AI's volatile power demand is damaging its own data centers

AI's volatile power demand is damaging its own data centers Artificial intelligence at times sees power usage spike as much as 50% above its design capacity. Artificial intelligence's tremendous hunger for electricity is already well known. What's less familiar is how the rapid fluctuations in data centers' appetites can break essential equipment at the facilities. Batteries, generators, cooling units and other critical systems are put under such strain at AI computing facilities that they are malfunctioning or prematurely reaching the end of their lives. As the AI boom accelerates, these technical problems suggest added costs and unforeseen reliability problems, with even a few minutes of lost uptime hitting data-center developers' revenue.