To support its ambitions to develop AI systems that would be as intelligent as people, OpenAI wants the U.S. government to help streamline the constru

OpenAI reportedly wants to build 5 gigawatt data centers, and nobody knows who could supply that much power

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2024-09-27 16:30:05

To support its ambitions to develop AI systems that would be as intelligent as people, OpenAI wants the U.S. government to help streamline the construction of massive data centers that would suck up as much power as major American cities. But experts are skeptical that anyone is in a position to meet those kind of energy demands.

Two weeks ago, Altman and an assortment of other top AI players had a meeting about infrastructure at the White House. The Biden Administration subsequently announced a coordinated push across government, to speed up the build-out of new AI data centers “in line with economic, national security, and environmental goals.”

But in the last couple days, reports from Bloomberg and the New York Times have provided more details about what OpenAI in particular is trying to get from the government: support in its quest to build data centers with power requirements of 5 gigawatts each.

Five gigawatts is an astonishingly large amount of power. It’s the output of around five nuclear reactors—the kind of power you need for a whole major city like Miami. It’s as much as 100 times the requirements of a standard large data center. The Times reported that OpenAI’s 5GW proposal drew laughter from a Japanese official.