DTN 007: Generative AI has a Carbon Problem

Plus: Japan falls back in love with nuclear energy, DIY genetic engineering, an intercontinental network of robotic telescopes, Blue Origin made solar cells out of fake moon dirt, and more.

February 17, 2023

Welcome to The Deep Tech Newsletter, a weekly exploration of the business, science, and engineering behind the world’s most important frontier technologies.

Jacob DeWitte is the co-founder and CEO of Oklo Inc., a company developing and building advanced microreactors.  In this conversation, Jacob discusses how to commercialize government R&D, the challenges of venture financing for advanced nuclear startups, how to turn nuclear waste into fuel, and more.

On the challenges of VC funding for advanced nuclear: “I think there’s a tendency for venture to be a little timid in this space because of either a lack of knowledge or willingness to roll up their sleeves and understand the regulatory side of things. I think there’s a decent return to be made for investors that can understand that side of things. There’s a tendency to be very simplistic and buy into the story that the NRC can’t license anything. It’s a catchy narrative, but I think more and more folks are starting to recognize that isn’t what’s really going on.”

On making nuclear regulation more favorable to innovation: “I truly think hearts and minds have been changed. That’s already in place. We’ve passed bills with massive bipartisan support that are changing regulators’ minds. But I think the tendency is that we pass a bill and expect it to fix everything. The NRC is a dynamic organization that’s constantly changing. The industry is dynamic and constantly evolving, too. So we have to be smart about what we do here and we have to be willing to iterate. Right now there’s this really cool moment of opportunity from a policy perspective to recognize where industry is going and the ability to unlock some of these technologies.”

The Big Picture

“While neither OpenAI nor Google, have said what the computing cost of their products is, third-party analysis by researchers estimates that the training of GPT-3, which ChatGPT is partly based on, consumed 1,287 MWh, and led to emissions of more than 550 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—the same amount as a single person taking 550 roundtrips between New York and San Francisco.” (WIRED)

“The basic plan for green transformation marks a departure from Japan’s policy of reducing its dependence on nuclear energy decided after the 2011 meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s tsunami-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant. To the end, the government adopted green transformation legislation so that it can procure funds for its share of the envisioned investments, which is projected at some ¥20 trillion.” (The Japan News)

“In 2020 alone, researchers spent 15,000 years worth of time reviewing articles. In the US, the time cost for peer review is equal to $1.5B, in China it is $600M, the UK is $400M.” (Research Integrity)

“For years, two leading approaches have enabled physicists to make progress partly by cramming devices with more and more qubits. One of those methods encodes qubits as currents running on superconducting loops. The other uses excited states of individual ions trapped in a vacuum by electromagnetic fields. But in the past two years, qubits that consist of single neutral atoms — as opposed to ions — and are held with ‘tweezers’ made of laser light have suddenly become competitive. And other techniques that are at an even earlier stage of development could yet catch up.” (Scientific American)

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