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Zoho Corp Chief Scientists Sridhar Vembu, who has been in the limelight due to indigenous messaging app Arattai, has highlighted concerns over huge energy demand artificial intelligence (AI) data centres and the noted that India will need “vastly more energy efficient options”.
Amid soaring electricity bills in the United States due to data centres, he feels that we need to fundamentally rethink the computational aspect of AI, in order to make the technology viable in India.
In a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Sridhar Vembu noted that electricity bills have jumped as much as 60 per cent since 2023, for consumers in the US, adding that India cannot afford to see such rise in prices.
Need to ‘fundamentally rethink computational aspect of AI’
Sridhar Vembu noted, ““Electricity bill .. up 60% since 2023” in Athens, Georgia (US) due to new AI data center demand for electricity. One of the under-appreciated facts about the current state-of-the art AI is how extraordinarily energy inefficient it is.”
“This is a huge issue for India. Even if we could afford all the GPUs (not!), we cannot afford the electricity bill. We cannot afford to hurt households and factories. We need vastly more energy efficient AI. I believe that requires fundamentally rethinking the computational aspect of AI,” he added.
AI data centres hike power bills for regular consumers in US
According to a Bloomberg report last week, data centres are sending power bills in the US soaring, “pulling everyday households into paying for the digital economy”.
The power needs of the massive complexes are rapidly driving up electricity bills - piling onto the rising prices for food, housing and other essentials already straining consumers. That's starting to have economic and political reverberations across the country as utilities and local officials wrestle over how to divvy up the costs. Yet those same facilities are a linchpin of US leadership in the global AI race.
A Bloomberg News analysis of wholesale electricity prices for tens of thousands of locations across the country reveals the effects of the Al boom on the power market with unprecedented granularity. The locations and prices were tracked and aggregated monthly by Grid Status, an energy data analytics platform. Bloomberg analyzed this data in relation to data center locations, from DC Byte, and found that electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas located near significant data centre activities.
English (US) ·