Recently The New York Times reported the following:
The Impending, Inescapable Deluge of A.I. (2/3)
“It’s hard to get your mind around the scale”
The NYT - By Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur, Jacqueline Gu and
Cade Metz - The reporters, based in London, Taipei, New York and San Francisco,
have covered the rise of artificial intelligence for years.
July 29, 2026
(continue from part 1)
With more computing power coming online, geopolitical
divisions are only set to widen.
The United States, home to about 5,500 data centers, about 10 times the next closest country, is far ahead of the rest of the world, including China. U.S. companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta control about 80 percent of global computing power that drives A.I., according to Epoch AI. Google alone is believed to have four times as many A.I. chips as all of China’s companies, which are racing to catch up by developing new semiconductors and A.I. infrastructure of their own.
Lack of transparency in the A.I. industry makes measuring global computing capacity difficult, including the volume of chip supplies, total number of data centers and overall electricity consumption. The New York Times relied on estimates from groups including Epoch AI, Cleanview and SemiAnalysis that study the industry and publish widely cited forecasts.
For now, there are no signs that the spending on A.I. will slow. By 2029, A.I. infrastructure investment is forecast to top $1 trillion globally, up from $318 billion last year, according to IDC, the market research firm. That would be on par with the economic output of Switzerland, the world’s 20th-biggest economy.
The investment is worth it, said Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist, because it will power A.I. innovations and spread the technology’s use.
“You see capabilities emerge at larger scale that didn’t occur at smaller scale,” he said. “You’re also now trying to bring these capabilities to not just a few million users for a more niche product, but really to bring the capabilities to hundreds of millions or billions of users.”
A.I.’s growing abilities are linked to increases in the size of data centers. To create a cutting-edge model, huge amounts of computing power are needed to analyze and find patterns in data. That process, known as a “training run,” can cost hundreds of millions of dollars as tens of thousands of specialized chips churn through the data. Training works best when chips trade data over lightning-fast connections, and it can falter when hardware breaks down.
Once an A.I. model is finished, a wider network of data centers takes on a different role by providing the computing power for the system to field queries in real time. This work, known as “inference,” is increasingly driving the need for more data centers. As with a mail distribution hub, putting computing power closer to users enables A.I. models to think longer, respond more quickly and complete more complex tasks.
To meet that demand, production of semiconductors is also skyrocketing. In March 2024, the world had about 2.4 million of “H100 equivalent” A.I. chips, a unit of measurement that refers to the semiconductor that the chipmaker Nvidia released in 2022. Now as millions of more advanced chips are being brought online every month, the world is set to have about 200 million H100 equivalents by the end of 2028, according to Epoch AI.
The build-out could be slowed by troubles with chip and component manufacturing, financing and public opposition. Massive amounts of electricity will also be needed to support new data centers. Last year, the facilities consumed 64 gigawatts of electricity globally, roughly as much electricity as Germany consumes, according to SemiAnalysis, a market research firm. By the end of 2030, that is expected to quadruple, eclipsing the power used by all countries in South America and Africa combined.
At the most advanced A.I. data centers, every gigawatt of power equates to roughly $40 billion to $60 billion in costs, including servers, land, connectivity and utility hookups, according to industry estimates.
“These companies are essentially in an A.I. arms race,” said Carl Benedikt Frey, an economist at Oxford University. “If they don’t invest, they are acknowledging defeat.”
(to be continued in part 3)
Translation
即將來臨、無法逃避的人工智能洪流(2/3)
2026年7月29日
(上接第一部分)
隨著更多運算能力的接入,地緣政治分歧只會進一步加劇。
美國擁有約5,500個數據庫,是排名第二的國家的十倍左右,遙遙領先包括中國在內的世界其他國家。根據 Epoch AI,美國公司像是亞馬遜、Google、微軟和 Meta 控制了大約 80% 推動 AI 的全球運算能力。光是 Google 相信就擁有的 AI 晶片數量,是中國所有公司總和的四倍,而中國的公司正努力追趕,開發自己的新半導體和 AI 基礎設施。
人工智能產業缺乏透明度,使得衡量全球運算能力變得困難,包括晶片供應量、數據庫總數和整體電力消耗。 《紐約時報》參考了Epoch
AI、Cleanview和SemiAnalysis等研究機構的估計數據,這些機構的研究成果被廣泛引用。
目前,沒有跡象顯示人工智能領域的支出會放緩。市場研究公司IDC預測,到2029年,全球人工智能基礎設施投資將超過1兆美元,高於去年的3,180億美元。這將相當於世界第20大經濟體瑞士的經濟產出。
谷歌首席科學家Jeff
Dean表示,這項投資物有所值,因為它將推動人工智能創新並擴大該技術的應用範圍。
他說道:“你會看到一些在小規模應用中無法實現的功能在大規模應用中湧現”,“現在,我們不僅要將這些功能推廣給幾百萬用戶,用於更細分的產品,而是要真正地將這些功能推廣給數億甚至數十億用戶。”
人工智能的能力不斷提升與數據庫規模的擴大密切相關。為了創建一個尖端模型,需要大量的計算能力來分析數據並發現其中的規率。這個過程被稱為“訓練運行”,由於數萬個專用晶片需要處理大量數據,因此可能耗資數億美元。當晶片可享有極速的資料傳輸連接時,訓練效果最佳;而一旦硬體故障,訓練就會受到影響。
一旦人工智能模型建置完成,更廣泛的數據庫網絡將扮演不同的角色,為系統提供運算能力,使其能夠即時處理各種查詢。這項被稱為「推理」的工作正日益推動對更多對數據庫的需求。就像郵件分發中心一樣,將運算能力部署在更靠近使用者的位置,能夠讓人工智能模型進行更長時間的思考,更快地做出回應,並完成更複雜的任務。
為了滿足這項需求,半導體的產量也在快速成長。 2024年3月,全球擁有約240萬顆「H100等效」人工智能晶片,這項計量單位指的是晶片製造商英偉達在2022年發布的半導體晶片。如今,隨著每月數百萬顆更先進的晶片投入使用,根據Epoch AI預測,到2028年底,全球將擁有約2億顆H100等效晶片。
然而,晶片和組件製造、融資以及公眾反對等方面的問題可能會延緩數據庫的建設進程。此外,運行新建數據庫還需要消耗大量的電力。根據市場研究公司SemiAnalysis的數據顯示,去年全球人工智能數據庫消耗了64吉瓦的電力,大致相當於德國的年用電量。預計到2030年底,這一數字將成長四倍,超過南美洲和非洲所有國家用電量的總和。
根據業內人士估計,在最先進的人工智能數據庫,每吉瓦的電力成本約為400億至600億美元,其中包括伺服器、土地、網絡連接和公用設施接入等費用。
牛津大學經濟學家Carl Benedikt Frey表示:“這些公司實際上正在進行一場人工智能軍備競賽。如果他們不投資,就等於承認失敗。”
(待續,見第三部分)