You tell me, is your gaming rig an electricity-hog? Add to that how OpenAI, Sam Altman being in charge, is to eventually be consuming energy equivalent to that of New York City and San Diego put together. Indeed! The power of two gigantic American cities for just AI. Everyone has been talking about that dreadful sit-tight report from Fortune, and it is definitely worth getting.
Let’s go further with the context here. We could well be talking about almost 10 gigawatts on the peak. In layman’s terms: that’s huge. Gigantic. Gigantic enough to cause someone to think for a moment and say, wait. No wonder the reactions ranged from shock and concern to jokes about Terminator:
A very interesting question was raised by a user named Ruglabok: “Sounds safe, where’s all the power coming from?” Well, yes, it is the million-dollar question, is it not? The power cannot just appear out of nowhere! This kind of consumption puts the spotlight on our whole infrastructure of energies.
Quickly, the views turned to solutions in the comment section. ‘m a s’ was quite forthright: “we need advanced nuclear asap.” He went on to call any other idea about getting energy somewhere else “a joke,” saying the demand for electricity is “just gonna keep going up.” And, well, that’s right. This is a trend, and not an anomaly. Another user shared a rather interesting take. Hans said, “There is a reason Sam has been investing in Fusion for the past decade this outcome was inevitable.” So, it would seem the people at the very top saw it coming and now they’re trying to get in front of it—but still. It’s a massive undertaking.
Between those big divides, some start claiming wastes. Nurbieez comes back with: “That’s just wasteful. Using that much power for AI seems irresponsible.” And one can kind of see where they’re coming from. Framing it as using a small country’s worth of energy just to power chatbots and image generators does warrant a second thought. Another user, zbigi15, put this thought even more bluntly: “all that power for AI slop videos.” Ouch. But it did capture a sentiment that’s going around.
The unquantifiable scale compelled Betterselfv2 again to call it a “small country in energy consumption,” and for once, there may be a grain of truth. Eshani Verma joked that “AI finally need its own power grid at this point,” which… is it even a joke anymore? It might actually be a logical next step. The comparison to other tech companies came up again, with Barkin asking, “which billion-user company uses less energy,” suggesting that maybe this is just the cost of doing business at this insane scale.
Of course, as we dance around all this, gamers and the tech-loving crowd are left awed and fearful. Kuaroo, PhD, points to the scariest thing, saying: “We’re not even at AGI yet. Imagine how much more power that will require. Then goes ASI. Think on that.” AGI, for those not in the know, stands for Artificial General Intelligence—AI as smart as a human. ASI is Artificial Superintelligence, which is, well, way smarter. If today’s AI is gulping this much power, what comes next is almost unimaginable.
It’s kind of weird hi-fi for the gaming and tech community. While on the other hand, we love this stuff. The AI is facilitating some extraordinary developments in game-making, from putting real NPC conversation into existence to generating whole worlds. Commissioning the real-world costs-the bread-and-butter power drain-was a real gut punch. Like, when you drop a ton of money on some wild rig, then get your first utility bill and stare at it for like five minutes. Inconceivably, this is that feeling times a billion.
So, where does this leave us? The energy has to come from somewhere. The calls for nuclear and fusion make sense, but those are long-term solutions. In the short term, it’s a huge strain. It raises big questions about sustainability and whether this breakneck speed of AI development is something we can actually power responsibly. It’s not just a tech story anymore; it’s an energy story, an environmental story, and a “what kind of future are we building” story all rolled into one. And for now, the power meter is just ticking up and up. Wild times, man. Wild times.
