Heavy Energy Consumption Is the Greatest Feature of Data Centers

In speeches, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tells rapt audiences that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “work.” Yes, precisely.

Jensen’s pithy explanation of what AI truly is speaks to the towering potential of data centers. As the headline to this piece indicates, and contrary to what you’re told, energy consumption by data centers is their most appealing feature.

While they don’t require a lot of employees once they’re in operation, data centers produce staggering amounts of work. A much more prosperous future relative to the already abundant present can be found in the previous truth. Data center critics disagree.

They disdain the energy consumption, while lamenting the few employed by data centers. The critics are mistaking what powers economic growth. It’s not jobs, rather it’s productivity.

Data centers, by consuming so much energy with very few full-time employees, will enable human production on a scale that will transform how we live and work.

Yes, data centers once again consume lots of energy, but in doing so they free humans from enormous amounts of exertion. There lies their genius.

Our daily purpose isn’t to exhaust ourselves, rather it’s to be productive. If the goal of work were exhaustion, then we would spend all our days digging ditches in the hot sun.

The aim of work is to divide it up with as many people and machines as possible so that we individuals can focus on the narrow, frequently least exhausting tasks that we do best. That’s what data centers are enabling.

Figure that lots of us have all manner of business ideas that we would like to bring to life, but there’s a big difference between a concept and something concrete. Readers know why: it costs a lot of money to start a business.

All sorts of business functions require all manner of narrow expertise: one person or many is required to handle accounting, others write the code that will enable the smooth operation of the business, still others oversee marketing, marketing materials, sales, product development. The list is long. And surely incomplete as anyone who’s ever started a business knows very well.

Of course, the fact that the list is long explains why there’s so much optimism in the moment, and particularly so much optimism about data centers. It’s not what will take place at the data centers themselves that’s so exciting, it’s the herculean amounts of work that will be automated for businesses globally thanks to the existence of these data centers.

Consuming large amounts of energy and water, though not nearly as much water as most assume (Americans consume more water on their lawns annually than do data centers), they’re freeing the world’s workers from exponentially greater amounts of work. To the grand betterment of those workers.

That’s because technology, which is but another word for the mechanization of human exertion, never replaces humans as much as it makes humans much more valuable. When we can divide up work with others, we get to do what animates our best, most productive qualities. And when we’re doing what we’re good at, we’re quite a bit happier while making much more money.

These truths require saying, and then a lot more saying at present. It can’t be said enough that the genius of data centers is in their energy consumption, consumption that produces work that will free workers around the world from the consumption of their own precious energy.

Data centers won’t drive economic growth, rather they are economic growth. See all the energy they consume if you’re confused.

Originally published on Real Clear Markets.