The OpenAI CEO told this year's World Economic Forum in Davos that his industry needs more power — both figuratively and literally.
Sam Altman, the Jimmy Neutron-looking mega-millionaire who runs OpenAI, had a lot to say at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. During an interview, Altman implied that his industry should lean into nuclear power to keep up with its growing energy footprint. That’s not exactly a surprising turn of events, but it does underline a growing refrain from Silicon Valley: AI is simply going to need more power if it’s going to take over the world.
Every year, the world’s opulent elite get together at the WEF’s much-hyped event, where they argue amicably over the best path forward for global capitalism. The event is designed to give participants — who are mainly billionaires, business leaders, and lobbyists — the ability to “game out” specific initiatives that, more or less, are all about how to make money more efficiently. It only makes sense that the sustainability of the AI industry, which has spawned ungodly amounts of financial investment over the past year, would be a central focus at this year’s conference.
Altman had plenty to say about the future of his industry, notably claiming that AI needs some sort of axis-shifting, Copernican “breakthrough” when it comes to energy innovation.
“There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” Altman said, during an interview, as reported Tuesday by Reuters. “It motivates us to go invest more in fusion.”
It’s no secret that the AI industry requires a breathtaking amount of power. Indeed, the ecological impacts of this business are enough to make most seriously-minded environmentalists run screaming for the hills. In recent months, tech companies have been casting about for alternative power sources that will be more environmentally friendly and, crucially, will provide ever greater amounts of energy to satisfy the data-sucking ways of AI. Altman himself has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at energy fusion projects — including Helion Energy, a fusion startup that is now owned by OpenAI’s special business partner Microsoft $MSFT.
There are a lot of experts who contend that nuclear power if handled correctly, could be a good thing for America. That said, whether the best use of that nuclear power would be creating faster chatbots and content generators is an entirely different question.
Here are some other things we learned from Altman at Davos:
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