Latest / Newsradio WGAN / Tech Talk: Craig Peterson

Transcript

Tech Talk: Craig Peterson · Newsradio WGAN

• 0:00
  It's time to talk to Craig Peterson on our tech guru who is
• 0:03
  with us once again now. Craig, how are things?
• 0:06
  Well, things are going well. Hey, I I wanted to talk about
• 0:10
  the Androscoggin facility here for AI basically for a data
• 0:15
  center and and also what Kevin O'Leary is up to out in Utah.
• 0:20
  We can talk about that as long as you pronounce the word
• 0:23
  correctly, Sir Androscoggin. Here we go.
• 0:28
  If I twitched a little bit, I apologize.
• 0:31
  That's OK. Well, you know how it is here,
• 0:34
  you know, is it Worcester? Worcester.
• 0:37
  Or nobody knows. Potato, potato, potato.
• 0:41
  So Androscoggin. Indeed, that is correct indeed.
• 0:46
  Hey, come on, Come on. Diego Scoggin or Francisco Memo.
• 0:50
  OK, well, we're going to lose all of the audience if we start
• 0:52
  speaking French here, OK? Well, we'll drop the French, OK.
• 0:56
  So it's interesting comparison here and an interesting problem
• 1:00
  because Maine has done some somewhat unique things in fact
• 1:04
  to kind of the first in the nation when it comes to trying
• 1:08
  to control stop the development of these data centers.
• 1:12
  And yet at the same time, governors come out and with when
• 1:16
  we're talking about Androscoggin facility has been supporting it.
• 1:20
  So it's dramatically different than most of these other
• 1:25
  projects that are underway. So let's start with Kevin
• 1:28
  O'leary's project. He of course is Mr. Wonderful
• 1:32
  from from Shark Tank and he has done some pretty amazing things
• 1:38
  with companies and turnarounds. But his proposition is, hey, if
• 1:43
  the United States wants to remain competitive in in
• 1:48
  everything, frankly, but certainly in the AI world, we
• 1:53
  need a couple of things. We need power and we need data
• 1:56
  centers. So he has been going and, and
• 1:59
  pushing for this $100 billion data center in Utah, kind of,
• 2:08
  well, in the West of Utah, more, more or less the northwest of
• 2:11
  Utah. Now, this thing is a huge data
• 2:14
  center twice the size of the island of Manhattan, just to
• 2:19
  give you an idea of how big this silly thing is.
• 2:22
  And we'll use more than twice as much power as the state of Utah
• 2:27
  uses on its worst day. So it it's just, it's a dramatic
• 2:34
  thing, absolutely massive. And of course there's pushback
• 2:37
  on it. About 56% of the people out
• 2:40
  there in Utah are saying, yeah, we don't want this.
• 2:43
  And the concerns are many of the same concerns everybody has.
• 2:47
  First of all, power. So O'Leary says what we're going
• 2:51
  to do is we're going to finish this gas pipeline that needs a
• 2:55
  half a billion dollars in order to finish it.
• 2:57
  And it's just been sitting there idle.
• 3:00
  And then we will use gas turbines to power our data plant
• 3:06
  and some pushback on that for obvious reasons.
• 3:10
  One of which is it would create what's called a heat island.
• 3:14
  It, it would be about the equivalent of multiple nuclear
• 3:19
  bombs going off simultaneously and on a constant basis.
• 3:25
  And I, I think the number I saw was like 2023.
• 3:29
  It's just just a huge number. So a whole lot of heat and, and
• 3:33
  some of these data centers had been shown will increase the
• 3:38
  heat in the area of the data center by 4° year round, kind of
• 3:45
  a problem. The other big problem with a lot
• 3:47
  of these data centers is the water in the water consumption.
• 3:51
  Now in Utah, of course, we're talking about desert, high
• 3:55
  desert up there pretty much and there isn't a whole lot of
• 3:59
  water. The Great Salt Lake has been
• 4:01
  just going down, down every year.
• 4:03
  And then on top of that the Colorado River and everything.
• 4:06
  So a lot of interesting problems.
• 4:09
  So let's switch over to main here in this Androscoggin Mill
• 4:13
  data center. Much, much, much different.
• 4:17
  First of all, O'Leary wants about 9 gigawatts of
• 4:21
  electricity. What's happening here with the
• 4:24
  data center is they say we want about 82 megawatts, much, much,
• 4:29
  much less. But it's also the same amount of
• 4:33
  power that they were using when they were operating as a mill.
• 4:38
  So it's not an additional load on the main power grid.
• 4:42
  So that's a really good thing. It's also this I kind of like,
• 4:47
  it's also a very advanced system when I looked into this and
• 4:51
  which was kind of, I guess, surprising with an older mill.
• 4:55
  So it uses a closed loop cooling system, which is extremely
• 5:01
  efficient. So unlike most data centers
• 5:04
  where it's pumping water and running it through to cool all
• 5:08
  of the computers, what's happening up there is it's a
• 5:11
  closed loop. So it's not demanding more water
• 5:14
  all of the time. And then of course, ultimately
• 5:17
  here we're talking about jobs and the people that that lost
• 5:22
  their jobs at the mill. So some of them will obviously
• 5:25
  be able to do some of the work maybe in constructing the data
• 5:28
  center, etcetera. Some of them will be able to get
• 5:31
  jobs working there and it's going to create some jobs.
• 5:35
  But it's interesting when people start talking about the data
• 5:39
  centers, I think most of them are kind of imagining a Kevin
• 5:43
  O'Leary version versus something that's that's local is not going
• 5:48
  to have an impact. In fact, no heat island impact
• 5:51
  at all in the area for the Androscoggin Mill data center
• 5:56
  versus O'Leary or so many others.
• 5:58
  So you, you, you can't mix these up.
• 6:00
  They're they're much, much different projects.
• 6:03
  Yeah, they are. Although I think since every
• 6:06
  project is different, there is this general sense that seems to
• 6:09
  be kind of seeping everywhere now.
• 6:10
  The data centers and AI and everything is evil and bad.
• 6:14
  Actually, one of the questions I was going to ask you about was
• 6:16
  the freaking Pope. I mean, comes out with like,
• 6:20
  throw in the heat, the Magnifica Humanitis, which is his first
• 6:25
  encyclical is actually all about AI and preserving the human
• 6:30
  person in the age of artificial intelligence.
• 6:33
  So the Pope thrown some shade at AI and I guess by extension data
• 6:37
  centers. And you also have too.
• 6:39
  I mean, I'm noticing this odd emerging coalition, right, where
• 6:44
  like the Graham Platiners of the world and the Tucker Carlson's
• 6:48
  of the world also really seem to hate data centers And like they
• 6:51
  just, they're very opposed to it and whatnot.
• 6:54
  And one of the things you always hear from the people who dislike
• 6:58
  it the most are the concerns about obviously energy, yes, but
• 7:00
  then also water. And I've seen some pushback to
• 7:03
  the pushback recently about the amount of water that these data
• 7:06
  centers use, which of course is immense, Yes, but it's also
• 7:08
  about the same that you use to grow almonds in California.
• 7:13
  You know, it's like, it's like, let's keep not only the scale in
• 7:16
  mind, yes, but also the comparisons of what we use for
• 7:19
  industrial scale water for everything in in mind here too.
• 7:22
  Like, is it actually that big of a problem?
• 7:25
  Like, can we have a sense maybe from you, Craig Peterson, of
• 7:29
  what the reality of the demands of these things are?
• 7:32
  Because while they are great, are they, are they somehow
• 7:35
  threatening to society if we continue to build these things?
• 7:39
  Yeah, it's a very good question because there's so many angles
• 7:42
  on it. So thanks for that softball.
• 7:44
  Yes, you're welcome. Yeah.
• 7:46
  So we're talking about like Androscoggin, you have 300
• 7:50
  thousands of 300,000 gallons of water.
• 7:54
  Now that is a huge number. But again, if you compare it to
• 7:58
  industrial use, it's not so much right.
• 8:03
  And again, Androscoggin recirculate recirculates it.
• 8:06
  But you, you made another interesting point to comment on,
• 8:10
  which is the jobs being displaced by AI.
• 8:15
  And in, in most cases, we're talking about jobs that are,
• 8:20
  well, I don't even want to call it a job, right?
• 8:22
  But industries that are, are being improved, upgraded by the
• 8:27
  use of AI. China has an interesting law.
• 8:32
  And just this week we saw prosecution of this law in
• 8:36
  China, which is if you displace an employee through the use of
• 8:42
  AI, you have to compensate that person and typically that means
• 8:49
  giving them another job within the organization.
• 8:53
  So I, I thought that was really kind of interesting because the
• 8:56
  country that throws up coal and nuclear reactors by the day, it
• 9:00
  seems and doesn't seem to care about environmental stuff and
• 9:04
  doesn't care so much about people who that throws into
• 9:07
  prison and etcetera is saying, hey, AI, when you displace a job
• 9:12
  as a business, you've got to compensate the employees, which
• 9:16
  is an interesting concept, right?
• 9:18
  We're hearing everything from the universal basic income
• 9:21
  through the Chinese approach. Final question for you, Craig
• 9:25
  Peterson, before I let you go. And we don't have too much time
• 9:29
  for it, but Spacex's IPO is right around the corner here.
• 9:33
  They started, they made a filing, obviously, which got
• 9:35
  everyone very excited about the space industry in general.
• 9:39
  And a lot of stocks ended up spiking as a result of it.
• 9:42
  And people are getting really bullish.
• 9:43
  People are saying this might be the biggest IPO of all time,
• 9:46
  might be one of the most valuable companies of all time,
• 9:49
  multiple trillions of dollars of valuation, lots of hyperbole
• 9:53
  about SpaceX. And yet perhaps it's not
• 9:56
  hyperbole because obviously there is a lot of economic
• 9:58
  opportunity with where they're looking to go here.
• 10:00
  What do you make of the SpaceX public offering that is coming
• 10:04
  here? Is it a harbinger of a very
• 10:08
  dramatic future of the space industry in the private sector?
• 10:11
  What think you? Yeah, it is.
• 10:14
  And in fact, just this rumor of the IPO on its way drove up all
• 10:20
  kinds of space stocks. So there there's a lot of things
• 10:24
  going on now. But I read a report that the
• 10:28
  study had been done of occupying the South Pole there on the moon
• 10:34
  and how we need to have armed military there all of the times.
• 10:38
  Kind of shadows of pretty good TV series.
• 10:41
  But anyways, SpaceX has done some amazing things and it just
• 10:45
  came up with the mega rocket version three configuration
• 10:50
  launched. They seem they've gotten the
• 10:52
  bugs out of it and and what this all allows us to do is put a
• 10:58
  base on the moon, use the moon as a base to go elsewhere.
• 11:02
  But why would we need to? Well, first of all, we're going
• 11:05
  to get all kinds of benefits. You're not expecting now far
• 11:07
  beyond Tang, but we're we are also now hoping to be able to do
• 11:14
  mining. So on the moon there's mining of
• 11:17
  various components, radioactive and otherwise that we can't do
• 11:21
  here, you know, the Helium 3, etcetera, etcetera.
• 11:25
  And also ultimately mining asteroids that have all kinds of
• 11:30
  minerals that we need. You know, the rare earth
• 11:33
  minerals that aren't that rare, frankly, but it's kind of hard
• 11:36
  to process processing them on the moon or in Earth orbit it it
• 11:41
  just opens up all kinds of avenues that we've never had
• 11:45
  before. And that's where we'll have to
• 11:47
  end on this fine Wednesday morning.
• 11:48
  Craig Peterson, as always, we appreciate you being with us.
• 11:50
  And we will talk again very soon, Sir.
• 11:53
  Thanks a lot.