It’s also worth noting that data centers are at the moment a relatively small slice of total worldwide energy usage—currently something like 1%, dwarfed by cars, heavy industry, commercial buildings, and so on. That could change—a report from the Electric Power Research Institute projected that the electricity required by AI companies could rise to reach up to 9% of the United States’ energy mix, which would, quite frankly, be insane. (If you think the web is overrun with AI content now, imagine a world where one tenth of all the electricity we generate is going into pumping out more of the stuff.)