and get whatever he wants.
As Zuckerberg ages, he actually has a chance to become less of a dick. I’m not saying it will happen, but he is one to watch.
It’s actually kind of poetic for a leftist to get bit in the ass by one of their retarded policies.
471 bumblebees spread across 4 different locales? That doesn’t seem to pass the smell test. That’s less than 120 bees, on average, in those areas. Either they haven’t checked everywhere else, or those bumbles are huge and easy to tag, or someone isn’t telling the truth.
Honey, we have a problem!
Speaking of AI … I just came back from Walmart. They have put AI programs into the self-check out cams, now, to analyze if people are trying to steal stuff. The idiot AI program went off three times on me (all incorrect) where I had to call the Walmart guy over to unlock the scanner to continue … But the new thing in Walmart seems to be that NONE OF THE WALMART WORKERS SPEAK ENGLISH!!! NOT A FRIGGIN WORD!!
SO, the Walmart experience is now a retarded AI watching me do THEIR work as a cashier and accusing me of stealing so that I have to try and deal with a Walmart employee who can’t speak a word of English.
Lovely.
You will purchase nothing and be happy.
After all that, I hope you remembered to ask for your Tren de Aragua Blue Stamps.
Hope it is BEElayed indefinitely.
This is bunk. Beekeepers can establish bee farms all around that region, government can require the nuke facility to subsidize them. So that objection is easily neutralized.
But beyond that, there are real concerns about what to do with the spent nuclear waste. Nobody wants that transported by rail through their hometown to reach the dump site in Nevada. Train derailments are real thing. They must be required to “reprocess” their waste on site.