Business | Schumpeter

Generative AI has a clean-energy problem

What happens when the AI revolution meets the energy transition

Illustration depicting a fuel pump or distributor with a digital screen displaying a series of ones and zeros as a code.
Illustration: Mari Fouz

When a colleague from this newspaper visited Sam Altman in 2022 at his home in San Francisco, he noticed two pairs of pink high-tops on a bookshelf. One had the logo of Mr Altman’s machine-learning startup, OpenAI. The other bore an emblem for Helion, a nuclear-fusion company that Mr Altman also backs. The entrepreneur is obsessed with both technologies—not just as foot fashion. He believes that the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy will fall in a mutually sustainable way. He calls it a “long and beautiful exponential curve”.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “There will be blood”

The next housing disaster

From the April 13th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Business

What could stop the Nvidia frenzy?

Two contradictions could stymie the AI chipmaker-in-chief

From Coachella to Burning Man, festivals are having a bad year

Tickets are no longer selling out


What a takeover offer for 7-Eleven says about business in Japan

Its merger with a Canadian firm would create a convenience-store goliath


Why Germany’s watchmakers are worried about the AfD

The far-right party threatens the industry’s brand

What to do about pets in the office

Dogs can bring both joy and chaos

Why America’s tech giants have got bigger and stronger

Whatever happened to creative destruction?