We know that for artificial intelligence to function at its full potential, it needs a large amount of energy. Furthermore, it is a problem that will only increase. OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, himself acknowledged to the world that the new generation of generative AIs would require much more energy to operate than expected. However, many companies have already found a solution: using nuclear energy.
The owners of approximately one-third of the nuclear power plants in the United States are negotiating with major technology companies to supply them with electricity. The goal is to meet the high energy demand required by the centers driving artificial intelligence.
Amazon Web Services, for example, is one of the major interested parties. According to WSJ, the company is about to close a deal with Constellation Energy, the largest owner of nuclear power plants in the United States. Already in March, Amazon’s subsidiary acquired a data center that operated on nuclear power for 650 million dollars.
The response to the need for electricity
The key to all of this could lie in advanced nuclear energy. Unlike traditional nuclear plants, advanced nuclear energy employs new technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs), for example.
These advances have attracted a lot of attention from companies. In fact, Google revealed to The Wall Street Journal that it had considered the possibility of making acquisition agreements with small-scale nuclear reactor developers.
Why does AI require so much energy to function? The truth is that there are several reasons for this, and one of them is its learning system. Processing large databases involves a large volume of calculations, which requires a lot of power, among other reasons.
