The energy required to run artificial intelligence systems may already be higher than the amount of power used to mine Bitcoin, according to new research.
While that may sound like good news for the Bitcoin mining industry, which is regularly attacked over power consumption, the sting in the tail of the report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute is that AI is shaping up as a fierce competitor to Bitcoin for electricity and equipment.
The sector’s deep pockets mean AI companies can afford to outbid miners for the same electricity. With AI offering up to 25 times more revenue than Bitcoin per kilowatt hour (kWh), some miners are adding AI processing to their data centers or even switching entirely from Bitcoin to AI.
“We will see this trend so long as the revenue per megawatt-hour is higher for AI than Bitcoin,” BPI researcher Margot Paez told Cointelegraph.
The AI industry is still in its early stages, but the energy demands of generative AI models is striking. According to Goldman Sachs, a single ChatGPT query consumes nearly 10 times the energy of a typical Google search. MIT Technology Review reports that generating an AI image can use as much power as fully charging a smartphone.
How Bitcoin is actually mined, according to Cointelegraph’s artists.
Bitcoin mining’s high energy use has led to the threat of bans in Europe and moratoriums in New York. According to the BPI, the annual energy usage of US Bitcoin mining facilities is around 121.13 terawatt hours (TWh), while AI consumed between 20 and 125 TWh in 2023 (AI is housed in data centers used for other tasks, making precise figures more difficult).
But with the huge uptake in generative AI this year, the report estimates that AI will use 169 TWh in 2024 and growth will continue to outpace Bitcoin mining, using an estimated 240 TWh in 2027 to mining’s 160 TWh.
Data centers housing AI models also require significant amounts of water to…
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