Schumpeter
熊彼特
Generative AI has a clean-energy problem
生成式人工智能面临清洁能源难题
What happens when the AI revolution meets the energy transition
当人工智能革命遇上能源转型会发生什么
WHEN A COLLEAGUE from this newspaper visited Sam Altman in 2022 at his home in San Francisco, he noticed two pairs of pink high-tops on a bookshelf. One had the logo of Mr Altman’s machine-learning startup, OpenAI. The other bore an emblem for Helion, a nuclear-fusion company that Mr Altman also backs. The entrepreneur is obsessed with both technologies—not just as foot fashion. He believes that the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy will fall in a mutually sustainable way. He calls it a “long and beautiful exponential curve”.
本刊有一位同事曾在2022年到山姆·阿尔特曼（Sam Altman）在旧金山的住所采访，当时他注意到一个书架上摆着两双粉红色高帮鞋。一双印有阿尔特曼创办的机器学习公司OpenAI的标志，另一双印有他投资的核聚变公司Helion的标志。这位企业家痴迷于这两种技术，可不只是为了用来装饰鞋子。他认为人工智能的成本和能源的成本将以一种互利的方式同步下降。他称之为“绵长优美的指数曲线”。
- emblem 主要用来表示代表国家、组织或家族的“徽章、图案、标记”，即选定用来象征一个国家、组织或家族的符号、图案或实物装置（参见：小词详解 | emblem）
- obsess 使痴迷；使迷恋；使着迷
Nasty, brutish and short, more like. Talk to utilities and data-centre operators and, though many share Mr Altman’s excitement about artificial intelligence (AI), they are grappling with an energy conundrum on which the future of three big economic shifts partly hinges: the AI revolution; the efforts to electrify swathes of the economy; and the fight against climate change. In a nutshell, “generative” AI, the sort behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has a ravenous appetite for electricity. It has landed, virtually out of the blue, on a global energy system that is already struggling to cope with alternative sources of power demand. As yet it is not clear whether there will be enough clean energy to meet everyone’s needs.
现实里，这曲线更像是丑陋、粗暴又短促的。与电力公司和数据中心运营商聊聊就会了解到，虽然他们很多都和阿尔特曼一样对人工智能（AI）兴奋不已，但正在疲于解决一个能源难题，这个问题在一定程度上关系到AI革命、经济电气化和应对气候变化这三大经济转型的未来。简单来说就是，OpenAI的ChatGPT背后的那类“生成式”AI对电力的需求庞大。全球能源系统本来就已经难以应付新兴的电力需求源头，生成式AI的从天而降更让它捉襟见肘。目前尚不清楚是否会有足够的清洁能源来满足方方面面的需求。
- brutish 残忍的；粗野的；蛮横的
- grapple 努力设法解决
- conundrum 引申指“难题、难以回答的问题、复杂难解的问题”，常意味着问题错综复杂（intricate）或者只有推测性的答案，认真尝试也难以解决（参见：小词详解 | conundrum）
- swathe 一长条；一长片
- ravenous 极其饥饿的
- 拓展学习：熟词僻义 | land 是落入什么样的境地？
