We do need way more energy in the world than I think we thought we needed before.

And I think we still don't appreciate the energy needs of this technology.

That's Sam Aldman, the CEO of Open AI speaking to Bloomberg back in January at the World

Economic Forum. In that interview, he was lightly pressed on the climate cost of his

generative AI vision. and he was remarkably honest.

The future he wants to realize

is one that will require an amount of energy

that's hard to even fathom.

And all that energy needs to come on stream

in record time at the same moment.

We're supposed to be phasing out fossil energy

in favor of less emitting alternatives

like solar, wind, hydro,

or, in some people's minds, a ton of nuclear energy.

The good news, to the degree there's good news, is there's no way to get there without a breakthrough.

We need fusion or we need, like, radically cheaper solar plus storage or something at massive scale, like a scale that no one is really planning for. So we, it's totally fair to say that AI is going to need a lot of energy, but it will force us, I think,

to invest more in the technologies that can deliver this, none of which are the ones that are

burning the carbon. The way Altman talks about the massive energy demands his AI ambitions

are creating is typical of tech billionaires. The climate crisis is not a political problem,

but simply a technological one. And we need not worry because our technocratic overlords will

deliver a breakthrough in energy technology so they can continue doing whatever they want,

regardless of whether it makes any real sense to do so.

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