The world’s top business leaders struggle to find the right metaphor to describe the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on humanity. Some have compared it to the printing press, while others have likened it to the dawn of a new industrial revolution. Google‘s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has even suggested that the AI revolution is akin to the moment mankind harnessed the use of fire.
Superlatives aside, it’s clear that we are in our own Noachian moment—human history will soon be divided between the antediluvian world that existed before AI and the one that takes over in its stead.
But realizing AI’s full potential has one major structural impediment—its massive energy requirements. A recent paper published by the World Economic Forum estimated that the computational power required for sustaining AI’s growth rate is doubling every 100 days. Wells Fargo estimatedthat, by 2030, the additional power demand generated by U.S. data centers will be nearly seven times that of New York City’s current annual …