Future data centres may have built-in nuclear reactors | BBC News

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), which requires far more processing power than standard computing, has put rocket boosters under the data centre world.

Chris Sharp is the chief technology officer at Digital Realty, a US business that builds data centres, the anonymous warehouses full of computers that keep the online world spinning.

Sharp predicts that data centres in the not-too-distant future will come with their own dedicated, built-in nuclear reactors.

AI systems are using all this extra electricity simply because they are doing so much more processing than standard computing.

The technology in question is the much-touted Small Modular Reactor (SMR). These are designs for advanced reactors with about a third of the power generation of a traditional, large nuclear plant.

#AI #NuclearEnergy #BBCNews

[eklim]

Connor: "Skynet cannot be switched off, it had spread to every computer in the world."

[brandenmanuel]

“AI goes Nuclear”

There’s like 6 movies on why this is a bad idea

[blackmage]

AI + nuclear power, do you want to play a game?

[ddddavyy]

BBC... you have no idea how horrifying "AI Goes Nuclear" sounds

[xensonar]

Sounds like the premise of a sci fi story about how it goes wrong.

[jungleboy]

LOL, skynet coming sooner than i thought. Inevitable then.

[cptgrimm]

“Some men just want to watch the world burn” - Alfred

and now they have the tools to make that a reality in the next decade

[ChrisLovesThisGame]

Power built in so it can't be turned off. Brilliant. Jesus Christ 🙄

[TangySpiderLegs]

We are not worried about AI, we are worried about what people will do with AI.

[unvaccinatedAndPureBlood]

In other words, AI can mine all the crytos they want and fund themselves and even blackmail or bribe with unlimited funds and the private data they collect.

[al]

Skynet: "Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen."

[kimber]

The issues with AI begin with those who manage, control, write, create, program it in the 1st place. Those who are at the Top of those Ai System hierarchy. Those who are already uncontrollable.
Corruption breeds corruption and AI has given them the ability to be Absolutely Corrupt at a whole new level, Technological.

[EstrogenSingularity]

A nuclear reactor next to a bunker next to a data center training AI

[FinGeeknow]

In regards to nuclear reactors, it's not that big of deal tbh. Nuscale and Rolls Royce are two companies I found right off the bat that offer SMRs (small nuclear reactors).

[TheTinyGod]

"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

[andybrice]

We should probably be using these small nuclear reactors more often. They're already powering ships all over the world. And unlike larger reactors, the consequences of a malfunction are fairly minor.

[Acolis]

not exactly related to ths specifically, but if were going to go down the ai road and bolster its abilities and continue developing ai to where it can do all of our mundane things in life and replace jobs, i think we need an entire overhaul of what society expects out of people, the way society will support people losing jobs to ai, and figure out ways to protect the new generation that wont have access to work.

[srinivasgatla]

Too much innovation leads to too much amount of disaster.

[AndreAmorim-AA]

Regarding chatbots as girlfriends or boyfriends indeed echoes the sci-fi film ‘Her’ (2013), but it also brings to mind medical chatbots. I read somewhere about research suggesting that the new generation feels more comfortable speaking to a chatbot than to their own GP because chatbots do not judge them. This is particularly true in some cultures. I also recall a GP in my family mentioning that they can tell when a patient is lying, even in simple questions like, ‘How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?

[obsidianjane]

Filed under, "What could possibly go wrong."