Cartoon: Power
“Power” by Iantoons
This new cartoon illustrates the growing electrical cost that is going to be needed to power up our brave new world.
Eric Schmidt recently remarked that building the new generation of AI data centres could set Big Tech firms back as much as $300 billion.
Meanwhile, a report by Goldman Sachs forecasts that $1 trillion will be spent over the next few years on data centres, semiconductors, grid upgrades, and other AI infrastructure.
These are big numbers and, rather uniquely for the technology industry, are early in the evolution cycle. While many talk about AI being as revolutionary to our lives as the Internet, the Internet started off as a low-cost technology solution that enabled e-commerce to replace costly brick and mortar solutions.
As we wait for the $1 trillion killer apps that will see the payback from this infrastructure investment, today consumers are starting to see the negative trickle down impact of this in their lives.
On average, a query using GenAI platforms needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search and, with the growth of other electricity hungry applications like blockchain, Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data centre power demand will grow 160% by 2030.
For consumers, this will require electrical companies to invest more in their grid, both pushing up costs and seeing huge anonymous data centres constructed in their cities.
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