"Drive in almost any direction from almost any American city, and soon enough you'll arrive at a data center-a giant white box rising from graded earth, flanked by generators and fenced like a prison yard. Data centers for artificial intelligence are the new American factory. Packed with computing equipment, they absorb information and emit A.I. Since the launch of ChatGPT, in 2022, they have begun to multiply at an astonishing rate."
"The leading independent operator of A.I. data centers in the United States is CoreWeave, which was founded eight years ago, as a casual experiment. In 2017, traders at a middling New York hedge fund decided to begin mining cryptocurrency, which they used as the entry fee for their fantasy-football league. To mine the crypto, they bought a graphics-processing unit, a powerful microchip made by the company Nvidia. The G.P.U. was marketed to video gamers, but Nvidia offered software that turned it into a low-budget supercomputer."
Data centers for artificial intelligence now function as the modern American factory, appearing near cities as large fenced white boxes filled with computing equipment. Since ChatGPT's 2022 launch, such centers have multiplied rapidly. The centers absorb massive amounts of information and emit A.I., often consuming electricity comparable to a large city. CoreWeave grew from cryptocurrency mining experiments into a leading independent A.I. data-center operator by acquiring GPUs and building a platform to offer their compute to customers. GPUs marketed to gamers were repurposed into low-cost supercomputers, producing rapid returns that drove scaling. The expansion raises questions about sustainability, energy demand, and long-term viability.
Read at The New Yorker
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