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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming the largest energy hog within worldwide digital infrastructure.<\/strong><\/p>\n In my latest research, published in the academic journal Joule<\/em> today, I show that AI systems were responsible for up to 20% of global data center power demand by the end of last year. Moreover, this share could approach half of data center power demand by the end of this year, as the power demand of AI systems could rise to 23 gigawatts. This exceeds the current power demand of cryptocurrency mining and is equivalent to twice the power needed to keep my home country the Netherlands running.<\/p>\n Big tech companies are well aware of this trend, as companies such as Google even mention having faced a \u201cpower capacity crisis\u201d in their efforts to expand data center capacity. At the same time, these companies prefer not to talk about the numbers involved. Google was the only big tech company revealing that AI represented 10%\u201315% of their total energy use over the years 2019 \u2013 2021, but since ChatGPT kicked-off the AI-hype we\u2019ve never seen anything like this again. As a result, it remains virtually impossible to gain a good insight into the actual energy consumption of AI.<\/p>\n By diving into semiconductor manufacturing (concentrated in East Asia), a bunch of (Chinese) analyst reports and earnings call transcripts I found a way to shed some light on where the power demand of AI is heading \u2013 and it turns out this growing at lightning speed. This growth clashes with other social ambitions, such as achieving climate goals and reducing total energy consumption. However, effective policy responses will first require urgent transparency from an otherwise opaque industry.<\/p>\n