A new report from Greenpeace suggests AI is exacerbating global power inequities.
More manufacturers are bringing AI fabrication to the U.S. Abroad, it's exacerbating global energy consumption. Credit: Rebecca Noble / Bloomberg via Getty Images The U.S. still has its sights on winning the global AI race. First stop: Commandeering AI manufacturing. Announced just last week, a $500 billion infrastructure investment from artificial intelligence giant Nvidia will bring domestic AI manufacturing to the U.S. — that's half a trillion dollars going toward mass production of the the country's own AI supercomputers as well as NVIDIA's Blackwell chips. The AI supercomputers will take over a million square feet of manufacturing space in Texas, while factories and manufacturing partners across Arizona — operated by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which landed a similar deal in March — will be tasked with building and testing chips. Proponents say it's a welcome investment in the country's growing AI economy, potentially boosting jobs and aiding in the development of an AI workforce. In the words of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "The engines of the world's AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time." But while the investment may bode well for the country's position in the AI race, a recent report from Greenpeace suggests an additional worry for such hardware manufacturing chains and AI data centers, at large: Their voracious consumption of electricity. AI manufacturing eats away at power supply According to research from Greenpeace East Asia, electricity consumption linked to AI hardware manufacturing increased by more than 350 percent between 2023 and 2024 — It's expected to increase another 170-fold in the next five years, according to Greenpeace, exceeding the total amount of power consumed by the population of Ireland. Global hubs for AI manufacturing in East Asia, including Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, are the largest consumers of electricity and are increasingly reliant on climate destructive fossil…