It wasn’t so long ago that Bitcoin was under heavy fire for using vast amounts of energy to mine a single coin. Today this environmental bogeyman belt is now being worn by AI. It takes a lot of power to train AI models, generate original images, and so on. By one estimate, each Chat GPT query used the same energy as running a 5-watt lightbulb for an hour and 50 minutes.
No Green Light at the End of the Tunnel
And there is nothing to suggest this will get any better anytime soon. That is unless nuclear fusion arrives decades early.
Elon Musk is reportedly building a supercomputer (a ‘gigafactory of compute’ in his words) for his xAI startup that will help make his Grok chatbot more powerful. The factory will reportedly rely on 100,000 or more Nvidia H100 GPUs.
Musk has reportedly raised $6 billion to fund this endeavor. That number sounds big, but some wonder if it will be even close to enough to compete with Microsoft, Google, etc.
Earlier this year, Musk also said that AI is such an energy hog that it may leave us without enough electricity within the next few years.
In a recent interview, Musk said that the biggest constraint on AI development last year was the availability of Nvidia chips. Musk believes the availability of sufficient electricity to power AI may run out in the next one to three years.
Perhaps this is just Musk’s hyperbole. But the energy issue appears to be quite real.
According to Data Center Knowledge, a January 2024 report from the International Energy Agency “forecasted that data centers globally may more than double their electrical consumption by 2026.”
Of course, the energy source matters. If AI is powered by coal, It will be declared a bad actor by climate activists. Green energy, not so much.
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On Big AI’s Radar
Big AI seems to be aware of the environmental challenge.
This may explain a recent move by Microsoft in Africa. The company announced it is teaming up with a UAE-based firm to build a new AI data center in Kenya. And the company is reportedly ready to invest $1 billion in the project.
Geothermal energy will power the new data center.
We anticipate that the media, activists, elected officials, and others will begin to shine more attention on this issue. And we imagine that soon every announcement about a new AI advancement will include some soft version of an environmental impact statement.
