ENERGY SECURITYData Centers’ Insatiable Demand for Electricity Will Change the Entire Energy Sector
When the first large language models were unleashed, it triggered a headache for authorities around the world as they tried to figure out how to satisfy data centers’ endless demand for electricity.
AI models are out on an energy-intensive training session with no end in sight. The training takes place on the servers in the world’s data centers, which currently number just over 10,000. Especially the large language models and generative AI that creates images and videos consume huge amounts of electricity.
They are so voracious that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that the power they needed for computing increased a billion-fold from 2022 to 2024.
The entire global energy sector is now changing because the demand for electricity to run and cool servers is so high.
Control in Just a Few Hands
“What we see happening now in the development of artificial intelligence is truly extraordinary and perhaps a pivotal point in human history,” said Sebastien Gros.
He is a professor at NTNU’s Department of Engineering Cybernetics and head of the Norwegian Centre on AI-Decisions (AID). This is one of Norway’s six new centers for research on AI.
Gros notes that developments in the AI universe are driven by just a few technology companies. The scale, electricity consumption, investments and pace are formidable, with control concentrated in the hands of just a few private enterprises.
Large, Undisclosed Figures
It’s not now possible to find out exactly how much electricity AI providers use.
“The companies that supply electricity to the data centers do not disclose these figures. The AI providers are commercial operators whose aim is to make money, and they have little interest in sharing this type of information. I don’t think anyone knows exactly, but the figures are clearly astronomical. Truly astronomical,” said Gros.
“Today We Launched ChatGPT”
“Today we launched ChatGPT. Try talking with it here,” wrote Sam Altman, then CEO of OpenAI, on X on 30 November 2022.
Since then, ChatGPT, Claude, Meta AI, DeepSeek, CoPilot and others have been competing to provide us with everything from cookie recipes to solutions to the world’s biggest problems.
Every instruction we give them passes through the data centers’ servers. Thousands of calculations are needed to determine which words the models should respond with.
Each Keystroke Consumes Electricity
Regardless of whether it has become your office assistant, meal planner, or psychologist: every one of your keystrokes consumes electricity.
Altman has said that the polite but completely unnecessary ‘thank you’ or ‘please’ costs the company tens of millions of dollars in electricity each year.
