Insights · January 17th, 2024
It’s now becoming clear that our Artificial Intelligence future needs an energy breakthrough to drive the industry and adoption at-scale.
“OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday said an energy breakthrough is necessary for future artificial intelligence, which will consume vastly more power than people have expected. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” he said. ”It motivates us to go invest more in fusion.” – Source: News 18
In the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, caused by overuse of energy, the dream makers in ‘big tech’ continue to invest in, and develop technologies, that are not energy conserving and rely on huge amounts of incremental energy vs. traditional computing.
Not alone does Big Tech see these environment-destroying energy demands as an existential human/business problem. They see it as a big opportunity for exponential growth for other energy businesses.
We are seeing Sam Altman gushing about “silver linings” and “climate-friendly sources of energy”. They are so excited about what sort of story they can weave to make even more money from their diverse and divisive investments.
Here’s a reading list that modern, future ready executives need to pay attention too…
New specialized AI chips and GPUs consume 2-3x the power of prior generations – read more
In AI, performance always comes before environmental good – read more
Multi-purpose, AI systems are orders of magnitude more energy intense than task-specific systems – read more
Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone – read more
Industry estimates peg the cost of running generative AI large language models at up to $4 million a day – read more
In 2020, it took about 27 kilowatt hours of energy to train an AI model. By 2022, that had risen to a million kilowatt hours – read more
ChatGPT may have consumed as much electricity as 175,000 people in January 2023 – read more
AI data center costs will exceed $76 billion by 2028 – read more
The hidden costs of AI: Impending energy and resource strain – read more
OpenAI’s GPT-3 emitted more than 500 and 75 metric tons of carbon dioxide during training – read more
Image created with Midjourney using the following prompt, some versioning and upscaling, and using as much energy as it takes to charge a smartphone – Create a version of the creation of adam by Michelangelo with god and a robot’s hand with electricity flowing through their fingertips, hyperrealistic, 8K, –ar 16:9 –v 6.0
About Nikolas Badminton
Nikolas Badminton is a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 300 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.
He helps shape the visions that shape impactful organizations, trillion-dollar companies, progressive governments, and 200+ billion dollar investment funds.
Nikolas Badminton’s book Facing Our Futures: How Foresight, Futures Design and Strategy Creates Prosperity and Growth has been selected for 2023 J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List, and featured as the ‘Next Gen Pick’ to inform the next generation of thinkers that lead us into our futures.
Reach out to Nikolas to discuss having him come and speak at your event or board retreat – click here.
