🔮 Exponential View #545: Rethinking scale; GPUs are the new turbines; stuck graduates, robots & AI companions++

A weekly briefing on AI and exponential technologies

Good morning from London!

Software demands a new world

Silicon Valley spent decades abstracting away from physical reality. But AI is so computationally intensive that it’s dragging tech back into the world of concrete and copper wire. Software is no longer eating the world; it’s demanding a new one.

Banks and other forecasters think there’s $4-5 trillion in building and power needed to run AI. Meta, by its own admission, wants to build a data center the size of Manhattan. This is all demanding massive changes to our energy system.

Microsoft foresees a consistent data center crunch through 2026. As Kevin Scott said

It’s been almost impossible to build capacity fast enough since ChatGPT and GPT-4 launched… even our most ambitious forecasts are just turning out to be insufficient on a regular basis.

But as many as 95% of data centers built for cloud computing may struggle to meet the power demands of new generation AI chips, according to BofA. A single AI rack will draw up to 600kW by 2027 (u…