The OpenAI CEO said during an event in Davos this week that “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology,” which is expected to consume an enormous amount of electricity as it matures. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough. We need [nuclear] fusion or we need like radically cheaper solar plus storage or something at massive scale,” Altman said.
Altman and Microsoft are both backers of the startup Helion, which is trying to develop a nuclear fusion generator — considered the Holy Grail of clean energy. But after more than 70 years of research punctuated with limited breakthroughs, many experts expect that the world will be chasing that Holy Grail for decades longer. Luckily, solar energy is already the cheapest source of electricity in history — the world just needs better batteries to store it.
Most Popular
- Xbox overhauls its PC, web, and cloud apps with a faster design
- Anker’s new window-mounted camera monitors the outside of your home from within it
- I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable this year — here’s how the iPhone Duo compares
- After printing 40,000 whistles, this is the 3D printer I’d buy
- The Enough Phone is made by and for people fed up with big screens
