The Lifeblood of the AI Boom

Artificial intelligence can appear to be many different things--a whole host of programs with seemingly little common ground. Sometimes AI is a conversation partner, an illustrator, a math tutor, a facial-recognition tool. But in every incarnation, it is always, always a machine, demanding almost unfathomable amounts of data and energy to function. AI systems such as ChatGPT operate out of buildings stuffed with silicon computer chips. To build bigger machines--as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and other tech companies would like to do--you need more resources.