Earlier this month, executives from some of the most influential Big Tech companies met with the Biden administration to discuss strategies to tackle the looming crisis induced by AI’s energy-intensive training.
Government officials, including White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard, National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi, Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta, and more, met with numerous tech industry leaders, including Alphabet President Ruth Porat, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
This isn’t the first time the Biden administration has buddied up with big business to address an energy issue while simultaneously enacting policies that nullify its own efforts to strengthen the American industrial and energy base.
To the delight of OpenAI, the Biden administration announced that it plans to invest in data center infrastructure projects following the discussion. In response, OpenAI told CNBC that the company “appreciate[s] the White House [for] convening this meeting, as it is a recognition of the priority of infrastructure to create jobs, help guarantee that the benefits of AI are widely distributed, and ensure America will continue to be at the forefront of AI innovation.”
Furthermore, the Biden administration announced the launch of a permitting council to provide increased technical assistance to federal, state, and local authorities handling data center permits, an AI data center engagement team to expand loans, grants, and tax credits, a program to “share resources on repurposing closed coal sites with datacenter developers,” and other measures to address the data center energy issue.
Data centers and fossil fuels
Like much of the rest of the tech industry, AI training heavily relies on data centers, which provide powerful servers and storage capacity for all sorts of ventures. Most of these data centers provide these services by drawing from fossil fuels — the type of energy many globalists and self-styled progressives insist will destroy the world.
The demand for these data centers continues to grow. A Goldman Sachs study showed that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. And according to the International Energy Agency, “Electricity consumption from data centres, artificial intelligence (AI) and the cryptocurrency sector could double by 2026.” What’s most concerning is that data centers consumed 460 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2022, and that number could rise to over 1,000 TWh in 2026 — close to Japan’s current electricity consumption.
That’s because more firms are innovating in AI, and AI is becoming more energy-intensive as it develops in complexity. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 took 50 times the electricity needed to train GPT-3. Additionally, AI-based programs consume much more energy than basic search engines. A simple ChatGPT prompt response takes nearly 10 times the electricity of a Google search; a ChatGPT prompt response requires 2.9 watt-hours, while a Google search takes 0.3 watt-hours.
Relying on green energy to power these data centers does not make sense, but the Biden administration thinks otherwise.
Cronyism
The Biden administration is currently facing a dire problem. But is the solution to partner with Big Tech to craft AI policy? Big Tech wants to leverage big government to shift public policy in its favor, leading some to call the move a “state buy-in.”
What could possibly go wrong?
No one would complain if industry and government were simply forming public-private partnerships to address the looming energy crisis. However, the problem lies in the proposals that Big Tech and the Biden administration want to implement. Despite the fact that lawmakers and politicians seemingly understand the urgency of AI’s quenchless energy appetite, they continue to push left-wing regulations and non-solutions that thwart the efforts to strengthen America’s energy sector.
Big Tech loves these regulations. It supports woke regulations that don’t actually do anything except increase inefficiencies for smaller companies, in addition to other restrictions that crowd out “little tech” from the market while leveraging its own institutional power and capital to expand its market share.
In addition to the aforementioned initiatives, the Biden administration also announced commitments to “achieving net zero carbon emissions and to [produce] clean energy.” Even though data centers are reliant on cheap fossil fuels, leftists insist on handouts to the green energy lobby by using expensive and inefficient renewable green energy sources that exacerbate the issue instead of simply finding ways to access cheap and reliable energy.
It’s a pattern
This isn’t the first time the Biden administration has buddied up with big business to address an energy issue while simultaneously enacting policies that nullify its own efforts to strengthen the American industrial and energy base.
In 2022, a bipartisan coalition in Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing. It was also supported and signed by President Joe Biden. The bill was a good start, but with Intel’s recent struggles and shortfalls — and fresh uncertainty surrounding the impact of the highly hyped new TSMC fabrication plant in Arizona — this effort to shore up chip manufacturing is overshadowed by its many flaws. These flaws include woke language, DEI provisions, and, most importantly, climate change and green energy initiatives, even though chip manufacturing is heavily reliant on cheap, reliant, and efficient fossil fuels.
What’s more, after announcing billions of taxpayer dollars would go to “strengthen climate resilience,” the Biden-Harris administration put out a press release detailing its expensive progressive climate agenda to reach net-zero carbon emissions.
“Net-zero emissions pathways require widespread implementation of currently available and cost-effective options for reducing emissions, including the addition of new wind and solar capacity. Reaching net zero will also require rapid expansion of technologies and methods to remove carbon from the atmosphere to balance remaining emissions, as well as the exploration of additional mitigation and transformative adaptation options,” the administration claimed.
As the name of the crisis suggests, the data center energy crisis will only be solved by accessing more reliable energy, not by conspiring with Big Tech to expand its institutional influence and advance the green agenda.
