Eye of the Cormorant

another odd bird who chases fish.

mystery of the day, and a hint

Written by

pkstoddard

in

,

Powering artificial intelligence might involve constructing a fleet of new nuclear reactors, yet natural intelligence runs handily on organic farm waste, such as tofu and kale.

If powering Nvidia chips to make fake videos is that important, nuclear power is still the most expensive way to add power to the electric grid, while renewables, wind and solar/battery, are the cheapest.

The push to build more old-style nuclear reactors suggests that AI and data companies have made so much money from their stratospheric stock valuations that they and everyone around them are willing to waste it.

Seems like a sign, and I am hardly alone in thinking so. Here, I believe, is a hint to how this mystery might resolve.

Remember Michael Burry and Scion Asset Management from the film “The Big Short”? Scion is betting big on an AI stock decline, allocating 80% of its $1.1 billion portfolio to put options against the AI companies Nvidia (NVDA) and Palantir (PLTR).

Why stop at shorting NVDA & PLTR? When was the last time any utility company failed to lose money building nuclear power?

Comments

5 responses to “mystery of the day, and a hint”

  1. Sally Philips Avatar
    Sally Philips

    Those with money are choosing to ruin the earth. They only care about their own life-times not about the generations which might follow them. There is so much available natural energy – wind, solar, tide, wave – why poison the water, why risk the radiation?

    It would seem to me that one could make money and still save the earth. When there are no crops growing and no animals living to feed them, those who are making their fortunes while destroying the world are going to enjoy eating their money. I wonder whether ketsup will help it taste good.

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  2. brian rasnow Avatar
    brian rasnow

    “Here’s How the AI Crash Happens. The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state”, at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/data-centers-ai-crash/684765/ , is illuminating. E.g., “For now, money is still pouring into the AI industry. But there’s also something circular about these investments. To wit: OpenAI has agreed to pay$300 billion to Oracle for new computing capacity, Oracle is paying Nvidia tens of billions of dollars for chips to install in one of OpenAI’s data centers, and Nvidia has agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as it deploys Nvidia chips.”

    Not only are nukes crazy expensive, they are incredibly slow to put online. Server farms are build in <1 year. Even with deregulation it takes that long for cement to cure — ok, so skip secondary containment … But if your AI comes to self-awareness, you wouldn’t want a long period of cloud cover or lack of wind to result in its “demise”, hence the 24/7 nature of nuke power is enticing.

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    1. pkstoddard Avatar
      pkstoddard

      and batteries don’t work at night.

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  3. rexlawyer Avatar
    rexlawyer

    If AI is truly intelligent then it is going to have a lot to say about using anything other than clean renewable energy sources.

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    1. pkstoddard Avatar
      pkstoddard

      yeah, I was thinking of asking.

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