Generative AI has a clean-energy problem

Illustration depicting a fuel pump or distributor with a digital screen displaying a series of ones and zeros as a code.

2024-04-11    

Nasty, brutish and short, more like. Talk to utilities and data-centre operators and, though many share Mr Altman’s excitement about artificial intelligence (AI), they are grappling with an energy conundrum on which the future of three big economic shifts partly hinges: the AI revolution; the efforts to electrify swathes of the economy; and the fight against climate change. In a nutshell, “generative” AI, the sort behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has a ravenous appetite for electricity. It has landed, virtually out of the blue, on a global energy system that is already struggling to cope with alternative sources of power demand. As yet it is not clear whether there will be enough clean energy to meet everyone’s needs.

经济学人和华尔街日报的文章是会员专属

请加入会员以继续阅读完整文章

成为会员后您将享受无限制的阅读体验,并可使用更多功能


免责声明:本文来自网络公开资料,仅供学习交流,其观点和倾向不代表本站立场。