While many factors are contributing to the increased demand for electricity, the use of artificial intelligence and the growing construction of data centers are two driving components, says Monmouth College Physics and Engineering Professor Chris Fasano:
“They are giant computer farms, and they are packing as many CPU’s and GPU’s and video cards in as they possible can into a tiny area. Those are really hungry devices. If you think about maybe a high-end gaming machine, you might have a thousand-or-fifteen-hundred-watt power supply in it, and that is just to run the computer. Now, imagine thousands of them packed into a building, if not tens of thousands, all sucking up that energy. Typically, a lot of these data centers have huge cooling needs. So, if you sit down with ChatGPT or pick your artificial intelligence and ask some question, that is going to some data center somewhere and it is using some fairly large number of CPU cycles or GPU cycles to try and answer your question. When you start adding it up, that is a lot of energy for one little question.”
Fasano will speak on this topic, as well as nuclear energy, Wednesday, February 25th during Monmouth College’s Great Decisions Lecture Series, beginning at 7:30 pm in Room 276 of the Center for Science and Business.
