Many people have seen enough of artificial intelligence by now to appreciate its potential benefits to humanity, as well as its risks. Not so many may be aware of what a big guzzler of natural resources it is. As the Financial Times reported this week, Big Tech companies are using ever more water to cool their energy-intensive data centres. The thirst for power and water of the server farms needed to run generative AI is even more intense. In Davos last month, Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, warned that future AI would consume so much electricity it would require an energy breakthrough — say, nuclear fusion — to power it.
現在很多人已經看到了人工智慧的潛在好處和風險，但並不是很多人意識到它對自然資源的巨大消耗。正如英國《金融時報》本週報導的那樣，大型科技公司爲了冷卻高能耗的數據中心而使用越來越多的水資源。而用於運行生成式人工智慧的伺服器農場對電力和水資源的需求更加巨大。在上個月的達沃斯論壇(Davos)，OpenAI的執行長薩姆•奧爾特曼(Sam Altman)警告說，未來的人工智慧將消耗如此之多的電力，以至於需要能源突破，比如核聚變，來爲其供電。