Data centre boom reveals AI hype’s physical limits

The craze in artificial intelligence has so far focused on chips made by Nvidia and apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Underpinning this frenzy is a rush to build the infrastructure needed to train and run generative AI (GenAI) models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts the sum invested in these data centres will double to $2 trillion in the next five years. Yet the world’s ability to construct, power and