However, concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of these AI factories. Data centers require large amounts of energy and water to run, contributing to carbon emissions and water consumption. For instance, training large AI models can use energy equivalent to the carbon dioxide released for approximately 300 round-trip flights between San Francisco and New York. Furthermore, cooling data servers for generative AI requires significant amounts of water, with Microsoft estimated to have used 700,000 liters of fresh water to train OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model.
Key takeaways:
- Nvidia is expanding its partnership with Foxconn to build data centers, or 'AI factories,' aimed at accelerating the development of robots, self-driving cars, and generative AI services.
- The announcement comes as major tech companies, including Microsoft, are investing heavily in AI and data centers to capitalize on the AI hype.
- Concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of these data centers, which require large amounts of energy and water to run and cool the servers.
- Research suggests that by 2027, the AI industry could potentially lead to a spike in energy usage equivalent to that produced by countries the size of Sweden and the Netherlands.