AI computing is on pace to consume more energy than India, Arm says

AI’s voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources, requiring the industry to change its approach to the technology, according to Arm Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas.

By 2030, the world’s data centers are on course to use more electricity than India, the world’s most populous country, Haas said. Finding ways to head off that projected tripling of energy use is paramount if artificial intelligence is going to achieve its promise, he said.

“We are still incredibly in the early days in terms of the capabilities,” Haas said in an interview. For AI systems to get better, they will need more training — a stage that involves bombarding the software with data — and that’s going to run up against the limits of energy capacity, he said.

Haas joins a growing number of people raising alarms about the toll AI could take on the world’s infrastructure. But he also has an interest in the industry shifting more to Arm chips designs, which are gaining a bigger foothold in data centers. The company’s technology — already prevalent in smartphones — was developed to use energy more efficiently than traditional server chips.