Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao

A rack of GPUs consumes three times more power than a rack of other computer chips. And it’s not just the training of the generative AI models that is costly, it is also serving them: According to the International Energy Agency, each ChatGPT query is estimated to need on average about ten times more electricity than a typical search on Google. Until recently, the largest data centers were designed to be around 150-megawatt facilities, meaning they could consume as much energy annually as close to 122,000 American households. Developers and utility companies are now preparing for AI megacampuses that could soon require 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts of power. A single one could use as much energy per year as around one and a half to three and a half San Franciscos. Few places on the planet exist that can produce and deliver that much energy to any single location. Developers are working with utility companies around the world to build more power plants and expand the roster of options. After the last decade of flatlined energy demand in the US, a Goldman Sachs analysis described the sudden new wave of data centers as driving “the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation.” Utility companies are now delaying the retirement of gas and coal plants and the transition to renewable energy; Microsoft restarted Three Mile Island, a nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, that had a partial nuclear meltdown in the late 1970s, the worst commercial nuclear accid...