Power-hungry AI is putting the hurt on global electricity supply
Electricity supply is becoming the latest chokepoint to threaten the growth of artificial intelligence, according to leading tech industry chiefs, as power-hungry data centers add to the strain on grids around the world.
Billionaire Elon Musk said this month that while the development of AI had been “chip constrained” last year, the latest bottleneck to the cutting-edge technology was “electricity supply.” Those comments followed a warning by Amazon chief Andy Jassy this year that there was “not enough energy right now” to run new generative AI services.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are investing billions of dollars in computing infrastructure as they seek to build out their AI capabilities, including in data centers that typically take several years to plan and construct.
But some of the most popular places for building the facilities, such as northern Virginia, are facing capacity constraints which, in turn, are driving a search for suitable sites in growing data center markets globally.
