Generative AI has a clean-energy problem

Generative AI has a clean-energy problem

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 … Read more

Big tech’s great AI power grab

Big tech’s great AI power grab

The comparison with the famously capex-happy energy industry is apt not just because of the sums involved. AI needs vast amounts of processing power. And that processing power needs vast amounts of electricity. On May 2nd Bob Blue, chief executive of Dominion Energy, one of America’s biggest utilities, said that data-centre developers now regularly ask … Read more