hile AI could change the world in many unforeseen ways, it’s already having one massive impact: a voracious consumption of energy. Generative AI does not simply float upon ephemeral intuition. Rather, it gathers strength via thousands of computers in data centers across the world, which operate constantly on full blast. In January, the International Energy Agency that global data center electricity demand will more than double from 2022 to 2026, with AI playing a major role in that increase.
Here’s how we arrived at this point, and what the rise of data centers could mean for communities on a local and global level. When someone’s phone data gets backed up to the “cloud,” it really gets stored in data centers: massive facilities filled with thousands of computer servers running on a constant basis.
But the tech industry’s hard pivot into AI has even more dramatically escalated their construction and usage. That’s because it is extremely energy intensive to train AI models, which burn through power at a far higher rate than traditional data center activities. A ChatGPT query, for example, uses ten times more energy than a standard Google query, says David Porter, a vice president at the Electric Power Research Institute. Porter says that while 10-20% of data center energy in the U.S.
Data centers are now the “number one issue we hear about from our constituents,” says Ian Lovejoy, a Republican state delegate in Virginia. Aside fromconcerns, he says that local politicians and residents are worried about data centers threatening electricity and water access, as well as the idea that taxpayers may have to foot the bill for future power lines.