5: Mumbai

Behind OpenAI’s Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, is talking to the United Arab Emirates, Asian chipmakers and U.S. officials to expand the computing power needed to build artificial intelligence............... he proposed that they unite on a multitrillion-dollar effort to erect new computer chip factories and data centers across the globe ........... OpenAI’s blueprint for the world’s technology future .. would create countless data centers providing a global reservoir of computing power dedicated to building the next generation of A.I. .......... Mr. Altman’s campaign showed how in just a few years he has become one of the world’s most influential tech executives, able in a span of weeks to gain an audience with Middle Eastern money, Asian manufacturing giants and top U.S. regulators. ......... When word leaked that Mr. Altman, 39, was looking for trillions of dollars, he was mocked for seeking investments equivalent to roughly a quarter of the annual economic output of the United States. .............

Altman has compared the world’s data centers to electricity

............. As the availability of electricity became more widespread, people found better ways of using it. Mr. Altman hoped to do the same with data centers and eventually make A.I. technologies flow like electricity. ......... Mr. Altman’s original plan called for the Emirates to fund the construction of multiple chip-making plants, which can cost as much as $43 billion each. The plan would reduce chip manufacturing costs for companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chip producer. ........... Omar Sultan Al Olama, the Emirates’ minister of state for A.I., told The Times in a March interview that there “is a business case” for going after such a giant deal. ......... OpenAI said in a statement that it was focused on building infrastructure in the United States “with the goals of ensuring the U.S. remains the global leader in innovation, driving re-industrialization across the country and ensuring A.I.’s benefits are widely accessible.” ............ it would take $7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers to fulfill his vision ........... During one meeting, a Japanese official laughed when OpenAI said it was seeking 5 gigawatts of electrical power, about a thousand times the power that an average data center consumes ................ in meetings with officials in Germany, OpenAI explored building a data center in the North Sea so it could tap into 7 gigawatts of power from offshore wind turbines ............. political pressures have forced OpenAI to explore options in the United States ............ Built at a cost of $100 billion each — about 20 times the cost of today’s most powerful data centers — they would hold two million A.I. chips and consume 5 gigawatts of electricity.

Why Is OpenAI Trying to Raise So Much Money? The San Francisco A.I. start-up believes there is not enough computing power on Earth to build the artificial intelligence it wants to create.