Bitcoin’s dirty history offers a lesson for AI’s future
A lot of money and energy is expended on the cryptocurrency, but AI could be even more power-hungry
SURGING interest in artificial intelligence (AI) systems will add further strain to global electricity grids, with the potential to rival the massive energy consumption of Bitcoin. Thankfully, the premier cryptocurrency has shown us a way to mitigate the impact.
A doubling of data-centre revenue at Nvidia last quarter shows that demand for generative applications such as ChatGPT hasn’t yet hit its peak. The US chipmaker is the key provider of shovels in this AI gold-rush, but those processors are neither cheap nor lean. Its latest flagship, the GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, which is the size of a postcard, draws up to 1,000 watts – equivalent to a portable heater.
Though most customers will be opting for something less fancy than the Superchip, they do buy them in bulk to connect together into a massive AI server and that’s where the hunger for electricity really kicks in. One study published last year looked at the energy consumption required to train a single large-language model used to output text in multiple languages.
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