Microsoft is betting nuclear power can help sate its massive electricity need as it ventures further into artificial intelligence and supercomputing, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The technology industry’s thirst for power is enormous. A single new data center can use as much electricity as hundreds of thousands of homes. Artificial intelligence requires even more computing power.
According to The Wall Street Journal, nuclear power is carbon-free and, unlike renewables, provides round-the-clock electricity. But it faces significant hurdles to getting built, including the daunting and expensive U.S. nuclear regulatory process for project developers.
In a twist, Microsoft is experimenting with generative artificial intelligence to see if AI could help streamline the approval process, according to Microsoft executives.
The generative AI experiments tap into Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, creator of the viral chatbot ChatGPT. For the past six months, a team of Microsoft employees have been training a large language model with U.S. nuclear regulatory and licensing documents, hoping to expedite the paperwork required for such approvals, which can take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Messenger reported Microsoft wants to use nuclear energy to power the future of artificial intelligence. And in a slightly bizarre twist, it wants to use AI to help cut the red tape to make it happen, according to Wall Street Journal.
A Microsoft team has spent months building an AI trained on nuclear regulations and licensing requirements to help the tech giant fill out all the applications it needs to build its own power plants. This typically takes years and millions, but Microsoft is urgently looking for more power to bring next-generation AI to life.
That’s because the larger model and the more capable it becomes, the more power it requires. Microsoft today reflects the sensibilities of its founder, Bill Gates, in that the company believes in carbon-neutral energy sources – and like Gates who himself invests in nuclear power innovation, the company seems to see more potential in nuclear than other renewable sources of energy.
The Hill reported that members of the Biden administration met to discuss how to implement President Biden’s artificial intelligence meeting of the White House AI Council, according to an official.
During the meeting, the officials received a president a classified intelligence briefing from the president’s national security team to discuss the international dimensions and capability of AI, according to the White House official.
Personally, I cannot imagine that the AI will be considered as a reputable source regarding the use of itself. Hopefully, someone at Microsoft can be available to articulate what it wants to do with the its plans for AI.