The management consultants at McKinsey have once again used all their cognitive resources to identify a worthwhile target for a (‘scientific’) study1, and then eloquently and confidently set out to achieve it.
OK – that may sound a little pejorative. Perhaps we should put it like this: They kicked down another barn door that was already wide open and discovered that AI’s hunger for electricity will triple by 2023.
No shit!!! Really??? If only someone had told us earlier!!! Ohhh – wait … <paper shredding> … someone actually figured it out some time ago: As early as October 2023, a scientists on Joule2 pointed out the escalating energy consumption of AI models and backed this up with reliable figures … and then The New York Times3, Goldman Sachs Research4, Wired, Forbes5, BBC and a zillion other sources picked up on this topic. But I guess in the business world, until McKinsey backs up an obvious problem with a study, the problem is just imaginary. You have to do that first … Hats off.
- https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/the-role-of-power-in-unlocking-the-european-ai-revolution ↩︎
- https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00365-3 ↩︎
- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/climate/ai-could-soon-need-as-much-electricity-as-an-entire-country.html ↩︎
- https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand ↩︎
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2024/06/20/ai-power-consumption-rapidly-becoming-mission-critical/ ↩︎
